Meet Ja Du, an American man who “identifies” as Filipino.
Yes, you read that right.
If you’re late to the party, Ja Du’s story has been making online waves since it was first published by Florida-based TV station WTSP yesterday (you can watch the video here). In it, he describes his experience as “transracial,” i.e. someone who thinks he is a member of a different race than the one he was born into.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s probably because it’s only been around since roughly 2015, when then-NAACP Spokane, Washington, president Rachel Dolezal was outed as being the child of two white, and no doubt deeply confused, parents.
Ja Du, whose real name is Adam, was born white but — much as Dolezal claims to have been black at heart all along — says he has always been drawn to Filipino culture.
“Whenever I’m around the music, around the food, I feel like I’m in my own skin,” he said. Well, we can’t blame him for loving adobo and getting down with some OPM. That’s only natural.
He even drives a vehicle that looks similar to a Philippine jeepney. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that’s what they’re called.
“It’s a tuk-tuk. Yeah, they use them a lot in the Philippines,” he says in the WTSP video.
Sigh. No. We don’t.
Ja Du likened his experience to how some white kids have grown up enjoying rap music and appropriated aspects of African American culture.
“Despite [that] their skin color was white… they would act as though they were of African-American descent and they were… abused for it and persecuted for it by their parents,” he said.
Oh, boy. We want to tread lightly here as there could obviously be mental health issues at play and we’re not medical professionals (though we do occasionally wear lab coats in the Coconuts offices just for fun). Not treading lightly, however, is popular US-based blogger Angry Asian Man, who, unsurprisingly, is having none of it.
“This is leaping over appreciation and appropriation into a whole other category of white nonsense,” the blogger said in a scathing takedown, adding a blunt “that’s not how this shit works.”
Reactions to Ja Du’s story, meanwhile, have been … mixed.
One netizen pointed out the obvious fact that he doesn’t seem to know much about Filipino culture at all.
https://twitter.com/softcoffin/status/930179545973559297
This Twitter user said that if Ja Du really wants to be Filipino, he needs to accept all the hardships that come with it as well.
https://twitter.com/mlsalgarolo/status/930185523062337536
But others feel transracial people need to be accepted, just like society is finally accepting transexuals.
https://twitter.com/TheHeidikins/status/930207392326811648
Speaking of which, no one reporting this story seems to be acknowledging the fact that halfway through the WTSP piece, it’s casually dropped that Ja Du is also transitioning to a woman.
And that’s understandable. Let’s face it, no one really wants to muddy the waters around the fluidity of gender — something a growing body of scientific work supports — by conflating it with “guy who thinks he’s Filipino.”
(By the way, as we’re not clear about Ja Du’s pronoun preference, and there is a crazy amount to unpack here, we’re sticking with “he” for the interim, though that may change at a later date.)
Ja Du, meanwhile, accepts his situation but acknowledged that it is not an easy one. Which, let’s be honest, is putting it mildly.
“I would never say it was a privilege to, you know, be unhappy with yourself all the time,” he said.
So, what do you think? Is this cultural appropriation, a man born into the “wrong” race, or simply a sad guy looking for attention? Let us know in the comments.
