Kevin Lau
English 165
Essay #4
Final Draft
Interview with Nate Nevado
The person I
interviewed was Nate Nevado. He is a Filipino American who was born in Long Beach, CA
and moved around during his childhood years.
His area of expertise revolves around helping his community. He has devoted his educational goals and
career goals toward helping Filipino youth today achieve success in
school. However, there are many
questions to be answered including what motivates and drives him to help others
and what place in Filipino historical continuum he is a part of. These questions will
be answered and will be explored thoroughly to gain insight and reliable
knowledge about the history and culture that is Filipino. However, early on I will need to address biases
I may or may not have in analyzing this topic.
Before the interview with Nate, I did not know much about activism. The official definition of activism is the
direct action, often confrontational, in opposition or support of a cause. My shortcomings including never being as
passionately involved in any belief or cause the way Nate is dedicated to
helping youth in his community. I gained
a great deal of insight into why he feels it is completely necessary to help
youth today to preserve the future for Filipino Americans. Growing up as a child, Nate was deprived of
major support to help him reach his goals.
Lack of knowledge about how the educational system worked made things extremely
difficult on top of all the moving during his childhood years. However, Nate persisted and this stubborn
drive to achieve eventually got him to where he is today. Understanding Nate’s drive to succeed in his
goal of helping others is extremely important to today’s movement of Filipino
activism in furthering their cause of obtaining better education and fair
treatment in San Francisco.
My interview with
Nate was conducted in a question and response format. I had made an appointment with Nate to meet
at his office at City College of San Francisco to discuss these issues that are
extremely important to him. I asked him
questions that gave me insight into understanding what it was like to grow up
as a Filipino child. Personally, I did
not have the same struggles as Nate so I was very interested in finding out
more about how his life played out during his early years. I touched upon these questions because I felt
his childhood would be a heavy influencing factor in what he does today. It answers my many questions regarding his
passion and his motivating forces that guide him toward achieving his
goals. For the most part, I asked most
of the questions and Nate answered them to the best of his ability. Going into this interview, I did not know
much at all about Nate so I felt this form of interviewing would give me the
best angle to learn and absorb what he had to say.
One
of the major themes in my interview with Nate revolved around childhood
struggles and how they are still relevant and important today. I will briefly summarize Nate’s childhood and
describe some of his struggles. Like I
mentioned before, Nate was born in Long Beach in
southern California. His mother was a Nurse and his father was in the
Navy, which explained why he was always on the move. The first location they moved to was Virginia. With the exception of his sister, Nate was
the only Filipino American on campus.
Everyone would assume he was Chinese because they had never heard of the
term “Filipino.” In fact, the only thing
Nate knew about Filipinos was what he was able to learn at home from his
parents and family. There were no other
Filipinos kids for him to learn from.
Later on he moved to Chicago,
where things were different. He attended
a school where there was greater diversity among the students. He had Filipino kids to hang out with. However, before he could get settled he moved
again to the Bay Area. He started
college in the East Bay and eventually finished at San Francisco State
University. Once to obtain his
bachelors degree and returning later on to obtain his Masters degree in
counseling. Between all the
traveling Nate was troubled with a few aspects of growing up and not realizing
your ethnic identity. During the
interview he mentioned that he did not experience outright racism many times,
but most of the time no one would understand him and the racism although subtle
definitely existed. Nate experienced
this racism from students and even counselors while he was growing up. He mentioned a specific example of racism
while he was trying to transfer from DVC to San Francisco State. He was talking to a counselor and wanted to
gain a better idea of what needed to be done so he could transfer to a 4 year
institution. The counselor looked at his
transcript and saw Nate had enough credits to graduate but had taken many
courses that he did not need. The counselor quickly told Nate that even though
he had the units to transfer, perhaps school wasn’t for him because he was misinformed
about the transfer process. I found this
extremely shocking, because I have never encountered an academic counselor at
school telling me that school might not be for me. I always assumed they were there to
help. This was not true. Apparently, racism exists in many aspects of
our lives and we often do not recognize it.
The subtle yet
obvious example of racism is part of what motivates Nate to be active in his
community. Nate eventually found out the
transfer information he needed to move on, and very impressively completed his
college career. He realized after
receiving his bachelors degree at San Francisco State,
that his life calling was counseling.
All the disadvantages he placed under during his childhood he would try
to help a new generation of Filipino youth overcome. Often there is racism that is harmful, yet
goes unnoticed or ignored by faculty.
Often mentally scarring episodes happen to Filipino students and are
completely ignored. “In grade school, he
said, some kids used "to pull their eyes back, stick out their teeth and
chant, ching-chong, ching-chong!'”(Veltasezar ) Nate knows this type of racism exists and he
tries to fight it by sending out a positive message of tolerance and
understanding.
Nate’s fight is also
with an educational system that is confusing and complicated to many Filipino
youth. He can see the real problem is
not Filipino youth are uneducated, but that they lack the knowledge about the
way the educational system works.
