He was bullied mercilessly for his skin colour. He still calls Newfoundland home - Action News
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NLN.L. in Colour

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.

CBC N.L. sits down with Ritche Perez to talk race, identity and belonging

Ritche Perez is about as Newfoundland as they come, but he didn't always feel that way. (Mark Cumby/CBC)

RitchePerez 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 heate 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."

Even at a young age, Perez could sense his cultural differences were rejected by other kids. (Ritche Perez)

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 describeshow he reclaimed his roots:

N.L. in Colour: Ritche Perez

4 years ago
Duration 14:35
Ramraajh Sharvendiran speaks with designer and photographer Ritche Perez, who suppressed his Filipino heritage to fit in while growing up in St. John's.

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 found his people in the underground music scene of downtown St. John's in the 1990s. (Ritche Perez)

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.

Perez and his family settled in Newfoundland in the 1970s, even though he says work for minorities was sparse. (Ritche Perez)

"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 byRamraajh Sharvendiran.N.L. in Colour is a five-part series examining race and identity in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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