Lourdes U. Alonso
My personal reactions' journey is my main focus of this multicultural resume. The spiritual values instilled in me at an early age helped me screen out the ugliness and allowed me to move on without begrudging anyone. I was born to Ursula Adriano Untalan and Thomas Flores Fleming. Born in Barrigada, Guam by a midwife named Nankala'. I was born and raised in the wooden house my Dad designed and built. I moved to the mainland when I was 14 years old.
RACIAL EXPERIENCE
0 TO 10 YEARS OLD - BARRIGADA, GUAM - 1956 – 1966 Early on in our home, roles were assigned without question according to one’s age and gender. For example, my Mom did all the cooking, cleaning, and raising all 9 children. Cooking and cleaning were Mom’s work, the breadwinner was Dad. Our job was to excel in school and the art of music. Every sibling had to learn an instrument by grade school. Prayers replaced depression. It is these early years too that I learned that suicide is a sin, and death is entry to the everlasting life.
When I was ten years old I experienced my first racial slur. The neighbor’s whispers about our family name (Fleming) being ‘Americano’ and that we looked ‘mixed’, and known to be ‘of‘Gupalao’ race’,--- and I remember hearing an adult neighbor said it out in a disparaging tone. I never repeated it to my Mother as I considered her feelings. Gupalao is a derogatory word for Micronesian. It was my own feelings of inferiority, for my Mother, of her dark skin and my curiosity of how she kept to herself and her family. Still I sensed her power of having a deep sense of herself and probably never even was affected by mine and others’ ignorance. My Mom’s mix of ¼ blood Filipino and Chamorru and alas, born in Yap Island, was immediately a gossip item that increased as her art in the garden flourished. And still, I find the need to defend her by saying to myself little did they know that a book was written about her in the early 1930s for their fashionable and refined lifestyle when she was very young growing up in Yap supported by their hard work in their Copra Trading business there.
11 TO 13 YEARS OLD - 1967 - 1969
Around this age I noticed that there was a unified sense that we had to be perfect little respectful girls and separate from our peers who were ‘wild’. We made sure we did not wear any makeup or short skirts or else our elderly Aunties would indiscreetly pinch us till our skin turned blue. These same Aunties curse girls whom choose to break the unspoken rule of being virtuous.
When a group is criticized because of being different, my mother would constructively mention all the positive aspects of them. For instance, she’d say “the Filipinos have a great bustling society with a lot more professionals than Guam does”, and shakes her head in disgust; she tells us of how the navigational skills of the outer islanders are still practiced, then questions the locals, “why do they think they’re better than anyone?”
There was an ‘air’ of prejudice towards the Filipinos and other small population of Micronesian in contrast to the high regards given to the ‘Americanos’. The close-knit Chamorru neighborhood in Barrigada welcomed the White contract teachers, inviting them to their fiestas. As I now recall, there were no Filipino or Outer-Islanders in our neighbor. I witnessed first-hand the effect of such ramification of such discrimination at Ypao Beach. There was a big celebration happening in the park and being that it was a public park, we freely entered the pavilion, only to be attacked by a large angry crowd of young Filipinos wielding chains, sticks and one of them had a machete, we ran like death upon us as fast as we could back to the car. I did not feel resentment against those young men. Instead, I only felt an exhilarating episode in my lifetime. I did not know it then, but truly, I now can say my parents’ teachings on values of human kindness from the time I could hear, allowed me that understanding of their rebellious anger. “No group should be made to feel ashamed of themselves. (Sue, 2007, p. 20)
14 TO 18 YEARS OLD 1971 - 1974
Ethnocentrism became ever-present during this period. A neighborhood girl moved in from Saipan. Reflecting back on how she must have been an object of curiosity to the community because she was “Saipanese,” this girl made it her job to be discriminatory first. I suppose having caught wind of my parents’ birthplace in Yap; she would constantly tease me about it. As a result of her clever and aggressive nature, she became quite popular, needless to say, accepted quickly into the community.
Later into my teens, I experienced injustice in the form of power of one’s position in the workplace. It happened on my first day in high school in Guam. I was late for my Counselor’s appointment; he outright called me a liar when I told him I couldn’t find his office. I learned immediately to be leery of men of authority. The following year in California, a racial antagonistic attack against me, chased off from a restaurant sitting area, it hurt. It hurt most because it came from a White businessman. This came at the worst time to experience socio-economic disparity. We had just moved to California in 1971. In Guam, my Dad was always a self-employed carpenter and when the H2 workers were brought into the island it pushed him right out of the workforce. So being an immigrant, and the bottom of the totem pole, I felt the ugliness of racial prejudice. Once again, I feel grateful for my religious values, because I do not harbor ill-feelings against these White men, but an awareness of that pain which I will never inflict on anyone as what was inflicted onto me.
Education
The University of Guam, Master of Arts in Counseling
Skills
Understanding the diverse populations and being aware that for people to function better in our society, I will recognize the heart and soul of the human being, his societal group, and the universal dimensions.
Referrals
Dr. M. Artero
