Do Filipinos hate -- and so won't date -- the Chinese?

Dear Filipino,

I find myself really attracted to this Filipino guy. I actually get along with him very well and I'm probably overthinking but...I was wondering if there was any chance for me to date him?

I guess I'm sort of young and naive, but the only stereotypes I know of Filipinos are that they are very peaceful, musically inclined, talented, and generally tanned. However, according to my Filipina friend, Filipinos tend to go after their own or go after whites in order to "marry up". She told me that's how she was raised, and that unless the person she dated was Catholic, Filipino or Caucasian, there would be no way she would be allowed to date. Furthermore, she told me that majority of Filipino people sort of hate Chinese people? So if I start a relationship with him, would I face a lot of prejudice from his family? Is it usually looked down upon to be of a different race?

Sincerely,
Love-stricken Chinese Girl

Dear LCG,

Hey, what can I say?  Filipino guys are simply irresistible! ;-)  And as regards the stereotypes you mentioned, I can hang with those -- no problem! 

Seriously though, first, I must apologize. You've written me this a while back and it's quite insensitive of me to have kept you waiting for an answer that must be quite important to you.  But unfortunately, I can only answer questions at my pace, and though I was born in the Year of the Tiger, I'm really a Turtle Blogger. 

I actually thought of delaying my answer to you until Valentine's, but I changed my mind because "Chinese" seems to be on everyone's lips these days.  Locally, in the Bay Area, Chinese empowerment is the buzzword, as the first Asian-American mayor of San Francisco, Edwin M. Lee, was sworn in last week.  Nationally, in the US, Chinese power is said to be really ascendant, as shown by the way China's president, Mr. Hu Jintao, is being treated as he visits his country's largest debtor this week.  But more importantly, globally, Chinese superiority is also now being touted -- even in an aspect erstwhile deemed to be so personal to everyone: parenting.

So assuming it's true that we Filipinos only want to "marry up" race-wise, surely we must be re-evaluating our stand with regards to the Chinese, right?

But here's the thing: The truth is, Filipinos don't look down upon the Chinese; Filipinos generally don't restrict marriage to Caucasians, Catholics or fellow Filipinos only; and while Filipinos often do prefer lighter-skinned folks as potential partners in marriage (although changing, that's still the reality of today's world), I think it's not a stretch to say Filipinos, especially when compared to other groups, are in fact equal-opportunity daters. 

I don't know why your Filipina friend said those things to you, but don't believe everything she says, in the same way that you shouldn't believe everything I say here.  None of us can speak definitively for millions of people.  But I think the evidence weighs in favor of my position.  And while statistics will bear out that most of us do end up dating and marrying within our group, that's just natural, because cultural compatibility is paramount to most people who want to avoid conflict.  I'd like to think this is just what her parents were driving at, too.

Besides, we're mutts, you see, and so historically, we've really intermarried a lot with all sorts of "breeds."  In fact, estimates show that while the "pure" ethnic Chinese only comprise about 2-3% of the country, as many as 20% of the Filipino people have some Chinese ancestry.  Personally, I think these figures are understated because the Chinese have been settling in the Philippines since time immemorial -- or as far back as the Ice Age when a now-submerged land bridge is believed to have enabled many people from South China to settle in what is now the archipelago called the Philippines, and continued non-stop even during the Spanish (when they were referred to as sangleys) and American regimes, up to present times.  The sitting President, the national hero, the former dictator Marcos -- they are just a few of the country's more famous Chinese mestizos, offspring of mixed marriages.

And I think it's wrong to say we hate the Chinese, for if that were the case, those famous Chinese mestizos would not have achieved their positions in life.  Majority of Filipinos do hate hateful and abusive people, Chinese or not.  In fact, anyone would, don't you agree?

That's why I now think Tiger Mother Amy Chua's observation in her 2003 essay, "Vengeful Majorities," unfairly depicts Filipinos.  In it, she related how her Chinese aunt was killed by her Filipino driver and how the police classified the killing as an act of revenge.  But she did more than that: She also suggested that the driver killed her aunt because her aunt was a member of a rich, market-dominant minority while the driver was a member of a "vengeful majority" in the Philippines.  By doing so, she elevated the incident to somehow be representative of an ethnicity-influenced tension between the ethnic Chinese and the ethnic Filipinos in the Philippines. 

