He was bullied mercilessly for his skin colour. He still calls Newfoundland home
CBC N.L. sits down with Ritche Perez to talk race, identity and belonging
Ritche Perez can't say he had a carefree childhood.
His 1980s St. John's grade school peers, overwhelmingly white, asked incessantly what language he spoke. They'd taunt him, chase him, and think up nasty names.
He could count the number of minorities in that building, he says, on one hand.
"From what I remember we got picked on a lot," Perez says. Despite having lived in Canada for the vast majority of his young life, the other kids couldn't accept that his Filipino family could chatter away in either English or Tagalog. They found it weird he ate fried rice for breakfast.
"They didn't understand the colour of my skin, or where I was from," Perez explains.
He sensed throughout school that those differences pushed his classmates away.
"So I grew up kind of … backing away from that, and trying to adjust … to fit in," he recalls.
"It led to me being more in denial of my culture."
Perez isn't white, but he tried his best to act like it. He stopped eating his family's food, preferring, instead, the fish and brewis of the other kids' households. Simulating Western culture was, for Perez, a survival mechanism.
In high school, Perez discovered a burgeoning alternative music scene. Everyone he knew, it seemed, was in a band. Perez joined one too. "There weren't many people at the time, many minorities, playing alternative music.… It was very rare," he says.
WATCH | Ritche Perez tried desperately to fit in. In an interview with Ramraajh Sharvendiran, he describes how he reclaimed his roots:
Despite that, the punks and grunge kids took him under their wings, offering him a place on the stage.
"Playing at all those bars — I felt accepted when I heard those cheers for the first time," he says.
"That brought up my confidence, in feeling like I was a part of something."
Perez never left the arts, developing his skills as a designer and photographer. Eventually, his curiosity about his roots got the better of him.
In 2016 he spent two months in the Philippines, shocked at how differently his life could have turned out had his parents remained there. After seeing what happens to young families in Manila, left to fend for themselves without social supports, he began to process some of the racial abuse he endured.
"My life here isn't as bad," he remembers thinking.
At the same time, seeing his home country up close as an adult left him nostalgic, and in a sense, regretful.
"I look back at it and I feel like I missed out on some of the culture," he says. The moment he arrived home in St. John's, Perez threw himself at Filipino-Canadian gatherings for the first time in his life, determined not to forget his roots a second time over.
Now, when someone asks him where he's from, Perez doesn't balk or panic.
"When people ask me that, I say I'm a Filipino Newfoundlander Canadian," he says, grinning.
"It's the only way I can explain it."
Video shot and edited by Mark Cumby. Interview by Ramraajh Sharvendiran. N.L. in Colour is a five-part series examining race and identity in Newfoundland and Labrador.
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