The television show Desperate Housewives rocked the whole country and other Filipinos abroad just recently because of a single sentence uttered by one of its characters during its September 30 episode.
Ironically, some Filipinos whined to high heavens after hearing that “insulting” line, but have overlooked their own crap right under their noses. Racial discrimination is as normal as breathing in the Philippines.
It’s high time for the whole of the Philippines’ to be taught to respect other races’ or ethnics’ culture, accent (when speaking tagalog or English), skin color, clothes.
In Philippine television and movies, racial discrimination has been going on unchecked and consequently accepted as normal by the general population. Philippines shows are even harsher and racist compared to shows in the west.
Bisayans are depicted as ignorant and dumb and ridiculed for their accent when speaking tagalog, the Philippines’ first official language. Even the Batanguenio accent is not spared, though it is considered the pure tagalog. Please read my previous related articles School Bukel I and School Bukel II.
I must admit that making fun at dark-skinned people used to be one in my joke list. Now matured and have learned to be considerate of other people’s feelings, making fun at peoples’ skin color should now be always avoided.
So anyone of you reading this especially if you have the connection to people who are in the Senate, Congress, or any politicians please relay the principle of this blog post that they create a law against discrimination.
To those who are in the entertainment, please avoid making stories that poke fun at peoples’ skin color, race, accent, sexuality, appearance and culture.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Jeff, granted that Pinoys are racist. Let’s assume that this is true. Does this mean that other Filipinos have already forfeited their right to cry foul when they are being subject to discrimination?
October 11th, 2007 at 9:39 am
@Benj
Filipinos have every right to resist any racial discrimination even though the DH’s line was not racist at all.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Why wasn’t it racist?
October 11th, 2007 at 11:08 am
It was not poking fun on a race.
It was insulting though (esp. for the med people), but not racist in any way.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
The sad part here is when you raise that fact that our local media is racist, sexist, not many Filipinos are willing to agree. For them, the truth hurts(they just don’t admit it). That’s why we can’t mature as a nation.
I remember this incident in Singapore. Two male Chinese bloggers were jailed because of saying racist statements against the Malays. I thought of racism(intra) in the Philippines — no one, not even a single media man was convicted or brought to court. The prevalence of intra-racism and racism in our media is highly condoned because most of the people who watch do not belong to the people who are made the butt of jokes. Tha tlife in the Philippines, we blow out of proportion the negative publicity we get but we don’t do anything about our wrongdoings. People make so much excuses.
Sometimes, I’m tempted to think that what happened(DH issue) was some sort of karma. Days before the issue broke our dear Miriam Santiago said that the Chinese invented corruption. Filipinos of non-Chinese descent shrugged it off, they’re not the object of such generalizing statement, anyway.
Reminds me much of a Lucy Torres script many years ago. I don’t hate Lucy Torres but one of her script was “Ang pangit mo naman, Igorot siguro parents mo”. Between the two, which is far more racist? When Carlos P. Romulo was still alive he once sai that the Igorots are not Filipinos(just because we have a different culture from theirs?)… the higlanders were sane enough not to blow things out of proportion. What Mountain Province(the former MP, as in the whole CAR) congressman Alfredo Lam-en did was to go to the congress wearing his bahag saying that the difference between him and Romulo is that he wear his(former) necktie on his waste while Romulo on his neck. I wish Filipinos took it that way too. Filipinos could have responded in a humorous and sarcastic way too.
Hehe
By stating this, I’m not saying that Filipinos should be passive towards unflattering statements about us. But it’s still abbig question mark in my mind why here in the Philippines, many of us tolerate(and even JUSTIFY) such discrimination/racism when we complain too much to the point of blowing out of proportion.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s the nationalism that was really stepped on here, it’s more of ‘extreme egotism’ of many Pinoys. Filipinos “say” fight racism when many of our kababayans are not willing to abandon their racist attitudes
October 12th, 2007 at 7:18 am
It was racist (imho) because NATIONALITY and the geographic location of educational institutions was used the defining criteria on whether one is competent doctor or not. It’s implicitly racist in my opinion.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Gwapito, did you not approve my comment or wasn’t just posted?
