There was this very interesting guest in the seminar we attended today. She's a dermatologist, and if I may add to her credentials, she's also a racist.
Background: She's a Hong Kong born Chinese who grew up and studied in Australia. Judging from her language and demeanor, she has assimilated well into the culture down-under. Heck, she even has their penchant for putting other races down.
It all started with a simple question: "Why are Chinese people obsessed with white skin?" She answered by launching this litany of how inferior other races are.
"People from Hong Kong and China have no self-identity," she opens. "They've been influenced by the British and the West for so long that they feel the need to look and act like them." She argues that most of the people from the west are white skinned, Asians feel that if they have the same skin color, they can attain the same status them. Thus, the desire to be whiter.
At this argument, most of the people in the room gave an uneasy scoff. Maybe because 60% of the people in the room were Chinese from both the Mainland and Hong Kong.
Then, she continues by bashing the West as well. She said that the people from North America and Europe are obsessed with getting tans because it gives them a sense of status. That white skinned Westerners are minimum wage earners who can't even afford to take a vacation in Santorini because their salary can't afford them to. And they want to get a tan, even the fake ones, just to lead people to believe that they have money to go on a sunny holiday.
To cap it all off, she launches another salvo against South and South East Asians. "There's a stigma that comes with dark skin in Asia," according to her. "Why? Because look at the dark skinned people. Who are they? They're Indians, and most of the Indians are our security guards and laborers. They're Filipinos, and Filipinos are are domestic helpers. They're Indonesians, and they're prostitutes. Who would want to be associated with them?"
Including myself, there were 3 Filipinos in that room. While we would love to pounce on this ignorant "Chinese masquerading as an Australian," we decided to keep quiet and let her ramble on. It's not that we don't love our country enough to defend it, we just felt it's not worth fighting a battle because it would be stooping down to a lower level.
What made this woman so strange is that she's completely ignored the fact that she's Asian. Because she was raised and educated in Australia, she feels like an Australian and feels she can trample on other "non-1st world races." I just hope she realizes that after she's stripped of the degrees and accent, she is still Asian. No matter how long she lived in Australia, she is still Chinese.
Alas, that also happens to a lot of Filipinos. I've met quite a number of Pinoys who are living abroad who diss the Philippines so much, never needing encouragement to put the country and its people down. They feel that just because they have a new home country or a new citizenship, they've eradicated the core of their identity, that is, being a Filipino.
Often, i feel sorrier for Filipinos who think like this. They fall under that old tagalog saying: "Ang matsing, damitan mo man ng ginto, matsing pa rin."
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