4/11 DJs Filipino

One of the many points that I resonated with self-proclaiming identity.  What does it mean to be Asian American?  In this article, there a few section dedicated to discussing about how DJs perceived themselves as Filipino as opposed to Asian American.  The interviewees would like to differentiate themselves from associating with Asian American because they felt their identities were lost.   For instance, Rey-Jun, one of the DJs interviewed, says the term Asian is broad and it doesn’t give them an identity.  They were lump together because of the region, not the culture.  When it comes to Hip-Hop, they take pride in incorporating this activity as part of their cultural legitimacy for the youth community.  Even they acknowledge the history of hip-hop, the Filipino DJs used Hip-Hop to their own cultural productivity.  They leaned towards hip-hop so that they can developed their own identity.  Instead of having the U.S. define their identity, they rather define their own meaning of Filipinoness.   

            Even though Asian American is a constructed terms used for political purposes, it covers the diversity within the Asian American community.  For instance, there are a great handful of languages and ethnic identity, such as Laotian, Cambodian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese.  Each ethnic group that falls under the racial category, Asian, are lumped together assuming they share the similar history and culture.  Being lumped as Asian American was problematic to the Filipino Djs because they were shadowed by the Asian American identity itself.  When it comes to Asian identity, Chinese and Japanese are the main ethnic group that people refer to, which relates to the construction of the term minority myth as well.