Diasporic Revelations

How to be a Non-Oppressive White Person in the Philippines

Note: I am writing this because I am deeply bothered by the increasing amount of white people in my country. Not foreigners. White people specifically. History has repeatedly shown that they do not have the brown person’s best interest. Color matters. Race matters. We can try to ignore it, and that will only do more damage because it is one of the most visible markers of one’s self. I might be able to hide who I fuck; it’s nearly impossible for me to hide the color of my skin. But we have tried, haven’t we? With whitening creams, blond highlights, and operations that can manipulate our Asian features to look more like them. I worry about our history of colonialism. I worry that, as a people, we have internalized our oppression; we have come to believe that white is indeed might and better and fancier and more dynamic and more interesting and what we strive to be now.And I worry that we are beginning to believe that we are less, that it’s okay to be treated as 2nd class citizens in our own country. I worry because the racism I saw while living in America, I see hear now. I worry.

Even if I remain the sole voice to destroy these assumptions, I will keep speaking truth to power. I WILL get the last word.

So here goes the list:

1) Leave your superiority complex at the door of your home country.

a. Don’t interrupt me when I speak because you think what you have to say is more important. It’s not. You’re not smarter than me. And I know this, because if you were, you would understand the value of humility. Interrupting might be culturally sanctioned where you come from, but in Manila – you’re just being an asshole.

2) Which brings me to my next point: When you go to a public place, we don’t want to hear you speaking from across the room.

a. Did you swallow a microphone? Did you want people in Cuba to hear you? I mean, what’s the deal? Are you so unaware of your surroundings that you fail to notice that most Filipinos aren’t loud? Learn to blend. We will resent you a wee bit less for the years you spent eroding our culture.

3) Which brings me to my next point: Learn to make pakisama.

a. You are no longer in a place where “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”. Here, we value the group over the individual. So sit down, shut up, and learn to get along with the rest of us.

    i. If I have to assimilate and be extra-assertive just to get any attention in your country because I’m not white, then the reverse is only fair.

b. If you’re going to spend your time bitching about our “weird” customs, our “too nice” personalities, and our lack of desire to take anything seriously – you know where the door is. We don’t need anymore haters. We have enough people criticizing our country from within. Your opinion is neither solicited nor appreciated.

4) Which brings me to my next point: Don’t try and “fix” us

a. Don’t come to MY country and tell me what I “should” do to make it better. I grew up here. I can see the problems. Again, if I care about what you have to say, I’ll ask you. For now, stop pretending you’re an authority on our issues. You just got here.

5) Which brings me to my next point: Know your place

a. Realize that as a white person, your skin color = money = power = opportunity for those less fortunate than you. Which in this case, happens to be about 80% of the Philippine population. i. If your skin color did not stand for these things, no one here would give you the time of day.

b. Realize that unless you are leaving the country better than how you found it, than in essence, you are functioning as a nuisance. You are merely continuing the legacy of cultural imperialism that your forefathers set in motion.

6) Which brings me to my next point: White men - Stop stealing our women.

a. Keep in mind that for many Filipina women who pay attention to you, they are doing it because they want a meal ticket, a ticket outta the 3rd world. Just be clear that for them – it is a BUSINESS TRANSACTION. Nothing more.

b. We all know that most of you were not getting laid in your home country. The ugliest people on my flight back from San Francisco were four white men, which makes me think that you people come to our country to get laid. While I understand how important it is to get sex on a regular basis, don’t think that because a beautiful Filipina is with you that YOU ARE SPECIAL. You’re not.

7) Which brings me to my next point: stop treating the CITIZENS of this country like your personal fan club.

a. If people here smile at you, compliment you, seem eager to please, I have to words for you: FILIPINO HOSPITALITY. It’s not because they like you more.

Which brings me to my next point: Don’t ask for a discount.

a. Whatever price the tinderas ask for an item is A DROP IN THE BUCKET compared to the dollar bills you earn here. Think of it as payment for all the years you spent stealing our natural resources, raping our women, and abandoning your mixed-race children.