Filipino youth are rated as the number one ethnic group at City College
of San Francisco, to either fall into academic probation or drop out of school
completely. Many of these students are
willing to learn and only need support and guidance along the way. Nate’s counseling services will go a long way
toward helping youth in his community achieve their academic and personal goals
in life.
Nate’s involvement
in community activism has great importance in his place in Filipino
history. The movement of Filipino
community activism has been going on for years.
When you talk about activism and its effects on commuting change you must
look back in history. Filipinos have
always had the desire to push change when things were
not
looking their way. Even today, there are
many examples of Filipino activism that has tried to force change. In the Philippines, activist groups are
getting together to protest recent the recent killings of progressive activist
leaders. Many in the Philippines believe that these killings are
linked to the U.S.
backed regime that is currently in power.
The United States
currently has great interest in making sure that it holds a strong foothold in
the Philippines. “With the collaboration of the present
Philippine government, it is attempting to reestablish its military domination
of that country so as to provide a stepping-stone for US military intervention in Asia and the Middle East”(Simbuland). Basically, the United
States will come in and intervene and try to stop any
Filipino activism that might still occur in the Philippines, because it has vital
interests in maintaining a military base on the islands. However, active Filipino activism is making
their voices heard, in that they will not take the abuse and suppression of
voices by the Philippine government. Change will only come when a strong voice
is raised to oppose what is wrong.
In mentioning
activism in that is currently going on today in the Philippines, I relate it back to
Nate’s work. Even though his work does
not directly connect him to protest against killing of Filipino activists, he
has another fight on his hands. He is
fighting the war against the lack of knowledge.
Often the term, knowledge is power appears to be a random cliché tossed
around liberally. However, in this case
it is very important because empowering students with knowledge is really a
powerful key to their success. “Offering
support is the best way to change a student’s life.”(Nevado,
Audio
file
segment 8) By supporting students and
empowering them with knowledge Nate is giving them an opportunity to succeed in
their own goals in life. In his own
childhood, such a luxury was not provided for him. He had to dig hard to find information he
needed to move on in school. Counselors
where not helpful and did not provide an outlet for him to voice his concerns
and problems. By providing such outlets
for students today, Nate is giving Filipino students options they never had
before. “I want to use
my own experiences to help students not go down the same path” (Nate Audio file
segment 5). His experiences and knowledge can go very far to keep
confused students looking forward into the future and achieve their own
personal goals.
Nate’s role in
community activism looks toward brightening the future. In addition to helping students achieve in
school, Nate also mentors student led organizations that empower young
Filipinos. He is also working on a
project that will bring a community center to Daly City for Filipino youth to learn more
about their roots, heritage and culture.
In Litton’s book “Journey of 100 Years,” he states “Filipinos need to
rediscover their rich cultural heritage and develop a more positive attitude
toward Philippine languages. (Litton
92) The community center will work
toward this goal. Exposing Filipino
youth with increasing frequency to their old culture and languages will help
them gain a better understanding of what it is like to be Filipino. Nate is taking the fight to many different
fronts. He is helping students stay in
school and also trying to provide a place where they can work on positive
projects and stay off the streets and away from gangs and drugs. His work pushes Filipino youth to expect and
demand more from themselves. Only by
helping themselves, Filipino youth can make a real difference in their lives. Nate helps give young Filipino a stronger
sense of identity. As a child, moving
from city to city, Nate felt he lacked an understanding of his own identity and
what it meant to be Filipino. Now as a
grown up he wants to instill what he learned about growing up as a Filipino to
students who are going through the same issues he had to deal with.
Nate
Nevado’s work has brought him closer to his
community. His strive to help others
goes a long way toward his fight against the lack of knowledge. His work relates directly back to community
activism, in that his main goal is to help his community achieve a better
standing in life. Nate’s place in in the historical context of Filipino history will lie with
his active pledge to help Filipino youth.
Even though Nate’s form of activism is not in the traditional sense of
protesting for a cause, his work is equally if not more important. His impact on Filipino youth will be great as
he is someone who they will respect and listen to. With similar shared experiences he can
connect to Filipino youth on a level their parents or teachers could never
understand them. This is extremely
important because without the respect and connection, authoritative figures are
usually shunned away and tuned out.
Reaching Filipino youth and guiding them through college is a vital step
toward making life better in the Filipino community.
Works Cited
Litton, Edmundo F. Jouney of
100 Years. Filipino American Literary House 1999
Nevado, Nate “Digital Oral Research Project”
November, 2005 (Audio File Segments
1-9)
Simbulan, Roland G. “Filipino American Friendship: A Boone
to the Filipino
People”
July, 2002. <http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/boone.html>
Veltisezar, Bautista. “Filipino Americans: Yesterday and
Today” <http://www.filipino-americans.com/cgibin/redirect.cgi?url=filipin2.html>