At 11:04 AM 8/10/01 -0400, Eric M Cho wrote:
>If it makes you feel better Jay-Z is part Filipino.
>
>Long time lurker.
I'll believe it when I hear him admit it for himself (gee, nowadays it's no 
big deal anymore for a gay person to come out of the closet, but admitting 
your ethnic heritage is an even bigger taboo I suppose...). The Filipino 
community is star-struck and desperate that even anyone with 0.0000000008 
Filipino blood is automatically hailed as "Filipino." The Artist Currently 
Known As Prince is 1/16th Filipino...but then he's also 1/2 Italian (and I 
don't see any Italian people claim Prince as one of their own).
Other celebrities like Lou Diamond Philips and Rob Schneider have 
"admitted" their Filipinoness, and that's cool.  But some people get 
ridiculous and insist that certain other celebrities are...like Keanu 
Reeves or Phoebe Cates (both part Chinese in their cases).  Then there's 
people like Tia Carrere who are full-Filipino but tell everyone else they 
are "Hawaiian"...
No disrespect to John Book or any mestizos (hey you can't choose your 
ethnic makeup, so whatever you personally claim yourself to be is fine with 
me), but IMHO it's as if to say if you're full-blooded you're not worthy of 
any sort of recognition. Oh well, I can go on for days about this topic.
I also apologize for those on this list who doesn't know what the hell a 
Filipino is. If you don't, email me privately. I also apologize for my 
excessive ranting on this topic, I take it rather personally.
Meanwhile I'm just trying to make my music, selling my CDs and seeing what 
happens.
Elson
- 30 -
: . elson trinidad, los angeles, california, usa
: . elson@westworld.com  :  www.westworld.com/~elson
: . groove to the futurethnic beats of e:trinity at www.e-trinity.org and 
www.mp3.com/etrinity
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Aug 10 2001 - 21:24:07 CEST