Benj, you’re not getting the whole point Gwapito is trying to imply. From the comments he made(the I read), he is also calling for Filipinos stop being racist other nationalities and even their own. Not all Filipinos are racist but our media promotes racism by making shows where people from rural areas are ‘dumb’,’stupid’, in their characters. We have many sitcoms and local movies that make fun of the Bisaya and Batangueno accent and sadly, to many Filipinos sich things are normal and people who negatively react to those are “too sensitive”.
Why is it hard to accept the the Filipino society has the same degree of racism? Before the Desperate Housewives broke out, Mrs Santiago said that the Chinese were the inventors or racism.–that was in front of the Chinese(mainland) representatives and the Filipino-Chinese community(and the whole Filipino population). They asked for apology and Miriam gave it. End of story. It didn’t really cause an outrage knowing the fact that for decades the non-Chinese have been making fun of the Chinese and their culture in our media. But many who reacted against ABC have gone out of the real issue. Now they’re demanding for scholarship, donations, etc. Maybe, real people who are anti-racism should compel all Chinese people to sue former Senator Santiago for slandering them and ask for half a billion dollar for moral damages
I’m not saying that Filipinos should be passive about offensive remarks about Filipinos. But we Filipinos, if we are true to our commitment against racism should also stop our practice. ..but sadly, many Filipinos are not really willing to. Filipinos should accept that racism is also practiced by maybe Filipinos. Only that way we could start genuine combat against racism
October 12th, 2007 at 10:06 am
“Mrs Santiago said that the Chinese were the inventors or racism”
I would like to correct this line
it should be
Mrs Santiago said that the Chinese were the inventors of corruption
October 12th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Kris-probably the comment went to the spam folder or something. Thanks for your input though.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Let’s try to imagine if Teri Hatcher is a black woman. It’s not far from possible that a good number of outraged Filipinos will used the very degrading “N” word to describe her and/or will throw insulting words at her because of her skin color. Luckily nalang, she’s predominantly Caucasian.
October 13th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Handsome? What a VALID Captcha string you gave me here, Jeff! I’m quite flattered. Because it’s all colored in pink. What a mirror you got here! (Hehehe).
Anyway, back to the issue. The whole fracas about these racial slurs and racial jokes have become freckles and racial pimples already. We love to poke fun. Bottomline, that’s our nature — and for the life of some of these ‘high-bloodied’ Pinoys, I am sure they have elegant mirrors at home. They should sell them off at eBay.
Enough said.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
well said! we share similar thoughts on this issue. there should be a discrimination law in the philippines for Filipinos against Filipinos.
for your readers who left comments here, when you get the chance visit my blog and get some perspective…
http://sinigang-dmeemai.blogspot.com/2007/10/update-desperate-housewives-remark.html
January 4th, 2008 at 5:34 am
whats the big deal…its not real. no one trips when people call white people white trash..you dont see that on the news..but i tell u what if that was real an i was there and someone said that id punch them in the face..then throw some adobo at them…
August 19th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I know that a lot of our shows are racist…and i really do think something should be done about it…The media’s[shows] childish racism jokes, has blemished the Philippines as to look like an entire nation of racists in others’ eyes. This also costs more racism from other countries towards Filipinos… I don’t think it is impartial for other people to discriminate against the whole country and it’s people just for a couple of vacuous people from the media[shows] that have discriminated others because it not only causes more outrage but also obviously only stoops to the media’s[shows] level…
Sorry…I’m only 14 so my english doesn’t sound as formal as the other people who commented… =_=”
August 19th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Thank you for your comments Andie.
I’m already 34, but my English is still much to be desired. Don’t worry about grammar errors, keep on writing and speaking in English. It’s one of the best ways to improve.