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Crimes against the Filipino pride
Dubai OFW Jacque Bermejo never thought that her personal comment on Filipinos and Typhoon Ondoy on Facebook would earn her nationwide hatred.
It took a lot of courage (almost suicidal) for Jacque to post something like “buti na lang am here in Dubai. Maybe so many sinners bak der! So yeah deserving what happened”, while most of her countrymen are still reeling from the killer floods. It was a short post in ‘barok’ English but potent enough to kick Filipinos down while they’re already submerged in Ondoy’s watery misery.
Wild reactions reverberated online as Filipinos got offended by her scornful, “holier than thou” frame of mind. And Jacque will not hear the end of it, even if she denied having said all those on her site which she now claims to have been hacked.
Jacque is now in the same “cold storage” as society columnist Malu Fernandez who in 2007 burned the Filipino pride with her so called acerbic wit. Fernandez wrote about a miserable international flight where she was “stuck on economy class filled with noisy OFW’s that reeked of cheap perfume”.
Angry Filipinos wrote to her publishers and it cost Malu her job. Like Malu, Jacque will go down in history as another perpetrator of crimes against the Filipino pride.
There are a couple of things non Filipinos (and even Filipinos, the likes of Jacque and Malu) should know about the way our psyche works when confronted by racial slurs.
First, Filipinos will always strike back when their sensitivities are poked. They will rally support from fellow Filipinos (worldwide, online) to gang up on the attacker. American radio commentator Art Bell got the flak for an alleged newspaper article “A Letter To Filipinos” which contained derogatory statements on the Philippines and its people. The article was later proven to be a hoax. Mr. Bell, who denied writing it is in fact married to a Filipina and has lived and worked in the Philippines. But the article continues to circulate enraging Filipinos as it is emailed on.
Second, Filipinos may hit (way) below the belt. Petty, but Pinoys will definitely use as weapon anything that inflicts pain. Malu Fernandez learned her lesson the hard way when she was called names like “pig” in obvious reference to her vital statistics. Remember, if you malign a Filipino, you’ve better be perfectly good looking, or be prepared to drown in the nit-picking of your slightest physical flaws.
Third, Filipinos value personal achievement and education, and attempts to trample on these will be dealt with severely. It’s a remnant of our oppressed mentality. We had centuries of Spanish, American and Japanese oppression where we were treated as “indios” (ignorant, unrefined mountain people) so never insult a Filipino’s achievement or education even unintentionally.
Hollywood starlet Teri Hatcher bore the brunt of Filipinos who were offended by an episode of TV hit Desperate Housewives which ridiculed the credentials of a supposed doctor who graduated from a medical school in the Philippines. Terrified Teri and ABC network executives had to apologize for a script that Pinoy’s could not take lightly.
Fourth, never (ever) laugh at a Filipino. We may be a nation of happy people who can find humor amid a desperate situation but you have to wait for us to crack the first joke on ourselves.
Hong Kong columnist Tsip Tsao’s satire on the Philippines as a “Nation of Servants” almost paved the way for a diplomatic protest. We acknowledge the gains of Filipino domestic helpers worldwide and we take pride at being service givers but “hell hath no fury than a Filipino scorned”. Now some foreigner calls our country “maid central”? It’s like the black thing. African Americans can call themselves “nigger” but never should a white man call them that.
And lastly, don’t call us names.
With Ondoy and Pepeng devastating the entire nation Korean blogger Yu Bin writes on Twitter, that she “hopes it keeps raining and die in floods like those Filipino monkeys”.
Now Filipinos demand for Yu Bin’s public apology or this means war.