by Lance • • 0 Comments
A recent survey showed Filipinos are among the most racist individuals in the world according to a study conducted by an international agency. The survey yielded that the Philippines has among the most racially intolerant populations next only to countries like India, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea.
World Value Survey released the study that measures the social attitudes of people in different countries. The survey asked respondents what types of people they would refuse to live next to, and counted how many chose the option ‘people of a different race’ as a percentage for each country. Up to an astonishing 39.9% of Filipinos would refuse to live next to people of different race according to the study.
So rather than go into some of my personal experiences with some Filipino’s who could actually be “tagged” as racist, I will give you a response I got from a friend of mine, to my re-posting of the article on Facebook.
Personally, I don’t completely agree with the interpretation of the results. First, just because you prefer not to live close to other nationalities does not mean you are a racist. There are possible reasons for this. One is that Filipinos in general are not exposed to the international community. We have not learned cultural awareness in a multicultural setting. We are not Singaporeans. We are not Americans. What is the population of expats living or working in our country? What nationalities are they? Now let us compare the data with that of the UK, Australia, Canada, or the USA. These countries are multicultural.
Secondly, we have known to be hospitable and warm to other nationalities and fellow Filipinos as well. History has proved that. Filipinos helped the Vietnamese refugees during the cold war period. Our relationship with China has rooted from time immemorial. The Jewish refugees found a safe place in our country when they desperately needed a shelter. Indians have been business partners of small Filipino entrepreneurs for a long time. The Japanese, who once attempted to colonize us, became our friends.
This paragraph will sound redundant if I mention the Saudis, the Spanish, the Americans, the Koreans. I tried to recall my knowledge of Philippine history if there was one era or period that we became notorious for being racists. Just now, examining the map, I just found out that we are labelled racists together with Indians, Africans, Jordanians, Thai people, and Indonesians. They all have something in common. They are all third-world countries. However, the countries which have been once notorious for racial discrimination, Australia, USA, Britain, Spain, have become the friendliest countries to other nationalities.
Does poverty make you a racist?
I thought about what she said, and this is what I decided was the best way to approach her reply, and the article itself.
The problem with humanity is, by nature, we are a visual species. Most of how we react to other people, is what we first see. Their skin color. What they may be wearing. Etc. Which in turn, wakes up the “suspect” way of thinking that thrives in most people these days. Just go to any “singles” bar, and see for yourself. 99% of everyone in there, is going to base there hopeful intentions for the rest of the night, on how they first see someone.
So the problem with surveys — regarding any subject — is too many people interpret them as Gods-gospel. In this case, “racist” may have been the wrong choice of words. But then again, we never saw for ourselves, the exact wording of the survey. So let’s just say… Filipinos may be more “suspect” of others? And with so many different countries fumbling over them for the last 400+ years.
One could say, they have the right to be suspect of others.
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