2ND GENERATION FILIPINOS: MORE ASIAN OR LATINO?
By: Edward Berdan
Tags: Asian American, Filipino

Again, I turn to Dr. Ocampo and his articles to further my research on Filipino-Americans. Because my research deals with the understanding of how this ethnic community forms its’ collective political identity (and individual identity), it’s important to understand how a Filipino-American interprets his or herself. In my last post, I highlighted Dr. Ocampo’s efforts to clarify why Filipino-Americans lack a sense of cohesiveness under the pan-ethnic label of “Asian-American”. In this post, I want to again reflect on Dr. Ocampo’s wisdom on Filipino-Americans and their self-imposed identity. Within the article entitled, “Are second-generation Filipinos ‘becoming’ Asian American or Latino? Historical Colonialism, Culture and Panethnicity”, he tries to understand the motive behind the factors that lead to Filipino-Americans selecting a pan-ethnic identity.

Before I dive in, I just want to take a moment and say that Dr. Ocampo’s works on Filipino-American culture and history are truly informative and helps shed light on an ethnic community that tends to be ignored often. His works were a cornerstone for me to initiate my research, which is to eventually map out the political identity of the Filipino-American community, with regards to specific groups within the community itself. These past two posts are referencing his work because of its close correlation to my research. Understanding the culture and history behind a community will surely help to decipher their political identity and how it’s formed. Dr. Ocampo’s efforts to understand the pan-ethnic identification of self, particularly of Filipino-Americans, is important to the understanding of the political identity of the Filipino-American community.

Dr. Ocampo seems to connect his logic behind the self-identification with a pan-ethnic label to assimilation theory and pan ethnicity. However, he notes that “contemporary reformulations of assimilation suggest that children of immigrants are incorporated into different segments of society due to a constellation of structural, economic, and cultural factors, a perspective known as segmented assimilation.” (Ocampo, 2013, p. 427). This presents us with the reality that assimilation isn’t simplistic and straightforward where identity is purely affixed to a singular factor, but more of a vast array of influences on the individual. Dr. Ocampo also notes that “…children of immigrants seamlessly switch between ethnic and pan ethnic labels depending on the situation, rather than viewing them as mutually exclusive options. (2013, p. 428). Perhaps it’s the need to adapt to the difference of environmental factors that contribute to this discovery.

He also looks at this issue through the context of colonialism. Dr. Ocampo implies that some factors contributing to this conflict of identity isn’t limited to the domains of the United States, but also the historical significance of the Philippines. Simply put, the Philippines and Filipinos have a colonial history with both the Spanish and the American governments and people. While the Spanish have long held the Philippines under colonial control, the Americans subsequently took colonial control from the Spanish and later granted independence through the Tydings-McDuffie Act (Ocampo, 2013, p. 430). So, because of the historical context do we have the factor of colonialism and the legacy that it provides that may provide a “swing vote” towards how Filipino-Americans identify themselves under.

Reasonably, it would come more naturally if Filipino-Americans would identify as Latinos for a variety of reasons. History of camaraderie from the farm-workers movement, similarities in religion and culture, and the resemblance within each native language used could be some motivational factors to identify as a Latino. However, the U.S Census identifies the Filipino ethnicity as under the pan-ethnic label of Asian-American. What contributes to an even more confusing struggle is when surveys or applications have both “Asian-American” and “Filipino” as options for ethnic identification. Perhaps this is a more micro-analytical perspective on the more broader issue of pan-ethnic fragmentation prevalent in the Asian-American community.

So, what does this mean? It means that the Filipino-American community seems to be a group within a larger group lacking cohesion to such group. Because of historical and cultural factors, the Filipino-American community seems unable to close that divide with the rest of the Asian-American community at-large. That seemingly innocuous circumstance could translate into political unity down the road. The inability for a community to unify under a pan-ethnic group and/or label could hurt the political importance, especially since the fragmentation would affect potential voters in a way that would not guarantee votes (that is one perspective). Maybe its the general issue of group fragmentation that is preventing the Asian-American community from flexing its’ political importance.