Thursday, July 7, 2011

Human Pride

My name is Richard Arce, I'm the author of this blog, and I just realized that haven't updated this blog for a while! So I'm back, and I'm going to update it on a regular basis from now on!

The reason I did this blog was to combat a lot of the negative and racist stereotypes about Filipinos that I had to suffer and endure growing up in Honolulu, Hawaii. And so a lot of the posts I did, there is a sense of overnationalism, and it was a sense of fighting back, saying "Oh yeah? That's what you think of us? Well f--- you, and this is how I'm going to break all of your prejudices and stereotypes!"

And it was extremely cathartic, and I grew into a stronger and more confident person as a result of the work I put into this blog. I no longer felt ashamed about any aspect of my Filipino heritage, which is something that a lot of Filipinos, and a lot of Asians and non-"Whites" who grow up in America tend to feel. The normalization of White America teaches a lot of non-Whites to feel ashamed of their heritage, and it's a process that has slowly been getting better as the years go by, but it's still there, and if you want a glaring example of it, all you have to do is turn on the TV.

So the nationalism that I've displayed in this blog was an emotional response to the scars of my childhood, and a lot of the nationalism displayed in the world is a direct result of negative prejudices, and so that's why people "fight back" with nationalism. But in the process, I also realized why nationalism is detrimental to everyone in the world. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, regardless of what country we come from and what language we speak. So race in itself as a concept should be null and void, and by logic so should racism.

But of course, the world is not that simple. But I wish it would be.

Take care, and God bless to all my friends and family, and I can't believe that this little blog I started up a few years ago has received almost 2 million visitors around the world since 2007! Thank you all, my human brothers and sisters around the world for supporting this blog, and may you all find happiness and love in this world of ours.

Love,
Richard

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Richard, thank you for sharing your insights. I struggled with a lot of that, but growing up in rural lily-white New England. Were you born in the Philippines? Just curious.