Racism and Crime
Published in the Philippine Daily
Inquirer
July 24, 2001
THE MURDER of internationally renowned musician Tadao Hayashi was all we needed to spruce up our international image. Details about Hayashi's murder remain sketchy but the crime should alert us to the increasing number of violent incidents directed against foreigners, or people perceived to be "foreign."
I refer here to a wide range of incidents, from the occasional "incidents" against tourists and visitors (including now, Hayashi) to the Abu Sayyaf's penchant for kidnapping Westerners. The trend is not limited to Filipinos at home. Overseas, we shouldn't forget too the less publicized case in New Jersey of two Filipino-Americans who beat to death a policeman, a Caucasian.
I've zeroed in on the violence directed against foreigners because it allows us to question one myth, that of Filipino hospitality. The fact is that our hospitality has always been selective. I've seen it all too often among Filipino plane stewards and stewardesses with the change in their facial expressions as they respond to requests: the ever smiling, ever gracious Asian responding to a Caucasian's request, changing dramatically to a scowl as the next passenger, a Filipino, makes a similar request. I've even seen stewardesses returning with the glass of water for the Caucasian and conveniently "forgetting" the one for the Filipino.
There was always a racist element to this selective hospitality. Even among "foreigners" that hospitality has been selective: the best treatment going to Caucasians (or people perceived to be Caucasian), with less hospitality exhibited as the skin color darkens. (An exception has been the Arabs, who despite their fair skin still gets discriminated against mainly because they are Muslim.)
This selective hospitality has been based on an opportunism, a perception of potential benefits from our "hospitality": a larger tip, a useful connection for the future. If in fact a friendship develops, expectations may grow about the foreigner helping out, and if the expectations are not met, the relationship sours, sometimes leading to violence.
I sense, too, that over the years, there has been a growing cynicism toward foreigners in general, that they are all "mayaman" (rich) and are there to be used. It's a perverse sense of entitlement, sometimes fueled by distorted nationalism: these foreigners exploit us therefore we should use them as well.
A few years back, Caroline Hau, a Chinese-Filipino, delivered an incisive paper at a conference of the Association for Asian Studies where she looked at the kidnapping of Chinese-Filipinos, a group seen by many Filipinos as "foreigners." She gave the whole context of local ethnic Chinese being very visible in business dealings, with the perception that they are exploitative. The irony then was that the Chinese, seen as converting everything and everyone into commodities, now find their own bodies converted into commodities, i.e., their worth measured by the potential ransom money they can bring in.
A similar "logic" operates with the Abu Sayyaf, whose hostages are not just "foreigners" but represent all that is wrong in the world: white colonialism, Christianity. The motives for kidnapping expand so that it is no longer just an act of retaliation but a way of asserting one's "superiority" (hey look, we can take these puti, these "whites" any time, anywhere).
The potential for violence is often historically determined. The kidnappings of local Chinese (and now, Singaporeans) are extensions of a long and often bloody history of animosity against the Chinese in the Philippines, one that often makes it easier for kidnappers to just murder their victims after ransom is paid.
Resentment of the "puti" is more restrained, partly the result of a historical memory of their brutal superiority during colonial times. But note that when the resentment spills over, it can be brutal, as it happened in New Jersey. The murdered policeman was a neighbor of the Filipinos. The "puti" policeman came over to ask the Filipinos, who were having a party, asking them to quiet down. This so enraged the two Filipinos--and I can imagine what they were thinking, "Who is this 'tangnang puti to tell us what to do?"--that they ganged up on him, literally beating him to death.
What to do about this situation? I have no short-term solutions but definitely, we need to get young people to be more introspective about our feelings toward "foreigners." There is a folk culture out there with its own racial categories and stereotyping. Some of these "races"--the Intsik, Hapon, Kano, Arabo--share a common perceived attribute of "mayaman." Moreover, the perception of wealth overlaps with a more specific attribute that "explains" that wealth: for the Intsik, kapitalista, for the Hapon, Yakuza, for the Kano, imperialista, for the Arabo, employer of overseas contract workers (plus "Muslim" thrown in for good measure).
Beneath all this is a sense of powerlessness, a resentment of the world: why must our nurses and midwives end up having to work as nannies for that Singaporean or Hong Kong Intsik or that Arabo, why must our women go off to Japan to work as "GROs"? It is a volatile situation, always in danger of being set off by the slightest provocation. Last year, I was with a seaman in Subic and a drunk American came by accusing him of being in the way. The seaman was furious and all ready to brawl. He controlled himself but muttered, "I take this all the time from the puti when we're overseas. I don't need to take this in my own home country."
No doubt, there's much more to all this than racial relations. I worry, for example, about the way our society is becoming more brutalized, about the way lives become devalued, faster than the peso, which makes it so much easier to kidnap, to kill, for a few more pesos. But for today, let's just think about our racism, and how our poverty and powerlessness fuel that racism, sometimes to the point of murder.
Maichael L. Tan
