I Am (Still) From Here

By: Adelaide J. Reilly, SVP/GM, Media and Digital, The Channel Company

“Where are you from?”

I was in the basement of Marsh Chapel on the Boston University campus one spring, chatting with a friend of mine who worked there about midterms when a woman walking through stopped and stared at us for a few minutes. I thought she was waiting patiently for me to stop talking so she could ask him a question, but instead, she fixed her gaze on me, and asked, “Where are you from?"

“Ohio.” I figured that she could catch my Midwestern accent, the way I pronounce “aunt” as “ant,” emphasized the pronunciation of the “r”s in Harvard Yard and other words that are a telltale sign I did not grow up in Boston.

“And did you always live there?”

“Yes, I was born and raised in Cleveland.” My Midwestern friendliness didn’t mind that a stranger who never introduced themselves was inquiring about my upbringing. I have been asked this question a million times, especially on the West Side of Cleveland, where many ethnic groups settled and intermingled easily. It wasn’t uncommon to find the Greek Orthodox church down the street from the Slovakian community center nearby a Chinese restaurant that was a few doors down from an Italian bakery that made the best Polish kolaches. Ethnicity didn’t divide the West Side as much as wealth did, unlike the East Side of Cleveland where both were more intricately intertwined.

“And are your parents from Ohio too?”

“Well, no, they immigrated from the Philippines.” I figured she didn’t know how to ask about my heritage and didn’t want to assume I was part of another ethnic group – I often got mistaken for being part of another Asian population or being Latina.

“And they can afford to send you to this school?”

“Well, they don’t fully fund my education, no. It’s a combination of them, scholarships, and financial aid that allow me to be here.”

“And take away opportunities from real Americans.”

She proceeded to tirade about good jobs being taken away by my “kind,” while “real” Americans had to struggle only to be shut out by dirty immigrants.” I took a deep breath and locked eyes with her, staring deep into her narrowed pupils and into the dark wells of hatred she must have built up over time. She started screaming into my face about “people like me” but I refused to break eye contact. I was fixated on finding something recognizable, some common ground between us, only to feel like I had been suspended in space, the blood draining from my face the more I inhaled the bitterness that hung between us. She yelled for maybe 10 minutes before storming off but it feels like an eternity when your existence is being questioned. 

May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. According to a 2021 Pew Research study, Filipinos make up 19% (4.2 million) of the total Asian population in the United States, making them the third-largest Asian population in the U.S., just behind Chinese Americans (5.4 million) and Indian Americans (4.6 million). Filipinos were the first Asians brought to America in the late 1500s as slaves and as workers on Spanish galleon ships that started trading between the Spanish-occupied Philippines and Acapulco. California became a stopping point along the way, and thus it was that the first Filipino set foot in California in about 1587. Nowadays half of the U.S.-based Filipino population lives in California, New York, Texas, New Jersey, and Washington.

Despite having eight nationally recognized languages, many people are shocked to learn that 84% of the Philippines is proficient in speaking English. Those that know the history of the Philippines know that it was a territory of the U.S. for about 50 years following the U.S.’ victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, until it was given independence on July 4, 1946. There are still converted American jeeps running as local buses in Manila, and the American dream was so well-indoctrinated into the baby boomer generation that it seemed logical that if you had the means to move yourself and your family to America, you absolutely should. 

Like many of their friends in the medical community, my parents fled the Philippines in the early 1970s shortly after Marcos declared martial law. We were fortunate that the U.S. was recruiting doctors and nurses in the Midwest, and my dad’s family had already started emigrating in the late 1960s. Even though they brought a lot of their culture, food, and values with them, many parents that came over during that period did not teach their kids Tagalog (pronounced ta-GAL-log). It was critical that we learned to integrate, to fully embrace Americanisms, and speak English because this was our home and our country. We all seemed to learn words and phrases here and there, but our parents insisted on speaking to us in English and saved Tagalog (or their provincial language), for each other. I got to a point where I could understand the conversations, but I couldn’t tell you the exact words, or subject-object relationships in a sentence. When it came time to learn a second language in high school, my only options were Spanish or French. Having heard so much about the cruelty of the Spanish occupants for more than 350 years, I committed to becoming fluent in French as a subtle way of rebelling against colonialism.

The first trip I took to the Philippines was on a medical mission with The Association of Philippine-American Physicians in Ohio (APPO). Once a year for one week, the group planned a voluntary mission to go back into different provinces and bring their own medical supplies, medication, and expertise to serve the poor communities and see as many patients in need of medical care as possible and give back to the country that gave them the ability to build a better life. In the week that I was there, we saw 2,000 patients from some of the poorest towns in the north. We slept in local hotels and were fed and celebrated by the local governments and women’s auxiliary groups. When you grow up as a minority in a country it is a uniquely humbling experience to go somewhere and be amongst so many people that look like you that are experiencing a very different reality. I am lucky and grateful that my family was able to leave and provide a different life for us, a value that we were constantly reminded of well before taking this trip.

It was also on this trip that I was able to meet first, second, and third cousins for the first time and be told that I’m not actually Filipino. “So, how do you find my country?” my cousin asked over a large family get-together. I instantly corrected her by saying, “Well, I’m Filipino too, so it’s also my homeland.” but she shook it off. “Do you speak Tagalog?” she asked me -- in Tagalog. “No,” I said in both English and Tagalog. “Well, you’re not actually Filipino because you don’t speak the language.” That stung. It’s true that you don’t really know a place unless you’ve lived there, but when asked about my ethnicity I’ve always said I’m Filipino, and whenever I travel abroad, I tell people I’m American. I’ve never felt the need to qualify my citizenry by saying I’m Filipino-American even though I am. Yet for some reason this clarity makes me feel more foreign to both countries. I’m reminded that in the U.S. you are judged on how you look – to the woman I was describing earlier she only saw that I was different. To my cousin – and to many foreigners I’ve encountered traveling outside of the U.S. – you’re a foreigner based on whether you share a common language… that is to say because I use American expressions, I am an American. And yet, the increased attacks on Asians across the country remind me that no matter what I think, no matter how I sound, I might always be regarded as an immigrant. That is the most foreign feeling of all.

I don’t want to feel like that. 

What I really want is what everyone wants: to belong. I want us to be better allies to each other; to think about how our own internal biases and lack of action might be alienating others. To realize that saying nothing to your AAPI friends and colleagues when you hear an 18-year-old Chinese girl was beaten on the subway by a group of kids or that an Asian woman is pushed in front of a train on her way to work, or when a person is punched in the stomach by a passerby for crossing the street feels more isolating than any awkward thing you might say. To quote from @rishi.draws on TikTok, "#IAmFromHere.”

After the woman left, I realized that a small crowd of people had gathered in the doorways of their offices, and they were all staring at me. Were they standing there the whole time? Their silence felt like an accusation. I wanted to say, “Is that what you all think of me?” when my friend finally grabbed me by both hands and said, “Are you ok?” The question jolted me back into my skin. I took a deep breath and then pushed all the air out of my lungs until I couldn’t exhale anymore. I did this a few more times until it felt like I purged most of the toxicity that I had taken in. I didn’t know how to answer his question, but I was grateful he asked it, nonetheless.