Casting Stones from a Gunboat

Check this article. If you're Filipino and on the internet, then statistically speaking, chances are your stomach is twisting, your eyes are popping bloodshot, and you're typing so hard you're about to break your macbook air in half. Did that sumvabitch really just take a dump on my country, my people???

People are pissed. Google for Chip Tsao and you'll find that not only is the article in question not on the front page, but almost all the entries are some forms of how-dare-hes peppered with the occasional say-it-to-my-face-tangina-mo. First line on the page as of this writing says Roilo Golez wants to take him on in a boxing match, a brutal one-rounder! Of course, it'll be the longest round of Chip Tsao's life before Golez goes and lays his chip ass out.

Righteous furor, right? Are you mad? Are you angry? Kumukulo na ba yung ebak mo sa galit? If so, then just let that shit simmer for a bit because congratulations, you're completely wrong.

Doesn't anyone read The Onion anymore? I'm loath to go on and explain Chip Tsao's point, because I find it hard and painful to believe that we as a society have sunk so low, so low that our jokes have to be explained to us like we do for the slow kid in class. Is our noble maharlika blood so volatile, so raging that we have no capacity to distinguish between satire and hard news? Is our chocolate-colored skin so thin that no one can poke fun at us anymore? Better call Rex Navarette and all those other malansang isda, because they're next. No one shits on the Philippines and gets away without Roilo Golez's fistprints on his grills.

More seriously, however, I am troubled by the deeper implications of all this outrage, implications which point to the nature of Filipino identity itself. One of the most incendiary portions of Tsao's column is this line:

As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

So after he goes on about browbeating the poor Filipina in his home, he calls us a colony of maids. Helpers. Yayas. And this is making a lot of people very very angry. "We're not all maids, you know! In case you're not aware, Filipinos have gone on to be successful everywhere!"

Because, of course, there's nothing successful about being a maid. Because it's a lowly job that is only done by those who can't do anything else. Because there's nothing great about leaving the comfort and familiarity of your homeland, going to a strange place and prostrating yourself before strange people, and being far, far away from the parents, children, brothers and sisters who by your toilings are fed and clothed. Tell me, is there not a more noble and patriotic sacrifice than this?

It's truth that most of the Filipinos in Hong Kong are there as domestic helpers in the homes of wealthy Chinese. Anyone who denies this needs to comb the gravel out of their hair and get some sunlight. But there is nothing that should offend us about this truth. The only people who are offended by this acknowledgment are those who deride the profession of the Filipino domestic helper and see it as something degrading to Filipinos. What message are we sending to domestic helpers when we bristle at that description and want nothing to do with them? What was that line about loving your countrymen?

Chip Tsao has nothing to apologize for, other than an unfamiliarity with the temper of Filipino society. The only people who should be apologizing are the bigots who continue to look upon domestic helpers as second-class human beings.