As a community health nurse at Heartland Alliance Health, Melissa feels privileged to work in a setting where she can meet individuals from 
all walks of life – and create spaces that allow opportunities for honest conversations about race and inequity. Her experiences serving the most vulnerable have built within her a belief that we all share a common dignity and sense of hope in humanity.
How does your racial ethnic identity shape the way you understand equity and opportunity for ALL?
I proudly identify as a First-Generation Filipino-American. The awareness of equity and opportunity for all was something engrained in me as a young child. I was lucky to have grown up in a diverse neighborhood that included other first-generation kids like me, navigating together what it meant to be “American.” I lived in a world where I saw my classmates from different races, cultures, and religions and naively, I thought this was a shared reality of ALL.
Like many immigrant stories, my parents came to the U.S. for better opportunities for their children. The shared commonality newly immigrated families share of sacrifice and hard work for equal opportunity was a similar world my peers and I lived through together, struggling to balance the traditions and culture our parents came from, trying to fit in the “American culture,” and showing our parents we understood this sacrifice by working hard to take advantage of the opportunities of this country.
Yet, as I grew older, my reality shifted as I experienced the inequities and barriers that come with being labeled a “minority.” My parents came from a society where they were respected working professionals in the Philippines. Here, my parents were treated as less than “second class citizens,” in my mother’s own words.
I believe we need to come to a place of understanding of an individual’s history and who they are today. That is what will allow us to begin to move forward on what it truly means to live a place of equity and justice for ALL.
In light of all the ways members of AAPI community have experienced racism and injustice, what would you like your team members at Heartland Alliance to know?
Our cultural histories and present-day violence AAPI community, black, brown, and other communities of color shows how hate and power can take humanity into a violent world. I try to empower team members to continue to push toward an Anti-Racist community where we can listen, learn and challenge each other – rather than creating barriers.
My most memorable experience was with a participant who directly told me “I do not like you because you are white.” The participant told me, “I see the world as only ‘blacks and whites’– so you are white.” This participant wanted me to understand they saw a clear distinction between us. We continued to work together, and race often came up, but we developed a strong working relationship. On our last day working together this participant told me, “you helped me to start liking ‘white people’.” I had thought this person stopped seeing me in this light, but their honesty reminded me that it is OK for us to see the differences and even acknowledge it.
I still have hope in humanity. If we can start with honesty, respect, and open dialogue, maybe we can begin to heal from the past and look to a brighter future.
