So, citizenship blues

Rick Olivares | bleachersbrew@gmail.com Bleachers’ Brew

I LOOK at this whole episode of many being upset with Super Grandmaster Wesley So’s accepting American citizenship with bemusement and incredulity.

Why aren’t these defenders of Filipino pride upset with the millions of Filipinos who have gone overseas and acquired foreign passports and citizenship?

Because Wesley is a sports star? After Manny Pacquiao, we have very few?

Sure, he left because of the mess that Philippine sports is in. But for whatever reason, it is his right. Just as it is the right of others to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

People howl in protest but really, what do you do to make things better so no one leaves?

People move around from country to country in search of themselves or a better life. It is just the natural order of things and it has been since the dawn of man.

Heck, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, sailed under the Spanish flag. Christopher Columbus, an Italian, likewise discovered the New World behind Spanish royal patronage.

Filipinos generally are so taken in with anyone having an ounce of Filipino blood that we are quick to pronounce them as Filipino and nothing else. But isn’t our race so mixed with Malay, Chinese, Indian, European and American stock? If so, by that logic alone, we also qualify as Malay, Chinese, Indian, European and American?

And all that inter-racial mixing has certainly improved our gene pool.

Seriously.

A traveler disses the country in a review and the legions of keyboard warriors go on the offensive as if we have been dealt a mortal blow. Having lived in two other countries, they really couldn’t care less whether you like their culture or not. They have more things to be worried about and you can always leave if you wish.

I certainly don’t read and hear of when other foreign nationals seeking citizenship elsewhere and their native countrymen raising their voices in protest.

I have gotten into many a serious discussion with all these compatriots pronouncing, “ang galing ng Pilipino” in anything that we do as if we aren’t entitled to do such.

A Filipino musician performed abroad and he recounted to me that “wasak yung audience niya sa isang bansa sa Europe.” Sure they were impressed but that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that one is a global star. It is entirely possible that he is a novelty since no one thinks that blues and R&B— music forms as American as apple pie—would be of interest to an Asian.

More recently, a friend had a fellow Filipino design an album cover and while it is awesome, it came along with the now familiar “ang galing ng…” when obviously, it borrowed influence from many other album art work by a multitude of bands that have come before.

I think it should be others lavishing praise and not the other way around. I don’t hear other than politicians’ rhetoric about “making America or other some other country great again.”

Yes, magaling ang Pinoy, but so are other countries. Didn’t this whole vaccine thing tell you where we are in the totem pole in the scheme of things that someone has to resort to threats to be taken seriously?

I am proud to be a Filipino and make no bones about it. I am just of the sort to keep it real and not blow one’s horn or get upset about others looking for greener pastures.

I can think of the time when Hakeem Olajuwon—who played for the Nigerian youth national team—moved to the US for a non-basketball reason. The Dream did say that there was some criticism which he parried with a statement in 1996, “I’ve been here over 10 years. My home is in Houston and a lot of my family is in the United States. It was just a natural. I’m still a Nigerian and I’m proud of it. But I am a US citizen.” Wesley has verbally intimated the same. The common denominator is both Nigeria and the Philippines being Third World countries. Singapore, Japan and Korea have shown that Asian countries can be first world countries. Surely, the Philippines can achieve the same. Getting there is another matter.

At this point, I think we should just be happy for him and take serious and concrete steps to improve what we have in the national sports scene and in our country for the brain drain not to continue.

Time to get real, people. It’s time for action on a real level and not on the keyboard.