Mr. Chip Tsao
Now that the wrath of the great multitude of Hong Kong based Pinoy domestic helpers, career protesters and pin button nationalists have brought writer Chip Tsao down on his knees and forced him to make a public apology for insulting Filipinos in his magazine column by calling the Philippines a “nation of servants”, maybe it is now our turn to reflect among ourselves- and apologize if needed- on the way we treat people of other races and also our househelps.
I shudder to think of how the people and government of China, India and Korea for example (not to mention the Africans) will react if they could only hear what many of our people say and behave towards their countrymen here in the Philippines. I am also aware that despite the world’s most powerful nation now having a- ahh err – “melanin rich” president, many Filipinos still have a bias against and are even scared of dark colored people.
And while we are on a fighting mood triggered by this inconsiderate assault on our national pride, can we not redirect our fight to advance the rights of domestic helpers here in our own country? For instance, how many futures are ruined when impoverished young women and men are forced to stop schooling and work as domestics? Why is there no legislated wage and benefits for domestic helpers? Is there a Magna Carta of Domestic Helpers Rights?
Mr. Tsao is wrong in calling us a nation of servants. What he may not have known, with the way we treat or allow our house helpers to be treated, the Philippines may well be among the last slave society in the world. But if through his column we can be forced to confront the issue of domestic helpers rights in our country, Filipinos might even thank him one day for his column.
That will be the day. Mr. Tsao started out to write a satire, but ended up with an irony.
I shudder to think of how the people and government of China, India and Korea for example (not to mention the Africans) will react if they could only hear what many of our people say and behave towards their countrymen here in the Philippines. I am also aware that despite the world’s most powerful nation now having a- ahh err – “melanin rich” president, many Filipinos still have a bias against and are even scared of dark colored people.
And while we are on a fighting mood triggered by this inconsiderate assault on our national pride, can we not redirect our fight to advance the rights of domestic helpers here in our own country? For instance, how many futures are ruined when impoverished young women and men are forced to stop schooling and work as domestics? Why is there no legislated wage and benefits for domestic helpers? Is there a Magna Carta of Domestic Helpers Rights?
Mr. Tsao is wrong in calling us a nation of servants. What he may not have known, with the way we treat or allow our house helpers to be treated, the Philippines may well be among the last slave society in the world. But if through his column we can be forced to confront the issue of domestic helpers rights in our country, Filipinos might even thank him one day for his column.
That will be the day. Mr. Tsao started out to write a satire, but ended up with an irony.
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