But even if I were to concede that there is in fact some tension, I guarantee you that it is almost negligible and in no way -- no way! -- comparable to the other ethnic tensions she also mentioned in her essay: e.g., Croats vs. Serbs, Hutus vs. Tutsis, Jews vs. ethnic Russians, Chinese vs. ethnic Indonesians, etc. -- tensions which are more violent and widespread, much more societally disruptive, and much, much more gruesome because they had resulted in riots, outright war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in the past.

To understand what I'm saying here, let's reverse the roles in Chua's aunt's case.  If her aunt had been an ethnic Filipina who was killed by her Chinese driver because the latter couldn't take the abuse and enslavement anymore, I think you'll also understand why the police would still be justified to put the same reason for the killing: "Revenge." In other words, the murder was an act of "revenge" because of Chua's abusive aunt, not because the ethnic Filipino majority is somehow "vengeful."

So, no, I'm not worried about you being looked down upon by the Filipino guy's family, and I'm not concerned at all that you would face any prejudice from the guy's side.  You won't.  The truth is, I'm more worried about your family looking down upon my fellow good-looking Filipino.  I know we're just talking about dating here and not marriage, but Chua herself recently admitted that she married an American Orthodox Jew as a form of rebellion because her once father told her: "You will marry a non-Chinese over my dead body!"  With respect to us Filipinos, she was upfront and didn't even mince words when she wrote in her 2003 book: "For the Chinese...marrying a Filipino...is shameful."

I happen to know this is quite true among many Chinese in the Philippines.  When I was in college, I had female Chinese friends who fell in love with Filipinos, and even if the guys were from decent families and were decent themselves, the Chinese parents still objected to the relationships, going as far as threatening their daughters with disownment.  One Chinese lady I know was indeed disowned and her parents did not even bother to attend her wedding.  I heard the parents and the daughter only reconciled after the latter delivered her first baby.

Now, are you sure you still want to date that Filipino guy?

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.

To chew or not to Chua? To know or not to Nora?

Dear Filipino,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on various subjects and issues you discuss courageously in your blog.  I have shared your posts with some of my friends.  Those who have seen them have been impressed, and your readership I’m pretty sure has increased.  (You may want to start soliciting for advertisers – you deserve some income from this.) 

Anyway, I want to share my thoughts with you on some subjects you broached in your blog, and towards the end, ask you another "profound and complicated question."

Reading and chewing on your articles on Amy Chua have caused me mixed emotions and feelings – disgust and hatred, bordering on admiration and awe.  I have never heard of her previously, but Wikipedia has provided me enough general background about her, and it's quite impressive.  She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School with a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, worked as a corporate law associate, taught at Duke Law School, and currently is a distinguished professor of law at Yale Law School – all these perhaps a product of her own intellect and extreme conditioning from her Chinese Filipino parents.

Since she takes her maiden name, not unlike many Western professional women, and since she seems to be into parenting and perhaps not into women’s liberation, I am not sure I know how to address her properly.  Should it be "Miss Chua" -- but she’s not single?  Or "Mrs. Chua" -- but she is not her mother?  Or "Ms. Chua" -- but she may resent that?  Therefore, I have decided to just address her as Chua.  Tells you what I know about proper etiquette in addressing women; with men, it's simpler -- just call them "Mister."

On the Vengeful Majority

As much as I like to read, mostly mysteries, spy stories, lawyer stories, some classics and literature, some autobiographies, some histories, I have never read any of Chua’s books.  And she had written 3 books:  the first book is World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability; the second book is Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall; and finally Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is currently causing a lot of controversies due to its extreme parenting method, its comparison to Western and other parenting methods, and Chua’s claim that Chinese parenting method is superior to others.  Guess these books did not belong to my list of desired topics and stories, fiction or otherwise.

Through your blog, I was able to read her essay on “Vengeful Majorities,” apparently with excerpts from her World on Fire book.  Some say this essay has been sensationalized to gain readership for her book and therefore increase its profitability – just like any other effort or action by any company or corporation with the bottom line being dollars and cents.  My money will probably not be used to buy her books, though I heard most parts of the books were intellectually written and show her knowledge of globalization and the law.

