[OP-ED] We get it! You're Filipino!

Me and my inner self, vibin’ and thrivin’. (Image: Nicole Cadelina (@ni.muy)

I’m not afraid to be vocal about my Filipino identity. On some Uni days, I sport a t-shirt gifted from my Tita, depicting a Filipina woman with the caption ‘19th Century Filipina Mestiza.’ In my room, I listen to Filipina hip-hop artists like HANHAN and Ruby Ibarra for female cultural empowerment. Even during my early days in retail, I’d slip in some Tagalog when serving older Filipino customers, saying ‘salamat po’ when I handed their receipts before waving goodbye with ‘ingat, ingat!’.

My love and passion for my culture is so abundant - and perhaps annoying too - to the point where my non-Filipino friends will joke about it occasionally. But other times, they will choose to scrutinise this. ‘Why does your ethnicity matter so much to you?’ they’d ask, as if to say ‘We get it - you’re Filipino and you love the Philippines. Why are you so obsessed?’.

I sometimes catch myself asking those same questions too. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I encountered the term kapwa. Roughly translating to ‘other’ or ‘neighbour’ in Tagalog, it is commonly used in Filipino psychology to describe a shared inner self. To feel kapwa meant that no matter how different your experiences or narrative may be, you are just the same as every other Filipino in the past and present - you’re connected with everyone.

Feeling the kapwa at my 22nd birthday, bonding over San Miguels and OPM artists 🇵🇭 (Image: Nicole Cadelina (@ni.muy)

Learning about kapwa helped me rationalise my ‘obsession’ with Filipino culture, but I knew there was another layer to this. For all I know, it wasn’t just a matter of flexing my Pinoy Pride to my puti (white) classmates. As someone who was neither born in the Philippines, nor learnt their mother tongue growing up (save for some basic sentences and insults), I felt insecure about my diasporic identity and wondered if I was a ‘true’ Filipina.

Then came a revelation - to connect with my Filipino diaspora was to affirm my own roots as a Filipina. Being born in Western Sydney and learning English didn’t mean my heritage suddenly disappeared. For my Philippine-born parents, moving to Australia never stopped my Mum from cooking her signature pancit for my Ninong and Ninang, nor did it hold back my Dad from running his Filipino Saturday School for the younger generations. If my parents found a way of sharing a part of themselves to other Filipinos, then I could do the very same myself.

As one Ruby Ibarra would say - alamin ang yung ugat (‘know your roots’) (Image: Nicole Cadelina (@ni.muy)

My deep love for Filipino culture was my path to connecting with other Filipino-Australians, Philippine-born or otherwise. Our culture keeps us inseparable from each other. Casual talks about family feeds, gatherings, music - just the little things ignited a passion within us - that was our kapwa. As long as I carried my culture everywhere I went, and shared some love for our ever-growing diaspora, I can proudly identify as a true Filipina woman.