Filipino-American, an intercultural dialog.
We all know the beauty of this wide and tall country is Diversity; and we are all part of it. This land is made of people who carried their cultures with them, cherish them with loved ones and passed them on to new generations. But what happens when kids becomes teenagers, then adults, and have to confront themselves with different norms, values, rules from the ones they have been thought so far in their household? How do these people manage to adapt who they are to both cultures? The one in the household, and the outside world? This is what the dialog will be about.
The current blog is an introduction to three others and it introduces a dialog with three different people about their culture of origin, Filipino, and the host culture, American.
Let’s start this conversation with one of the biggest group of immigrants to the US, Filipino-Americans. In order to understand how challenging could be moving into a new culture it is necessary to give a quick view to some elements like history, languages, values, and religion.
HISTORY
For its geographical position the Philippines Islands were exposed to a lot of different society that all influenced its development. Historically the Philippines traded with “Southeast Asia, as well as Japan, Korea, China, the Indian subcontinent and Arabia”. Later, with colonialism, they were strongly influenced by Spanish culture. In 1899, with the Treaty of Paris, they became United States territory, consequently a large number of Filipinos migrated to the US. In 1946 the Philippine declared independence, and when World War II ended another wave of migration happened. “The Filipino immigrant community in the United States jumped from 105,000 in 1960 (1.1 percent of all immigrants) to 1,844,000 in 2013” .
“Filipino immigrants constitute one of the largest foreign-born groups in the United States. Since 1990, the Philippines has been consistently among the top five countries of origin, and was the fourth largest in 2013, accounting for 4.5 percent of the 41.3 million total immigrant population in the United States.”
LANGUAGE
Today the Philippines has up to 187 between languages and dialects, 171 of those are “living” languages, it means that they are currently spoken in the Philippines. “The 1987 Constitution declares Filipino (Tagalog) as the national language of the country. Filipino and English are the official languages, with the recognition of the regional languages as auxiliary official in their respective regions”. Cebuano and Ilocano are other two languages still used in some regions.
VALUES
The value system in the Philippines has some similarities with the American one. Three values share almost the same percentage: Masculinity, when society is “driven by competition, achievement and success”, Uncertainty Avoidance, when members of a culture feel threaten by what is unknown; and Long Term Orientation, when a society wants to remain connected to the past while dealing with present and future. Individualism, that has to do with whether people’s self-image is defined in terms of “I” or “We” suffer from a strong difference.
Individualism, is 32% in Filipino culture and 91% in United States culture. This defines the Philippines as a collectivistic society, meaning that members tend to perceive the society as a “We” and deeply care about family and in-groups. In the following three blogs it will be clearer how collectivism in Filipino society has a strong and dominant presence.
RELIGION
In the Philippines the Constitution requires the government to respect all religions and makes sure that State and Church stays separated. The religion practiced is mainly Christianity, “at least 92% of the population is Christian; about 81% belong to the Roman Catholic Church while about 11% belong to Protestant, Restorationist and independent Catholic denominations”. There is also a 5.6% of the population that is Muslims, and a 2% that still practice Philippines traditional religions.
It is important to know that FILIPINO-AMERICANS :
- are the second largest Asian-American group in the United States.
- are the number one largest asians group in California
- Filipinos were the first documented Asian people to arrive in the United States.
- strongly present in the arts and in hip-hop culture.
The dialogs that follow are meant to explore the Filipino-American culture. The outcome of the interviews unexpectedly led to the collectivistic element of the Filipino society. Check them out:
1. https://medium.com/@bpaesano/dialog-1-filipino-culture-is-unique-junel-af4f7eb5922e
2. https://medium.com/@bpaesano/dialog-2-its-different-for-everybody-jessica-a4254681cd99
3. https://medium.com/@bpaesano/dialog-3-this-filipino-american-life-joe-e1793858627
At the end of the dialogs will be clearer how collectivism plays a strong role in defining Filipino-Americans cultural identities.
Hi! My name is Beatrice Paesano. I am a student at City College of San Francisco. This blog is for an assignment in the class Intercultural Communication taught by Dr. Jennifer Kienzle. If you have any questions or comments about this project, please contact Dr. Kienzle: jkienzle@ccsf.edu.