As I read that essay, I was totally shocked when she wrote very early in the essay in regards to her aunt’s murder: “For the Chinese, luck is a moral attribute, and a lucky person would never be murdered.  Like having a birth defect, or marrying a Filipino, being murdered is shameful.”  I was appalled and totally surprised by this statement and was hoping she was only being satirical and that she would recant it later.  But no such ‘luck,’ and as a matter of fact, Chua seemed to have justified the killing by saying: “But poverty by itself does not make people kill.  To poverty must be added indignity, hopelessness and grievance.”  Nothing can justify a killing, neither can one justify rudeness.

She repeated many times how her family, which belonged to the market-dominant minority in the Philippines, lived in a very exclusive, all-Chinese, luxurious, gated and guarded enclave, walled off from the Filipino masses.  And how they have bank accounts in various places in the US and had safety deposit boxes full of gold bars.  (I hope they reported their income, both foreign and local, to the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue.)  But then she related about her aunt stuffing her Gucci purse with free packets of ketchup when they ate at McDonald’s – sounds like petty thievery to me at a place I would never guess they dined.
 
Also, I don’t understand why her family’s splendid hacienda-style house in Manila in this exclusive Chinese enclave has servants' quarters where the poor, ignorant, ethnic Filipino servants sleep on a dirt floor.  When I was growing up in the Philippines, we were not rich, not even remotely close to the Chua’s wealth, but we also had some helpers and they were provided with decent accommodations and, God forbid, they never slept on the dirt floor, not that we had any.  But I digress, and rightfully so, since I seem to have noticed too many inconsistencies on her story.  Considering how intelligent Chua is, I don’t understand the inconsistencies.  Maybe I misunderstood, or perhaps I’m just getting petty. 

But can one blame my pettiness if somebody compares being married to your compatriot similar to having a birth defect?  Which reminds me how beautiful Filipinos are, of course for both sexes.  Look at how many Filipinas have been Miss Universe -- two in the last count, and an additional five Miss Philippines have been semifinalists.  How many of Chua’s Chinese were Miss Universe?  None that I know of, not even as semifinalists -- but that’s of course a cruel thing to say since I know a lot of pretty Chinese women and good-hearted Chinese Filipinos.

On The Tiger Mother

And then finally, here is Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, purporting how Chua’s Chinese method of parenting is superior to the Western method and, of course, to all other Asian countries.  Chua may be too smart to know that she may not be right the way she’s raising her children.  Reminds me of a Machiavellian pragmatism -- "the end justifies the means" -- though I don’t think I agree with it.  I cringed when her dad told her "to not ever disgrace him ever again" after she got only second prize in a national history competition, but she seemed to have justified that too.  She said she knew her father loved her and that he just wanted her to try her very best since he knew she was the best.  Imagine being the best among 6.8 billion people in the world: That’s such a prestigious honor, but really scary and so stressful – almost like Manny Pacquiao (yes, Chua, can you believe Pacquiao is an ethnic Filipino boxer?) being the greatest fighter ever in this world.

How does one maintain to be the best the world?  I’m realistic and I know I will never know.  I just want to be the best I can be.  But Chua certainly has a different outlook in life than most of us mortals.  That’s her family’s life philosophy and she certainly has the inalienable right to defend it – but then again it is her family and I’m glad not mine.  Life is too short to try to achieve perfection all the time – we need to aim for it but we should enjoy the trip.

On Our Filipino Way of Parenting

Briefly, allow me to tell you my own experience in raising two children here in America.  Like a lot of young engineers in the late 1960s, I immigrated to the US, met my future wife, got married, finished an advanced degree, and worked for a major US corporation.  We were blessed with a girl and a boy, and since we did not have extended family and since my new job moved us to a location where there was only one other Filipino family in town, we were left on our own to find the right methodology in parenting. 

