Racist Filipinos do not represent us

IT was indeed shocking, to say the least. The comments were pure and unadulterated racism emanating from Filipinos who were reacting to Miss Universe Canada Nova Stevens’ blackness. The remarks are simply too painful and embarrassing to even repeat in this space for they are clear evidence of sheer bigotry and malicious ignorance.

What makes it bizarre is that these all come from people belonging to an ethnic group that has been targeted and equally marginalized for the brownness of our skins, the flatness of our noses and the weird accents when we speak. In our history, we were even likened to uncivilized apes.  Some of our compatriots in the Filipino diaspora have been subjected to utter cruelty, from being kicked while walking on a sidewalk in New York to being accosted in public trains to being shooed away in restaurants.

And yet, instead of exercising solidarity with those who are marginalized on the basis of the color of their skin or the kinkiness of their hair, these miserable souls who are poor excuses for being Filipino have joined the racist bigots of this world and inflicted the same kind of cruelty on Miss Stevens.

This is actually a malaise among many Filipinos in the United States. Not only do many of them hold anti-immigration sentiments despite being immigrants themselves. Many of them also hold racist values and predispositions. It is no small wonder that many of the Filipinos in the US are Trump Republicans. They are not just Republicans because they think that this party holds an ideology that is close to what is socially stereotyped as the Filipino values of conservatism and religiosity. They are the kind of Republicans who acquire the worldview of its fringe groups as radically conservative followers of conspiracy theories, believers of the big lie about the election that they think was stolen from Trump, and purveyors of the worst kinds of racism, Islamophobia and homophobia.

And these are the Filipinos in the US who are also ardent believers of President Rodrigo Duterte. The probability of a Filipino in the US who is a Trump Republican being also a diehard Duterte supporter, or DDS, is as certain as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

The anti-immigration stance of many Filipinos in the US may not necessarily be puzzling when one considers the hardships most of them went through in obtaining their legal immigration status. In fact, there are plenty of stories about people who turn in illegal Filipino immigrants often being Filipinos themselves. This is less about following the law but more about a mixture of a sense of moral righteousness and of pure and unadulterated jealousy. They see it as an affront that others could have an easier way, while they had it the hard way. And this is the logic that drives these Filipino immigrants to look down upon migrants who cross the border in Mexico. And it doesn’t help that most of these immigrants are people of color.

The bigotry that Filipinos feel toward other people of color is however more historical in its progeny. This colonial mentality of looking at anything Western and white as superior and desirable is something they associate with White America. This is precisely the very driving force that made many of them leave the Philippines and migrate to the US, Canada, Europe, New Zealand or Australia.

The lingering shadow of the American colonizers is present not just among the diasporic Filipinos, but even among those in the Philippines. There is a preference for whiteness — to a point that we are a country so fixated on being white. While Caucasians value a tanned body and would bake themselves in beaches or even in tanning machines, Filipinos would preoccupy themselves with protective garments. Tanning lotions are sold in convenience shops in most Western countries. We don’t have these in the Philippines. What we have are whitening creams and bleaching solutions. Umbrellas are only used in many Western societies to keep themselves dry during a downpour while they are used by Filipinos to shield themselves from the darkening effects of the sun.

Admittedly, there is a structured racism among many Filipinos, and we target not only black people like Africans, but even fellow Asians like the Indians and other South Asians and the Pacific Islanders. But this is something that many Filipinos who are more enlightened are trying to shake off and for which there is a conscious effort to move away from.

Reacting in horror to the cruel bashing that Miss Universe Canada suffered from fellow Filipinos, some have expressed disgust while others manifested their shame by declaring that they are not proud of being Filipinos. Some even wish that they were not Filipinos.

I can understand where these reactions are coming from. However, I must strongly object to the generalization that just because there are racist Filipinos, and that racism may be inherently structured in our worldviews, that we are necessarily a racist people.  I cannot accept that we are destined to be forever held captive by the unfortunate programming and conditioning that we experienced from our colonial masters. This cannot be our fate, and we cannot accept that these racist remarks from these ignorant bigots who happen to be Filipinos are what would define us as a people.

There are racist Filipinos, no doubt about that. And we saw them in all their hateful and shameful display among those who inflicted verbal cruelty on Miss Universe Canada. But we should not allow them to define us. They do not represent every Filipino.

When we react by saying that we wish we are no longer Filipinos just because some of us are racists, then we are allowing racism to win, and we are letting these racist Filipinos to arrogate to themselves the power to define us.