Stereotypes

I am 18 and in my first year at UC San Diego. I am writing in response to Youth Opinion (Voices, Nov. 30) that featured teen-agers’ feelings on stereotypes. I have never read a newspaper article that I could relate to more than this, especially the excerpt by Aburee Duggan. My mother is white and my father is a Spanish-Filipino. I have been labeled everything from Filipino to Mexican to Native-American. It makes me feel as if I don’t have any real identity. I tell people I’m half Filipino, half white. Full-blooded Filipinos look at how I am dressed. I do not dress the same way so they call me white-washed.

I think when people see somebody, they try to imagine what kind of person he or she is. The problem is that sometimes they really do not know much about it. They have nothing to base their judgments on, except for stereotypes. I dress like an average white person (which is a stereotype in itself) and people think I act white. They see my brown skin and don’t know what to think.

I think the best way to fix the problem is through education. It is good that the teen-agers in this article can acknowledge that there is a problem. Schools need to teach children while they are still young, about what kind of people they are.

DEREK BATOYON

San Diego