Of course, we were neither experts nor very educated in parenting, but we used some of the lessons we learned from our own parents, picked up the good, and downplayed the ones we were not enthusiastic about.  Raising kids in America was more of a challenge relative to raising children in the old country.  This was a different culture and we did not have the presence of lots of relatives to provide some guidance and help.  What we tried to instill to our children was to do the best they could without threat of punishment.  We were not into extremism.  I was more like a "be happy and enjoy" guy and still am, although my wife was a little stricter but reasonable.  The way we raised our kids was to let them get into activities they liked, and we found out they excelled on things they wanted to do. Luckily, they were good kids and conscientious students too.  They also made mistakes along the way, but that was part of growing up and quite natural – and we were there to support them when they did, providing them with unconditional love, and just hoping that they would learn from their mistakes.

The girl excelled in dancing, gymnastics and piano, with no coercion from us but lots of support.  She was also an "A" student from the early stages of learning, garnered a BS in Sociology, then an MS in Medical Sciences, an MD degree, a residency, and finally a fellowship on her specialization – all at prestigious universities and institutions.  She is now a specialist surgeon in her field of expertise. 

The boy was a bit of a late bloomer, but also became an "A" student in high school through hard work.  He studied piano and saxophone but drifted to sports as he grew up.  He finished a BSME and an MBA degree also at prestigious universities, and now has a responsible job in a private corporation.  He married his college sweetheart who is also a lawyer and works for the federal government.  They have two little boys, our only two grandchildren – our pride and joy.

Our goals in raising our children were similar to those of Chua’s Chinese parents, but our approach was quite different.  Of course, we tried to instill in the kids when they were growing up to work to the best of their abilities.  Most of all, we thought we have to show that we love and will always support them and that was the most important thing in our lives and none of this ‘Chua’s Chinese disgrace’ nonsense.  In addition, since our ancestry came from a different culture and country, I urged them to be better than their American friends so they can feel equal with them (this was my own hang-up – I always knew I was just as good if not better than anybody else).  I’m not sure they understood that, but I know they are now doing well in their chosen professions and lives.

On The Philippine Economy

One has to remember that the United States really helped rebuild Japan after defeating it in World War II, while the Philippines which was an ally was not given the same treatment.  Despite this, the Philippines had the highest literacy rate in Southeast Asia during the mid-to-late 20th century.  It had an economy second only to Japan, ahead of Singapore and much better than South Korea and other neighboring countries.   It had prestigious universities where foreigners attended, taking advantage of their programs which could compete with the best of the best.  (Chua's essay reminded me of some Chinese classmates at the University of the Philippines; they did not speak Tagalog and they probably lived in the same enclave where the Chuas lived.  And though they were good students, they were not in the high percentile of our class.  I do digress again, but I’m just trying to show those critical intellectual ingrates that Filipinos can compete with anyone given the opportunity.)

In any case, as cronyism and corruption became rampant in the Philippines, perhaps fueled by briberies from the market-dominant minority to which Chua's Chinese family belong, the Philippine economy was fleeced bone-dry and the country fell to the bottom of the economic ladder in the region.  (By the way, another important point about the poor ethnic Filipinos that Chua always and relentlessly alluded to in her writings: Don't these impoverished people provide the clientele for the Chua companies to keep them reaping all those profits which make them market dominant or shamelessly rich?)

While things are beginning to change again with Pres. Aquino, all we can really do is just try to help in any way we can, pray, and hope fervently that the country will indeed recover and be what it once was -- and perhaps even better.  And I hope the market-dominant Chinese Filipinos will also do their part.

Finally: My Profound and Complicated Question

You know, I also just want to ask: Do you personally know, and are you really friends with, Nora Aunor?  :-)

Best regards to The Filipina and your family,

Pinoy na Inhenyerong Suya Sa Tsinitang Off-putting (aka "PISST OFF")

Dear PISST OFF,

(Source: Video48)

Thank you for your support for this blog and your comments.  Wow -- Chua must have rankled you real bad to write the above. ;-)

But to answer your question, of course, I know who Nora Aunor is!  I mean, who doesn't, right?  A true morena and Bicolana, she is an uragon actress who bested dragon ladies by topping the Ten Best Asian Actresses of the Decade poll for the 2010 Green Planet Movie Awards which was held in Los Angeles, California.  The other 9 Asian actresses who also made it to the elite list include Zhang Ziyi (China), Gong Li (China), Maggie Cheung (China), Nae Yuki (Japan), Angelica Lee (China), Hye-Soo Kim (Korea), Yaqing Jin (China), Yoon-jin Kim (Korea), and Rinko Kikuchi (Japan).