9) Stop bragging.

a. Are you paying my fucking bills? I didn’t think so. We don’t want to see you flashing it around. I think you’ve rubbed it in our face enough that you have more than we do. We get the point, fuck you very much.

10) Lastly, Don’t pollute our country.

a. I was taking a tour on the Loboc River in Bohol when a British gentleman threw his ciggy butt in the river. This river is one of the few fresh water supplies of the surrounding community. He would have NEVER done that in his own country. Can you imagine the public outrage if the did that during a cruise on the Thames? I think not.

b. It’s NOT YOUR LAND. It’s ours. And we demand you treat it with respect.

I am writing this entry so that people can see the trajectory of change in my life. When I was younger, my teachers constantly underestimated me. The British, unlike the Americans, had no compassion for a young, troubled youth coming from your garden-variety fucked-up home. They threatened me to “shape up or ship out”, but they never once gave me the tools I needed to improve. Below are excerpts from letters and progress reports sent to my family discussing my “behavioral problem”. Most of these comments don’t sound anything like me anymore. But at one point everyone thought I was going to become this problematic loser, and it took years of counseling, hard work, and growth to change these trends in my life. I’m proud of myself for proving them wrong, but more importantly, I laugh at their arrogance in thinking they knew what kind of person I would become. Oh, and for the record, I had to correct the grammar in the majority of these reports.

I was twelve years old and mad as ever at the world for being sent away from my family. On November 4, 1993, Mr. Brian Green, the housemaster at my boarding school in

Singapore

at the time, wrote my parents the following letter:

            Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gurnamal,

I have just learnt that immediately after leaving the meeting with me this morning Pamela went to school and was encouraging members of her Tutor Group to stop speaking to a particular girl, who is also in Junior House. This girl’s ‘offense’ was to tell me that she has been awoken at 3 am in the morning – and kept – awoke – by the noise Pamela and her friends had been making! I am not impressed.

Take one look at me and you might figure me as a bully, which for all intents and purposes I was during elementary school. I was bigger than a lot of the boys and certainly towered over the girls.

            But do I look like a slacker? Or a constant under-achiever? Slow academically? What about socially awkward? Mr. Green gathered progress reports from all my teachers at the time. Here are some of their comments:

Science: “She has low self-esteem & is very poorly motivated…has unpleasant personal habits, others dislike her, her work is of poor quality and I suspect often copied.”

French: “…tends to day-dream…Very laid-back…on the test today she scored 50/76. Not brilliant – but not bad considering she does very little outside the class room.”

Humanities: “She is a little less academically able than her peer group and would appear to be the ‘junior’ partner in these relationships.”

Math: “Basically an average child, she makes little attempt to do her best…avoids work wherever possible…has learnt to make it appear that she is working all the time…she is not very popular amongst her peers, a bit of a user.”

I am grinning from ear to ear. The worst progress report I got was from my Craft, Design, and Technology teacher who simply made a list of my bad attributes. Here it is:

                        Pamela is: -

                                    A disruptive influence.

                                    Unpopular with a large percentage of the group.

                                    Manipulative of weaker peers.

Untrustworthy.

Extravagant with the truth.

Lazy.

Devious.

Confrontational.

Late with homework (always someone else’s fault)

Missing work/homework – “stolen from locker”!!

Obsequious when a favor is required.

Obsequious - marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness.

Well at least I bother to fake it!

Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi, one of the most influential figures in modern social and political activism, considered these traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity.

• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Science without Humanity
• Knowledge without Character
• Politics without Principle
• Commerce without Morality
• Worship without Sacrifice

Excerpt from They Call Me MAD DOG (1998)

"(the cop)put his hand on his gun and said ‘wait ma’am. Why do you have newspaper on the back window?’ And he opened the back door with the other hand, and there was Hooter tied up with her pants pushed down around the bottom of her butt. And a big smile on her face.

And before I could even break down and tell him everything about our relationship, I said, ‘Uh, uh…’ And shrugged my shoulders. It seemed to say something to him I didn’t understand.

