OF APPLES & ORANGES, MANGOES & BANANAS
We're apples and oranges, mangoes and bananas. Everybody is different and we should celebrate our diversity for it is a potent spice for human interaction and appreciating humanity.
Prejudice is an ugly word. More so because it is driven by ignorance and intolerance. Worse still when it rears its sinister head and is manifested in intolerance and hate.
In this country it rarely gets to that point. But it exists just the same. In most cases it is manifested not so much with malice and hostility, but as a perverse way of relating with other people by resorting to stereotypes. There's no way anyone can avoid it. Political-correctness is more the exception than the rule here. When we recount the amount of jokes, teases, and slangs we foist upon others you'll agree.
Discrimination exists in derogatory references to disabled people -- the blind, the deaf, the mute, the retarded, the harelipped, the crippled, the hunchback ... The normal people with certain physical imperfections are not spared: men with receding hairline, flat-chested women, short people, fat people, dark-skinned people, skinny people, knock-kneed legs, the list goes on.
Religion? It is not so much conflict and mistrust between Muslims and Christians -- unless one happens to live in some parts of Mindanao where it is experienced every day. But look at how the debates go among Catholics, born-again Christians, Protestants, and the Iglesia ni Kristo. Families objecting to cross-marriages unless one spouse converts is an old story.
In this country where regionalism burns with hotter fervor than nationalism Cebuanos poke fun at Boholanos, Ilonggos look down on their Bisaya neighbors, Ilokanos are stereotyped as kuripot (frugal), and Kapangpangans are made fun at because they don't pronounce the "h" in their vocabulary. We stubbornly refuse to look up to the urbanites in "imperialist" Metro Manila. We bristle with regional pride when they dismiss everybody who is not from the national capital region as promdi ("from the province"). When movies and TV shows ridicule how Bisayas pronounce the "e" as "i". Puydi piru dipindi.
We pigeon-hole people into stereotypes to explain their behavior, attitude, and mindset. In a class by themselves are the gays and the Filipino-Chinese. Next to lawyers they are blamed for everything from the change in weather to power failures -- unsa'y ilang pagtuo sa bayot, gamhanan? -- and from the rising prices to corruption.
Among the many professions, the ones who get little respect are lawyers, politicians, government employees, cops, jeepney and taxi drivers, and prostitutes and the different euphemisms they go by -- bar girls, GROs, and attendants.
Discrimination against women disturbs me, naturally. Harassment comes in both blatant and subtle forms. Like the condescending attitude towards women drivers. Walking, we could never get past a building, a street corner, or construction site without getting catcalls and "pssst's." Guys at work talk and brag about their sexcapades, or pass off-color jokes and comments ripe with sexual innuendoes in front of female co-workers. Here, the men outnumber the women by 150 to one. Most of us ladies have learned to shrug it off most of the time.
Let me cite more personal experiences to illustrate the everyday-ness of discrimination.
I am Filipino-Chinese. When people make unflattering remarks about Chinoys someone else would usually butt in, "watch it, don't forget Tonette is also one." No offense taken, I would reassure them. Nonetheless, hearing or reading the news irritates me when they say that a Chinese businessman was caught smuggling, cheating, padding or overcharging customers. Like what does his ancestry got to do with the crime? As if Filipinos are above these acts. It's not even necessary to state Intsik because the family name is often a give-away.
My mother hails from Bohol. Cebuanos like to poke fun at Boholanos for being country bumpkins. Especially so when Bohol produced a president but he never got to develop much less pave the streets in his quaint, rustic, sleepy hometown of Talibon -- hicksville in other words. Somebody later explained how the expression "ija-ija, aho-aho" came to be used to mock Boholanos. It is because they came up with their own provincial anthem. Years later the people in Metro Manila were dumbstruck that Cebu translated the national anthem into the vernacular.
In college I lived in a co-ed dorm and mingled with students from all over the country. In our freshmen year we gravitated towards students from the same provinces or at least speak the same language. As we progressed the groupings became less regionally-based due to affinities by frats, clubs, courses, and shared interests. Still, the Ilonggos and Chinoys didn't mingle as much. The Bisayas were the noisiest because at least in the dorm we outnumbered the Tagalog-speaking people. I lectured a girl from Batangas to study her history after she wondered out loud why Bisayas are insecure of the Tagalogs. "Well, excuuuuse me, jitsch!!!"
It's not exactly discrimination but within a big organization there are people who attract so many unsolicited advises and good-natured banter: the single and unattached, the childless couples, and the widows and widowers. Some friends made it their mission to find me a mate. It was embarrassing. Every guy who walks into our office -- to check on our computers, to deliver a proposal or solicitation letter, to do a sales call -- they would pounce on him. "Are you single?" "Tonette here doesn't have a boyfriend yet." Made me felt shitty that some people think there's something wrong about being single and unattached or about being childless -- and that they make it their business to rectify that deficiency.
Finally got a boyfriend, an American. I had to deal with another form of discrimination. Every time we go to public places people sized us up, oftentimes openly. They look at us both, then him from head to foot, then me from head to foot. To think that we're both in our 30's. It is much worse with old, balding, pot-bellied foreigners who go out with slim and petite Filipinas young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters. Their wives or girlfriends are accosted and asked about the size of the man's organ.
While foreigners enjoy being looked up to, being the center of attention, and being popular in the countryside, such is not the case in highly-urbanized places with high foreign tourist traffic like Cebu. Pity the few who take pains to wear a coat and tie under the merciless heat and humidity to look respectable. There is a general bias that Caucasian men are either pedophiles, gays, out here for cheap sex, AIDS-carriers, or losers in their own countries. In the same vein, the Filipinas who go out with them are either only after their money and the opportunity to live abroad, and are cheap or rejects of Filipino men.
When I visited him in his place, a guy joined our party and upon seeing me, he told my boyfriend to watch out because "Filipinas are only after visas." This guy has not even been to the Philippines yet or know any Filipino personally.
Having said that, I, along with others, never cease to be amazed by how we Filipinos can take these discriminations in stride and with a nonchalant toss of the shoulders. Pilde man gud ang maglagot. We even tell jokes and amusing anecdotes at our own expense. We seem to take perverse pleasure in mocking ourselves.
But every time a foreigner repeats the same jokes or unflattering observations we take umbrage. It is almost a mortal sin for a foreigner, a guest of this country no matter if he or she has lived here for 10 or 20 years, to insult the hospitality of the Filipinos even in jest or well-intentioned advice or well-founded complaint. It seemed to be the only time Filipinos become patriotic all at once. Go figure.
September 4, 1998