Motherfuck! Teri said what?!

"Oh no she di'in'!"

Unless you've been living under a rock, then you know that the latest bit of racism that has everyone in a pseudo-nationalistic uproar is Teri Hatcher bad-mouthing Filipino doctors on an episode of Desperate Housewives.

But before we call for the castration/mutilation of the man/woman who wrote that line, let's take a good, hard look at our own penchant for intolerance. I'm not saying it wasn't wrong, because it was, and I have a lot of former classmates studying medicine, but we're not exactly the most politically-correct race around eh?

Being half-Indian in this country, sometimes I feel like a racial slur waiting to happen. One of my earliest memories after moving back to the Philippines, and one of the first statements I understood as I was learning Tagalog, was swimming in a public pool at around age 8 and seeing a girl about my age drag her two brothers away from me while saying, in a voice dripping with revulsion, "'Wag tayo lalapit d'yan, mga bumbay 'yan, ang baho-baho." Sweet ano? I guess it's never too early to inculcate racism in your little girl.

I can't remember how many times I've been asked if my parents are 5-6, if they sell arinola and payong, why I don't have a scooter, why all Indians smell bad, etc. The worst is when people tell me I'm fair or handsome, then say, "Buti na lang, you don't look like other Indians." Why thank you for managing to simultaneously complement me while insulting the more than one billion other people of my race. It takes a very skilled asshole to pull off something like that.

One time, a nanny pointed at my dad while trying to shush her young charge, stating that if he didn't stop crying, "Papakuha kita sa bumbay." My dad turned around and asked her what she would do if he really took her kid. Naturally, the yaya was dumbstruck. Holy shit, the "monster" doesn't like being used to scare babies pala? What a shocker.

And hey, this isn't just on the street. How many times are Indians made objects of ridicule on local TV shows, radio, etc.? How many songs has Michael V. put out making fun of Indians? My boys at the home I work in sing one particular song all the time around me and think it's funny. I grin and bear it, but I'm pretty fucking pissed inside. Not at my boys, but at a media that would condone such offensiveness. At the institutionalizing of such racism. I tell my boys that while your average Filipino delights in making fun of Indians, your average Indian doesn't even know the Philippines exists. And it's true.

Oh and our word for ourselves is not bumbay. I have only ever heard that word here, in the Philippines. Bombay is one city in a country of dozens and dozens of cities. As my sister once said, that would be like calling all Filipinos Manilas. And we do not like that word, seeing as, and I say this from personal experience, that word is only ever used when Filipinos express disdain, revulsion, or some other negative feeling for Indians. The word itself has racist connotations; using it and saying, "Oh that's just the Filipino word for Indians," is like telling a black person, "Oh, 'negro' is just our word for people of African descent." It's beyond offensive, to say the least.

But c'mon, our country doesn't just confine itself to Indians. I heard that the common word used by Pinoys for Chinese-Filipinos, "intsik," is racist to them. My boys at the home think it's perfectly alright to go up to a black person and say, "What's up nigger?" because they hear it in rap songs. I excuse that and chalk it up to a lack of education. But even educated people torment anyone dark-skinned, calling them "negro," "ita" and "nog-nog." My brother couldn't stand his last school because the kids made fun of him for being dark. He was even cast as a (fuck me!) terrorist in some UN day presentation at school. Apparently, he was supposed to hug a fair-skinned kid, showing the West and the Terrorist making peace. I guess your average terrorist is a dark-skinned South Asian/Arab eh? Lovely. And this was his teacher's fucking idea, P.S.

I find it sad that, in this country, my brother has only found friendship and acceptance in an international school, among foreigners. I make fun of how he can speak French but not Tagalog and how he knows next to nothing about this country we live in, but I can't blame him for his disinterest. Given how actively hostile his former Filipino classmates appeared to be to him, this country has given him no reason to love it.

And hey, we call any fixed game "lutong Macau" even though your average Pinoy can't even point to Macau on a map. We say "amoy Arabo" for anyone who smells bad, and since 9/11, any Arab is automatically a terrorist. Before 9/11, people would automatically call me bumbay and make fun of my smell. Now, people automatically assume I'm Arab and make terrorist-flavored jokes. I don't know which is worse.

We even make fun of our own people. Anyone with a Bisayan accent is to be tormented. Aetas, or anyone with similar features, are to be relentlessly ridiculed. Anyone from Mindanao, or any Muslim, is to be feared because he'll probably go "amok" or is probably a terrorist. In a survey my group did for our college research paper, a Muslim man we interviewed in Baseco told us that Robinsons malls have an unofficial no-hire policy for any Muslim, which is why none of them ever get hired there.

I could go on and on but you get the picture.

And sure, everyone will forward angry e-mails and repost crap on their Friendster bulletin boards, but tomorrow, the same people will be lining up at the US embassy, desperately trying to get a green card. As what? As doctors and nurses in the US. If you're really so pissed, you'd all boycott that country's health industry.

So you'll excuse me if I roll my eyes and say "whatever" at this latest burst of "righteous" indignation. Before we crucify Teri, let's make sure we're not racists ourselves eh?

Otherwise, we're just being fucking hypocrites.