Filipino American History Matters | Opinion

The first time I heard Doja Cat's new single, "Balut," I cringed. The backlash from the Filipino community was well deserved. If you're going to culturally appropriate my motherland's delicacy, a fertilized duck egg that we eat and slurp whole, then get the facts straight. In the aftermath, Doja Cat claimed she titled the song "Balut" because "it signifies a bird that's being eaten alive," symbolizing how she felt. But balut is cooked. Facts matter.

Filipino food has already been negatively stereotyped on shows like "Bizarre Foods." A celebrity like Doja Cat casually appropriating Filipino culture for a song is harmful. The incident leaves us with a bigger issue to tackle: rich Filipino American history has been erased. We need to do something about it.

In 2009, Congress declared October to be Filipino American History Month. At San Francisco City Hall this week, many will celebrate 125 years of Filipino-American history outlined by Mayor London Breed in an invitation flyer. But most Americans, even Filipino Americans, do not know our history goes back earlier, to four centuries in the U.S.

I graduated from some of the best schools in America, and even I just found out that Filipinos were not only the first Asians to step foot on U.S. soil via Morro Bay, Calif. in 1587, but we made it to this country decades before pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock.

In old drawings stored at the U.S. Library of Congress, you will see Philippine nipa huts, wooden houses built on stilts, floating over marshes in Saint Malo, La., in 1763. It is the first Asian American settlement ever recorded in U.S. history, a fishing community built by "Manilamen." Here, Filipinos revolutionized the shrimping industry of the south, introducing Philippine methods like the "Shrimp Dance," where teams of fishermen would stomp on piles of shrimp to separate the shells from the meat. Filipinos introduced Louisiana to dried shrimp.

Since the Filipinos of Louisiana were all male, they married Isleños and Cajun people, integrating traditions. How did I visit New Orleans feeling like I had traveled to the heart of jazz and culinary greatness without knowing that my people had been an integral part of NOLA's history and famous food scene?

Filipinos are the third largest Asian American group in the U.S. with 4.2 million Filipinos; a population with only 5 percent less than the Chinese, and 2 percent less than the Indians. But we continue to live in America's shadows. At the 2018 Emmys, actor Michael Che quipped, "Can you believe they did 15 seasons of 'ER' without one Filipino nurse?"

The joke was funny because it's true—without Filipino nurses, the U.S. health care system would collapse. For decades, the Philippines has become America's biggest resource for skilled nurses. For years, I thought America did the Philippines a favor, permitting mass migration and enabling the American Dream for so many of my people, but it was the U.S. that needed Filipino nurses: a countrywide nursing shortage followed World War II.

Some have said it's exploitation. Throughout the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemic, Filipino nurses have worked shifts that nobody wanted. They risked their lives serving on the frontlines, racking up grim on-the-job statistics like "26.4 percent of registered nurses who have died of COVID-19 and related complications are Filipino."

And it's not that we don't speak up. In the 1960s, Filipino American civil rights activist Larry Itliong spearheaded the United Farm Workers and led the Delano grape strike; a five-year battle that became known as "one of the most pivotal labor movements in the history of the United States." But Itliong's efforts were overshadowed by his co-director, Cesar Chavez. In San Francisco, Chavez has a street named after him, while Itliong has faded into the background.

Generations of Filipinos have protested against labor inequalities, racial violence, discrimination, and anti-miscegenation laws. We are fighters, too. During World War II, 250,000 Filipinos fought to protect and defend America, and we have continued to serve in every war from Iraq to Afghanistan.

On a lighter note, since another stereotype is that Filipinos love to sing ... most people don't know that Filipino Americans are accomplished musicians, who serenade audiences beyond karaoke machines. Kumusta (hello) Bruno Mars, Olivia Rodrigo, Apl.de.Ap from Black Eyed Peas, H.E.R, and others.

The rest of us aren't all nurses either. My mom is a retired chemist. My sister is a lawyer. My other sister is a public school teacher. I was a tech sales executive turned yoga teacher. My grandfather was the first Filipino to be trained in petroleum engineering in America in the early 1950s. The newspaper clipping that highlights his scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania has gone missing. It has become my job to find it.

So, to Doja Cat, I'd say, do research before you misuse someone's culture for a song. Some of us are doing a lot of work to preserve our heritage.

Alyssa Lauren Stone (@alyssalauren) is a Bay Area-based writer, certified reiki master, yoga teacher, and ex-Silicon Valley / NYC tech sales executive.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.