I'm Like A Rapper

The Philippine Flag,  originally uploaded by NCVillamar.

It has come to my attention that the term "Flip" may have derogatory origins. Allegedly, during World War II, when American soldiers were in the Philippines, some fool came up with the term "Flip" as an acronym for "fucking little island people" to refer to Filipinos. Apparently, it may be a racial slur as offensive as the N-word, according to one website I read when researching this. One entry in UrbanDictionary.com says that any Filipino that uses this term is stupid for not knowing their own cultural history.

I first heard the term "Flip" referring to Filipinos when I was a student at Nogales High School in La Puente, California in the 1980s. I am proud to say that my high school was known as a true melting pot of cultures -- I had friends who were Caucasian, African, Mexican, East Indian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and, of course, Filipino. In fact, there were a LOT of Filipinos. West Covina, where I and many of my classmates lived (it bordered La Puente), is now known as "Little Manila" because a large part of the town is is comprised of Filipino establishments, businesses, and residents. West Covina is a warm, diverse, and hospitable city - a nice place in which to have grown up, and a nice place to visit. To me, it's still "home" even though I have been in Baltimore for 17 years.

The people who used the term "Flip" as I know the term were my classmates. These were teenagers who, like me, had immigrated as young kids to the U.S. with their parents (usually doctors, nurses and engineers), or were born in the U.S. to parents who had immigrated here. In other words, they still had a lot of exposure to their native culture. When they used the term "Flip" to refer to themselves, they used it with a sense of pride. Another source that I found that discussed Filipino history recognized that in early to middle 1980's young Filipino-Americans began to use the term for themselves to make known their identity as Filipino-Americans, thus transforming it into an empowering word of identity and solidarity.

I have heard that the modern day usage of the word "Flip" is subversive, a way of taking a word that was used against Filipinos, "owning" that word, and using it to empower Filipinos. It is sometimes compared to they way the African American community appropriated the once derogatory N-word to subvert the dominant culture's use of language to label, suppress, and compartmentalize the minority. In other words, the oppressed minority were taking a bad word and turning it into a good word.

When I entitled my blog "Days On The Flip Side," I was trying to be clever and intended "Flip" to mean two things: Obviously, the first was in reference to the fact that I am Filipino. The second was a reference to "the other side" such as in "the flip side of a record" or flipping the coin, because mine is an interracial marriage and family, and the blog is a portrayal of our life through my point of view. I am embarassed to admit that I wasn't aware of the derogatory origins of the word. I may not have used it if I had known. I even considered changing my blog's title after I found out.

But I have only ever associated the term "Flip" with positive things, and I personally have only ever heard it used in a positive way. I certainly did not know that my usage could be compared to the way that some black rappers use the N-word to "subvert the dominant culture's use of language." I actually sort of like that. It's like I'm taking a word coined by some fool and metaphorically flipping him off by using it to mean "Ako ay Pinay!" (translation: I am Filipino!)