Comment posted on the "Why are we ‘a nation of servants’?" topic on The Brown Raise Movement http://www.thebrownraise.org/?p=564

I have this Cantonese friend who went to Boracay. Coming back home to HK she posted on facebook: "Back from the Philippines, I'm so dark I look like a maid". A couple months after the Philippine trip she went to Thailand. I just had to ask her what she looked like as a result of her Bangkok weekend. "What else but a prostitute", was her answer. Hilarious. So...what's worse? None of our Thai friends freaked out about her very public comment, just like I didn't freak out about her "maid's tan". Because I'm not petty enough to freak out about that, really. Was it supposed to make me feel bad?

I'm not in any way defending Tsao but I think it must be pointed out that Pinoys have been reacting so strongly to what he said in one article when the snobbery at home, here in the country, is just as, if not more intense. It's certainly ubiquitous. I'm sure some of you were discouraged by your parents to be behavioral equals of your household help. Who here wasn't raised to be more educated, have better table manners, speak better, in general not act like maids? Who here isn't guilty of ever thinking, "she looks like a maid/he looks like a driver"? Seriously. Does it hurt more when a non-Filipino speaks of our realities?

How about the uproar over that actress who, after filming in the country, commented that Manila was "filthy, polluted, slum city". Some of the indignant people were a bunch of my Mom's friends, upper-class, educated, ersatz Filipino aristocrats. Mom and I couldn't figure out what their problem was. Were they contesting the fact that Manila IS filthy, polluted, and slummy? Can ANYONE deny it? Or were they pissed off because someone foreign cunt vocalized these absolute truths? It's as if this actress (who she is is completely incidental) was violating a gag order (confidentiality agreement) by describing the city.

What I think is that we as a people are pathologically melodramatic; it cripples us. So much time and energy are wasted wallowing on shit that at best gives our realities a cheap, trivial, and temporary varnish and at worst keeps us just the way we are. Sinking.