Racism and reactivity. Being Filipino is to be both, the subject of racism and the puppet of it. The systematic indoctrination of self as inferior to the white, middle class male. The reactivity to resist that competition. But the gratification in being the white, middle class male for one moment, to laugh at the blackest, the most inferior, the most poor, the most unwhite, unmiddle class, unmale. My assimilation has put in me in closer proximity to the white middle class status than the blackest African. Or the blackest Filipino. The knowing how much I don’t know the pain of being black because we were compared to the negroes in Africa. That which we were compared to to name us as inferior and savage. The negritos, the Aetas, and in our lowland, Hispanicized eyes, they were the ugly ones we ran away from, as we bathed with skin-whitening soaps. When in our dreams, they were the same as those enigmatic forest dwellers, who were our nightmares in the daytime. In our dreams, we lived in forests, and drank from streams, and loved our bodies with golden jewelry that adorned our sun tanned skin. Moist like the slippery rock glistening. We were, then we are. Running away from our pasts, ourselves, to hate our pasts, hate love, but rather be in a spell of self flagellation. Desecrate our sacredness, and we follow the tracks of those white colonizers to be and breed with him. In our desire to be who we are not. Who we are, but are not. Assimilate, we become his mistress, with illegitimate child kept in the back rooms of the housekeeper’s quarters. We are protected from the harshest of elements, and out of tuch with spirits, left back. Forgotten…

Fuck him…
He who does not understand the complexity
of pain
of being
assimilated, integrated and hated
and loved lusted object of his dreams, of his nightmares, of his fantasies.
The hardness of his member,
the second phallus he remembers,
and follows orders of bullets.
Where did you learn to love this violence?
This violence so part of you and you can afford to forget,
as you run back to a space where that culture is your face,
and you belong somewhere.
Assimilated everywhere,
where the way of hate has a foothold in every country of the world.
And you can stand among the elites,
the desires of self hating girls and guys…
and be the one lusted after for.
But, you lust after the ones who remember.
So that you can silence us
and continue being the star of the show.
Lies…