Filipinos Love Serving Others: Negotiating a Filipino Identity in Hawai’i

Abstract

Examining how individuals negotiate a Filipino identity in Hawai’i provides insights into the fluidity and flexibility of racism. Filipino identities in Hawai’i are often negotiated at the intersections of a Filipino colonial mentality, a local Hawai’i identity, and racialized structures that marginalize Filipinos. Drawing on interviews with upwardly mobile individuals who grew up in Hawai’i, I illuminate how young adults reclaim a Filipino identity after growing up being ashamed of being Filipino. Spurred by experience in higher education, the participants worked to affiliate themselves with being Filipino and recast negative stereotypes in positive fashions. Although these reframings of stereotypes enabled one to confidently assert that they were Filipino, they also upheld the negative characterizations of Filipinos that inform their marginalization in Hawai’i. Ultimately, this research demonstrates the racial ideologies are fluid and flexible, as they can shape identity processes that attempt to construct a positive Filipino identity in Hawai’i.