White kid, I know you didn't just call me white.

I am light. My mom might even be as light as me. She doesn't have an accent anymore. She can't pass for a Barbie doll, but she could probably pass for Greek or Italian or some such. Enough that people say a lot of racist bullshit around her at work without thinking. Does that make her not Filipina? Does it erase the orientalism that led to her marrying my father in the first place? Does it negate the 21 years lived in what she also still thinks of as home, her abandonment as a child and the family who raised her? The husband who has never thought of her as anything but Filipina since the time they met as small children?

I wasn't born in the Philippines. I wasn't raised in California or Hawaii where there are so many mixed kids it doesn't make much of a stir, where you can grow up in a culture more similar to your parents' and have your debut and be surrounded by more people who understand your heritage. I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing. But it was a lonely thing.

I was the only person who looked like me in school. I had to question where I came from, from the very first bubble sheet I filled out in elementary school: fill in the bubble with your race, and oh look, here's a sheet provided by the school to tell you what to put. White. My mother didn’t think I was white. My classmates surely didn’t think I was white.

I didn't want to be different; I wanted to go to school and be in the lunch line and not be laughed at for spam and rice. I wanted my mom to be a PTA member, a class volunteer, something, anything to show that I wasn't that different. They tried to make me white on my forms, and even at 5 years old, I knew that was bullshit. I was only white as long as I acted the same as them. But try as I might, they always made me bubble in the same thing.

Am I not Filipina because I'm mixed? I used to think that people thought that. I couldn't understand what it had to do with skin-lightening and why all the famous people in the Philippines were so light. I didn't understand why my few Filipina friends thought they weren't pretty when they were skinner and sexier and had more fashion sense than me. I can't help where I came from, but I don't want people to feel that way. I have a new little sister figure, who keeps whining about how dark she is. 16 and so gorgeous and so insecure because of her skin. I don't want that for anyone.

Am I not Filipina because I wasn't born there? Didn't grow up there? Maybe there's some truth to that. I can claim citizenship because of my mother being a Filipino citizen at the time of my birth, but I've never been able to spend a significant amount of time there before. So I don't know my family from there too well. I'm awkward with them, and a lot of them don't speak english. But I love them and I know they're always thinking of me when we send gifts back and forth. When I get a chance, I'd like to go and stay a while. I'm trying to learn Tagalog but it pisses me off because it's not my family's tongue and not their people's tongue and they don't speak it unless they have to when they meet friends from other islands.

Am I not Filipino-American? You bet your ass I am. And I will keep saying it every time some white person with an inflated ego tries to laugh at me and tell me what I am.