Trivializing racism

One truth about racism is that we Filipinos apparently don’t know what it means. Which is to say we have trivialized it no end, using it to describe any statement that highlights the Azkals’ difference from the rest of us who (1) are kayumanggi, i.e., are brown-skinned, (2) are Pinoys who grew up here, and (3) share common values and concerns based on, not necessarily just because of, numbers (1) and (2).   To assert that these are racist statements is to fail at understanding that racism is about asserting one race’s superiority over another. On Facebook, writer Ninotchka Rosca says it right: it is a matter of privilege. The history of the term will tell you it is about white supremacist ideology.   Which is why it is absurd that in these shores we can think of the white mestizo Fil-foreigner Azkals in particular – and the Fil-foreigner in general – and assert that they are being oppressed in this, and any other, instance. Because their superiority is at the core of this discussion, not so much based on their race, but based on the hybridity that they live off. And when I say hybrid, I don’t mean all of us having some Spanish blood in us, or some Chinese. Instead I mean hybridity equal to that hyphen; it is hybridity as the premise of one’s own economic status in these shores, the premise of one’s superiority here.   Granted we like to think that that hyphen means nothing. But if there’s anything the current discussion about the Azkals have highlighted, it’s the fact that it does matter, precisely because it has allowed them a privileged place to begin with, one that is no different from the hyphenated half-Filipino half-foreigner taking over television and becoming celebrity, or taking over modeling versus the kayumanggi supermodels.   We’d like to deny it, but that hyphen matters because it is a superior privileged place to begin with, one that informs the changing notions of beauty and color in these shores, but also one that has become equated with skill as far as sports is concerned. While we have yet to prove that there are countless football players who are as, if not more, skilled than the Fil-foreigners we have in the Azkals, it is a valid question to ask of our national teams: why are there more hybrids on the team than full-bred Pinoys?   And athletes like Robert Jaworski are exactly that, which is why it’s just downright wrong (if not stupid) to invoke that he in fact is half-Filipino, half-Polish. The point is that we never called Jaworski Polish-Filipino, yes? In the same way that we never called Freddie Webb American-Filipino. None of these athletes who might be hybrids (as many of us possibly are, it might be argued), are put in a privileged position in culture and society as a matter of their racial distinction. This racial distinction is already what puts the Fil-foreigners among the Azkals in a position of power, over and above their athletic skill.   It is also what makes them different for sure, and this difference is something that they themselves earn from, no ifs and buts about it. Now to have someone call them out on this difference, to look at this difference beyond notions of skill and skin color, and taking a look at how they are different in terms of behavior and beliefs and attitudes is about as valid as it comes. That this difference is highlighted by charges of inappropriate behavior against two of the Fil-foreigner Azkals is no one’s fault but theirs isn’t it? That we would like to think that they are no different from the full-bred Filipino is downright wrong: after all, they themselves earn from being hyphenated Filipino-foreigners, why can we not call them out on that difference?   And when we call them out on that difference and say that they obviously didn’t grow up here to know of cultural norms, are we not stating a fact? When we call them out on that difference by saying that they are “pretending to be kayumanggi” are we not in fact stating the obvious? In fact the Fil-foreigner lives off pretense the moment he or she decides to be one race, which is to deny the other; the moment the decision is to be Fil- versus -foreigner. It’s a beautiful romantic decision to be made for sure, to wear the flag of the Philippines versus the flag of America or Spain or wherever else, but that doesn’t make him or her any less the race that’s being denied, or more of the one that’s being affirmed.   You live by the hyphen, and you live by that difference, by this distinction. And in these shores, living by that hyphen means living by that privilege, too. This is what makes the Fil-foreigner distinctly in a place of power, in culture and sports both. This place of power can only be highlighted more by the fact that charges of bad behavior and gender discrimination become the vilification of the one who is victim, in the face of the team that’s become famous for its hyphenated hybrids. This place of privilege is one that the kayumanggi gaze of fans and supporters themselves has continued to sustain, in the decision to place the Azkals in the place of the oppressed, the aggrieved, the ones who are being victimized here.   This would be laughable were the Azkals fans and supporters not turning it into the grandest display of mob rule, screaming racist! racist! even as that is not at all what’s happening here. This would be laughable were it not a display of the sad state of discourse in these shores. This would be laughable were it not messing with notions of privilege and power, oppression and suffering, which actually exist, but not at all in the way that the Azkals and their fans see it.   In fact, in the greater scheme of things, there is nothing here that would mean tipping the balance between the powerful and the powerless, nothing here that messes with the status quo of white and mestizo and foreign being better than the kayumanggi, nothing here that disrupts the discourse that keeps colonial mentality and white / foreign privilege in its immovable place in culture and sports. In fact, were we to actually look at this in terms of the privileging of one race over another, we are in fact pushing the hyphenated hybrid, the Filipino-foreigner, higher up in the ladder of privilege, setting aside if not glossing over, relegating to fandom, the existence of the full-bred Pinoy.   You want racism? Here is the privileging of the white mestizo import by virtue of the fact that they are white mestizo imports. Welcome to the Philippines, land of the kayumanggi. - GMA news