Recently, while browsing around on the Internet, I came across this gem of a Facebook comment on Manila, the capital of the Philippines: (quoted word-for-word)
'Manila is a disgusting stinkhole where kids have to sell plastic bags on the street at night and mothers breastfeed their baby on the side of the road while trying to sell bags of eggs for food money amongst the stench of plugged up sewers and bicycle cab drivers that have never quite possibly even heard of soap let alone a flush toilet.'
Since I am a proud Filipina and am proud to have been born in the Philippines, I obviously just can't let this one pass. The sad truth is that judgments and opinions like the one I quoted above are all too common. The worst part is that they are passed off as truth when the complete picture is, just like the rest of the real world, more complicated than the cartoon version of the Philippines being publicized on countless forums, Facebook groups, Facebook walls, and online message boards. Here is my detailed response that, I hope, should shed enough light on this type of comment. When I use the word 'you' I am directing it at both the person that wrote the comment above as well as the people who think like him. It is not directed at the reader per se.
Base your opinion on reality
I can sum up my problem with the comment above with the simple sentence: base your opinion on reality. At the very least, the reality is based on a statistically valid sample. Your comment ignores reality because it doesn't factor in a statistically valid snapshot of people nor does it factor in the life stage of these people. Regardless, your comment does raise many questions about how you think.
Sadly, your post is based on a tiny slice of Manila life that doesn't represent all of Manila nor the Philippines in general. There are hundreds of roads in Manila, they don't all look like the scene described. In fact, many are quite clean and spacious. Many don't have homeless people and beggars loitering around. What happened to that slice of Manila? Moreover, there are many parts of Manila where there are very rich people. Same streets, different classes of people, different income.
You mentioned pedicab drivers that were dirty, is it fair to call all pedicab drivers dirty? Does it make sense to stereotype all such drivers based on the appearance of a few? There are thousands of pedicab drivers in Manila, can you say with certainty that they all haven't heard of soap much less a flush toilet? Indeed, does it even make sense to equate flush toilets with cleanliness when there are other ways to clean up after relieving one's self?
As for the people you saw on the streets, sure they were selling stuff in plastic bags, would you rather they rob you? What is wrong with entrepreneurial hawking on the streets? If you live in the United States or parts of Europe, these countries' big cities also saw street hawkers and peddlers in the past while these countries were developing industrially. What is it about the term 'developing country' you don't understand? Surely, you don't expect the Philippines to look like more developed countries who have had over two centuries of economic and capital development, right?
Your post is based on a tiny slice of those people's lifetime. The truth is that poverty is not a death sentence. People who are poor now can become middle class or even rich after some time. I know this is true for my own personal experience. I have been poor but I have never let that get in the way of me working hard and taking the right risks to get where I want to be. Now, I am living a life that is way better than the life I lived before. And I expect my future to be even better. If I can do it, what makes you think those less fortunate you ridiculed and condemned can't do the same? In fact, every single day, poor pinoys are moving up the ranks both within and outside the Philippines. Does it make sense to condemn them all as hopelessly dirty?
The plastic vendors, egg vendors, and pedicab drivers you saw might be future OFW (overseas foreign workers) or they might even be under petition from siblings and parents in the US and other countries. The truth is that social and economic class is more mobile in the Philippines than casual observers assume. People do manage to rise up from bone-grinding poverty. People like Manny Villar, Manny Pacquiao, and Ramon Ang weren't born rich but through hard work, risk taking, and faith, they made it. Do you think that if you are born poor, you will die poor? What makes you think that people don't have ambition to rise above their circumstances? What makes you think that economic status is not the product of choices and just like any choices they can be corrected later? Do you think you are stuck in your life and other people are responsible for your current economic situation? For you to condemn and ridicule a city for containing poor people who are hustling to make their lives better says more about your personal values than the people and city you are judging. The truth is that people aren't victims. They make choices. They make a way. The people you so casually ridiculed are doing the best with what they have and they have dreams of a better tomorrow. And it all begins with taking responsibility and putting in the work. That is why there were out on the streets selling stuff and driving pedicabs to begin with.
The root of racism is denying people's individuality
By condemning and ridiculing all of Manila as a dirty city with dirty people, you reduced all those individuals, each with their own story, each with their own paths, into cartoons. This is the real bedrock of racism. By reducing different people into a stock stereotype which, in your mind, they can't escape, you marginalize them and you murder their humanity. The truth is that God gave us all individual lives, individual stories, personalities, and ways of viewing the world. By robbing us of that God-given dignity, racism seeks to murder our right to be addressed as individual human beings.
I don't throw the word 'racism' around lightly but in your case, the glove fits.
Peace!
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