I thought I’d just said something akin to, yep, you got me, copper  Now I’ve gone beyond ignoring restraining orders, now I’m kidnapping and drugging my ex-girlfriends so I can tattoo embarrassing things on their butts. Take me away.

But instead, i think he heard something more like, yep, you got us , copper. We’re just a couple of cannibalistic lezzbians from San Francisco, into trendy tied-up sex at the century’s end, because he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Uh, you ladies are from San Francisco I gather?’

I nodded. "

Yesterday I taught Filipinos about U.S. Holidays. It gave me the utmost pleasure to say "Columbus was an idiot!". Of course, they all looked at me with blank stares that said "what the hell is she talking about?". I went into my tirade about how Columbus thought that he landed in India, and that he didn’t "discover" anything because there were already people in the U.S. But because they were Native Americans they do not count in white people’s version of history. When it was time to present thanksgiving my notes said that "the pilgrims invited the Indians for a meal" and because they had a feast, every thanksgiving Americans remember this first meal. OK BULLSHIT. They didn’t invite the Native Americans! They were too busy killing them off with small pox. I said all of this. Except for the "bullshit" part.

It felt so good to be giving them my version of American history because so much of what they hear and what they’re taught about the U.S. is a flat out lie. I told them the truth - A lot of Americans are impatient, pushy, and some of them are extremely rude. Expect to be yelled at, expect profanity, and try not to take it personally because it’s not about you. Part of me feels really sorry for them because I see that they have no idea how much shit they’re going to get from American callers. I mean, I was one of them! Every month, without fail, I would have to call a corporation because they fucked up something on my bil/account. It was not pretty. It’s so funny that I’m teaching customer service specialists communication skills because I used to complain about how incompetent they were all the time. They were the bane of my existence when I was living in N. America. I remember turning to a friend after a call and saying "What the fuck? Don’t they teach these people any listening skills?" Talk about Karma.

I am beggining to think I was out of my fucking mind to leave San Francisco. Does anyone have any idea how diificult it is to get laid in this city?? Even if the girls like you, they do this thing called "making pakipot" which basically means that they keep saying no to you because they want you to keep asking them. Ok. These people have wayyyy too much time on their hands. 

The girls here call me "guapo", which means handsome and is usually an adjective reserved for men. And, apparently, masculine dykes. Now, even after they have purposely approached my friends at a bar to tell them they find me guapo, when I ask them to dance, they say they are embarrassed. I ask them over and over because I know they want me, but have been culturally programmed to think: "If you like them, just keep denying them!" As many of you know, I am not a patient person. After a while, I’m like "bitch, I’m the one that should be embarassed since I ask yo ass to dance wid me a thousand times and you still giving me a hard time!" Of course, that’s not what I say, because I’ll scare the entire lesbo population!

Right now I’m thinking… it’s hard enough to get someone to dance with me… imagine the kind of effort it’s going to take to get someone to hop in the sack.

Did I really leave all the easy women in the States? Just the thought makes me laugh out loud. Perhaps that’s why I love sluts… because with them, I have less work to do. They are straight up if they want you, they’ll seduce you, and they’ve been around so chances are they know what they’re doing in bed.

I know for a fact that if I was still in the States I would be getting laid right now. I also know that I would be worrying about my visa, the department of homeland security, not having a job, the the assinine customer service rep that fucks me over my phone bill every month, and they guy in texas who stole my identity (this is not made up). So, perhaps forced celibacy isn’t such a high price to pay for leaving the States.

I was with my lesbian godmother tonight. She took me to a friend’s house for drinks. On our way there she told me about this chick she thought was really cool. As we were walking towards the hous this chick came up to her and gave her a big hug.

Everything was fine until the host asked me "Are mosquitos fond of biting you?"

"Yeah"

Then this chick, trying to be funny, was like "You must smell differently than the rest of us". My inner running commentary is like ‘okay… now I’m feeling hella singled out at a table full of Flipinos when it is so glaringly obvious that I’m not filipina’.

To add insult to injury, later on I mention that I’m Indian. Without smiling or missing a bit she says, "Then you must stink if you are Indian".  For a moment I consider pouring my beer all over her smug face. But then I realize that I have been invited here by a close friend I trust and I would ruin her reputation among these people if I acted… appropriately. Which, actually, would be all well and good - except they are her co-workers.

