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wowbrightIn all the fan fic I've read that refers to Blaine's ethnicity, he's always identified as at least partially Filipino. Just a wild guess, but I'm assuming that this is because Darren Criss has Filipino heritage. (What exactly the heritage is, I don't know, because I tend to avoid learning too much about actors I like. Okay, for the purposes of this entry, I just looked it up and the ever-reliable Wikipedia says his mother is Fillipina by nationality and Filipina, Chinese and Spanish by heritage.)
The fanon about Blaine being Filipino or partially Filipino isn't based in canon, because there have been absolutely no clear references to Blaine's ethnicity on the show - at least not that I've noticed. (And yeah, the dialogue moves fast, so I very well could have missed something.)
The closest reference has been when Rachel, in BIOTA, imagined a possible future in which she and Blaine could have "vaguely Eurasian-looking" babies together. But I take this as meaningless, because my grandfather used to tell me I looked Japanese - when there is absolutely no Japanese heritage anywhere in my known genealogy - and I have had more than one Korean ask me if I am half-Korean when they've learned about my personal history. I'm not. I'm something like 80% WASP, 12% Swede, and 8% other (mostly or all European). (At least one of my great-grandparents claimed some Native American heritage, but it's unclear whether this is a true claim or wishful thinking.)
So, this is my lead up to asking: Am I a freak that my headcanon does not have Blaine's mom being a first-generation Filipina-American? I honestly don't know what her race/ethnicity is -- it's probably a bunch of things, and Filipina might be in there -- but she's not first-generation American. Is that somehow an insult to Darren Criss?
Because I look at the other characters, and many of them have ethnicities that don't quite match up with that of their characters. For example, Rachel on the show. Her biological paternity is officially unknown, although it is implied by the writers that Hiram, her white dad, is the biological father (her other dad is black). Both her fathers are Jewish, and Rachel identifies herself as Jewish. I've always assumed that, culturally, she leans toward Ashkenazic because if it was Sephardic, wouldn't she have mentioned that? Her bio mom - Shelby Corcoran - appears to be white, but her religion/ethnicity is unknown (although Corcoran is an Irish surname, so we can take a guess at at least part of her ethnicity).
On the other hand, the actress who plays Rachel has a mother who is Italian-American/Roman Catholic and a father who is Sephardic-Spanish/Jewish. So it doesn't quite match.
A run down of other character/actor racial/ethnic/religious differences:
Of course, I shouldn't have been investing so much in the national origins of Blaine's last name, in any case. This is America, and surnames that survive usually have to do with paternal lineage, and not overall heritage. They might reflect the nationality of some ancestor down the line; or they might just be borrowed from people who owned your ancestors as slaves, or from the place from where your ancestors escaped slavery; or they might have been made up on the moment at Ellis Island.
I have no conclusion to these thoughts. I just needed to get them out there.
The fanon about Blaine being Filipino or partially Filipino isn't based in canon, because there have been absolutely no clear references to Blaine's ethnicity on the show - at least not that I've noticed. (And yeah, the dialogue moves fast, so I very well could have missed something.)
The closest reference has been when Rachel, in BIOTA, imagined a possible future in which she and Blaine could have "vaguely Eurasian-looking" babies together. But I take this as meaningless, because my grandfather used to tell me I looked Japanese - when there is absolutely no Japanese heritage anywhere in my known genealogy - and I have had more than one Korean ask me if I am half-Korean when they've learned about my personal history. I'm not. I'm something like 80% WASP, 12% Swede, and 8% other (mostly or all European). (At least one of my great-grandparents claimed some Native American heritage, but it's unclear whether this is a true claim or wishful thinking.)
So, this is my lead up to asking: Am I a freak that my headcanon does not have Blaine's mom being a first-generation Filipina-American? I honestly don't know what her race/ethnicity is -- it's probably a bunch of things, and Filipina might be in there -- but she's not first-generation American. Is that somehow an insult to Darren Criss?
Because I look at the other characters, and many of them have ethnicities that don't quite match up with that of their characters. For example, Rachel on the show. Her biological paternity is officially unknown, although it is implied by the writers that Hiram, her white dad, is the biological father (her other dad is black). Both her fathers are Jewish, and Rachel identifies herself as Jewish. I've always assumed that, culturally, she leans toward Ashkenazic because if it was Sephardic, wouldn't she have mentioned that? Her bio mom - Shelby Corcoran - appears to be white, but her religion/ethnicity is unknown (although Corcoran is an Irish surname, so we can take a guess at at least part of her ethnicity).
On the other hand, the actress who plays Rachel has a mother who is Italian-American/Roman Catholic and a father who is Sephardic-Spanish/Jewish. So it doesn't quite match.
A run down of other character/actor racial/ethnic/religious differences:
- Puckerman is Jewish, but Mark Sailing, the actor who plays him, was raised as a Christian.
- Tina Cohen-Chang is identified on the show as "Asian," although her name implies it's more complex than that. "Chang" could be Chinese or Korean; "Cohen" is usually Jewish (it comes from Hebrew for "priest") - although I've also read it can be Gaelic. Jenna Ushkowitz, the actress who plays her, was born in Korea and adopted by American parents. Presumably, her bio parents are Korean, but hell if I know.
- Chris Colfer describes himself as Irish-American, while the name Hummel is so freaking NOT Irish I don't even know where to begin. We don't know anything about Kurt's geneaology, though.
- According to some press release I read ages ago, Matthew Morrison is of Scottish heritage. "Schuester" is definitely not a Scottish name.
Of course, I shouldn't have been investing so much in the national origins of Blaine's last name, in any case. This is America, and surnames that survive usually have to do with paternal lineage, and not overall heritage. They might reflect the nationality of some ancestor down the line; or they might just be borrowed from people who owned your ancestors as slaves, or from the place from where your ancestors escaped slavery; or they might have been made up on the moment at Ellis Island.
I have no conclusion to these thoughts. I just needed to get them out there.
