Microaggressions toward mixed-ethnicity people?
Hello,
I'm posting to learn, not to get hate. I've been seeing a young mixed-ethnicity man from Mindanao for almost two years. He was born in Mindanao and speaks Bisaya. He's never met his father and has never even been to India. To me he just looks like a very dark-skinned Filipino, but maybe that's because I know. He constantly gets questions about his background and language. When he says he's Bisaya, people don't believe him. People often press their palms together, say “namaste,” and laugh. He says it doesn't bother him, that he's used to it, and that the country is homogeneous so people don't understand. But I've met so many mixed people born here. Ten million Filipinos (10%) live and work overseas. Mixed-ethnicity Filipinos are not rare at all.
Why is it okay to point out someone's ethnicity and argue with them about who they are?
I'm asking as a mixed person myself, with Creole, Caribbean and Chinese ancestry.
I was also raised in America by a Filipino family, and their mixed kids are basically my siblings. So I'm very sensitive about this topic too.
Can someone please explain this to me? I'm genuinely trying to understand, because it feels so strange that I get more defensive than the people actually going through it.
Also, as someone with dark skin, people are only ever nice to me and excited to meet me, yet they seem to treat my mixed friends differently right next to me.
And of course I'm sensitive partly because of how older Chinese people treat me over my Chinese heritage.
OP, you must be American to be this bothered about race and ethnicity
Why are you asking expats a question meant for locals? This is the wrong group Go to r/AskPH
My wife is mixed Black and Filipino. When people say things in Tagalog assuming she's a foreigner who doesn't speak it, she finds it more amusing than upsetting.
Filipinos really care about skin tone, noticing who's darker and who's lighter. In general they like to divide society into different layers and have all kinds of derogatory nicknames for poorer or provincial Filipinos. But there's not much you can do about it, so just let it go. It doesn't matter that much for foreigners (ironically, foreigners are far more tolerant on this than locals). By the way, this trait makes it pretty easy to spot Filipinos writing in English while pretending to be foreigners. Their concern with the fine shades of Filipino skin tone gives them away right away.
You being bothered won't change society. Life is short. Relax.
It's ‘bisaya’ or ‘visayan’, not ‘Bisyah’. Filipinos are racist, yes, it's normalized. I'm surprised that with your dark skin you haven't figured that out yet, since you'd be treated as a second-class citizen in most of the Philippines.
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