So instead I do not give her the opportunity to insult me. In a calm manner I respond, "Well, that is a common stereotype about Indians. But if you’re ever lucky enough to get close to me, you’ll find I smell great!"

A little bit of grace. A little bit of wit. And the world shuts up. Even for a moment.

As my friend Briggs so aptly put it, Manila has become a "call center country". Sprint, Wamu, Verizon, Citibank, IBM, HSBC - Name an American country and they have outsourced their labor to one of two English speaking countries - India and the Philippines. Now get this: many of the people are FORBIDDEN to tell their American callers that they are actually in the Philippines. They are either a) mandated to lie and say they are in bumfuck, Wisconsin or b) reply "I’m sorry but we are not allowed to disclose this information". Ok… what the fuck?

My feelings about Americans invading the Filipino labor force are complicated. On one hand, they are giving many middle class Filipinos a chance to earn well because they pay better than most Filipino companies. Some of these people cannot even start work because they cannot afford the jeepney ($ 0.15) to get to work. This is how desperate some families are. In addition, they have created a culture where it’s alright to be gay/lesbian/homo of any stripe. These two things are invaluable for a lot of my community and I don’t want to underplay the importance of these considerations.

However - if labor laws change in the States (and considering how pissed off people are at the lack of jobs over there) and they make it illegal to outsource labor - WE ARE FUCKED. This is just a replication of the cash crop economies the West created when they were colonizing Asia, South America, and Africa. Basically - where all the brown and black people live. They did it with Brazil and jute and their goddamn economy crashed when world demand for jute decreased. They did it with Columbia and coffee and their economy suffers a recession every time the price of coffee goes down in the world market. Basically, developing nations have created economies that rely on foreign investment and importation to sustain them. Now, what does this do? It makes us totally fucking vulnerable. Can you imagine if labor laws did change? This would leave literally tens of thousands of Filipinos out of jobs, some of whom are supporting a 7 person household.

The saddest part of all of this is that there are sooo many Filipino companies that can pay their people well, even better, than these American call centers and still make a hefty pofit. But they choose not to. So, of course, many Filipinos are happy to work in call centers.

But there’s another dimension to this already complicated picture. So many of the call center reps get sexually harassed and verbally abused on the phone. So far, my friends have said they’ve been called the usual "bitch", "whore" and "fucking cunt" by their clients, if you can call them that. (And they call US uncivilized??) But I’ve also heard them call my people "goddamn hunchback monkey", and say things like "Why don’t you go back to your house on stilts and give me someone who speaks English?" In some call centers they are allowed to end the call. In some, they are told to tolerate the abuse unless they want to lose their job. Now in this country, when there are ten other people eagerly waiting to take your place and the majority of people help support their families - who is gonna think about their self-respect instead of their pay check?

I should be starting my job at IBM next week or the week after. I cleared the final interview and now I’m just getting all the pre-employment clearance papers out of the way. One of the things you have to do here is get NBI clearance, which is like the equivalent of an FBI check up basically. They make sure you’re not listed as a psycho-killer and get all your thumb prints and shit. Anyway, it involves spending a whole lot of time in a government office, which in Manila, can take an entire day! I shit you not. So anyway, one of the guys who worked there was a total asshole. Here is the conversation in English (it happened in tagalog):

Guy: Were your parents born here?
Me: Yes, I wrote it on the form that they were born in Manila.
Guy: how old are your parents?
Me: (thinking: how is this relevant?) My mother is 47 and my Dad is 52.
Guy: Are you sure they were born here and not in your country?
Me: This is my country! Just like it is yours.
Guy: (irritated) How can this be your country when you don’t have a Filipino last name? Your last name is "gurnamal".
Me: Because my grandfather moved here during World War II. Do you know when that was? 1947. Calculate that. Over 56 years. We have been here for a really long time.
Guy: Are you sure?
Me: It’s my family. Of course I’m sure!
Guy: next.