And you know what too?  Because she has made my mother and aunts very happy as her fans with her remarkable decades-long acting (and singing) career, I consider her a friend.  And until she unfriends me on Facebook, I'll proudly trumpet to the world that I'm her friend, too -- regardless if that profile of hers on FB is the real Nora or not. ;-)

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.

Does Prof. Amy Chua have any other "connection" to the Philippines?

Prof. Amy Chua, author of the new book entitled "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," is probably one of the most talked about persons in the world right now because of a purported "essay," which is actually a collage of sentences and paragraphs from her book taken out of context and probably put together by some people working for the Journal or the book's publisher to create a sensation. New revelations show the book is much more nuanced and thoughtfully written.

In 2003, Prof. Chua had also written a thoughtful book entitled "World on Fire," which "explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of 'market dominant minorities' and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority."  In the book, she relates a very personal and engrossing story involving her extended family in the Philippines.  The following paragraphs are excerpts from the book:

One morning in September 1994, I received a call from my mother in California. In a hushed voice, she told me that my Aunt Leona, my father’s twin sister, had been murdered in her home in the Philippines, her throat slit by her chauffeur. My mother broke the news to me in our Hokkien Chinese dialect. But the word “murder” she said in English, as if to wall off the act from the family through language.

The murder of a relative is horrible for anyone, anywhere. My father’s grief was impenetrable; to this day, he has not broken his silence on the subject. For the rest of the family, though, there was an added element of disgrace. For the Chinese, luck is a moral attribute, and a lucky person would never be murdered. Like having a birth defect, or marrying a Filipino, being murdered is shameful.

My three younger sisters and I were very fond of my Aunt Leona, who was petite and quirky and had never married. Like many wealthy Filipino Chinese she had multiple bank accounts, in Honolulu, San Francisco and Chicago. She visited us in the US regularly. Having no children of her own, she doted on her nieces and showered us with trinkets. As we grew older, the trinkets became treasures. On my tenth birthday she gave me ten small diamonds, wrapped in toilet paper. My aunt loved diamonds and bought them by the dozen, concealing them in empty Elizabeth Arden moisturiser jars. She liked accumulating things. When we ate at McDonald’s, she stuffed her Gucci purse with free packets of ketchup.

According to the police report, my Aunt Leona, “a 58-year-old single woman,” was killed in her living room with a “butcher’s knife” at 8pm on 12th September 1994. Two of her maids were questioned, and they confessed that Nilo Abique, my aunt’s chauffeur, had planned and executed the murder with their assistance. But Abique, the report went on to say, had “disappeared.” The two maids were later released.

My relatives arranged a funeral for my aunt in the prestigious Chinese cemetery in Manila where many of my ancestors are buried. After the funeral, I asked one of my uncles whether there had been any developments in the murder investigation. He replied tersely that the killer had not been found. His wife added that the police had essentially closed the case.

I could not understand my relatives’ almost indifferent attitude. Why were they not more shocked that my aunt had been killed by people who worked for her, lived with her, saw her every day? Why were they not outraged that the maids had been released? When I pressed my uncle, he was short with me. “That’s the way things are here,” he said.

My uncle was not simply being callous. My aunt’s death was part of a common pattern. Hundreds of Chinese are kidnapped or murdered every year by ethnic Filipinos. Nor is it unusual that my aunt’s killer was never apprehended. The police in the Philippines, all poor ethnic Filipinos themselves, are notoriously unmotivated in these cases.

My family is part of the Philippines’ tiny but economically powerful Chinese minority. Although they constitute 1 per cent of the population, Chinese Filipinos control about 60 per cent of the private economy, including the country’s four airlines and almost all of the banks, hotels, shopping malls, and big conglomerates. My own family runs a plastics conglomerate and owns swathes of prime real estate – and they are only “third-tier” Chinese tycoons. They also have safe deposit boxes full of gold bars, each one the size of a chocolate bar. I myself have such a gold bar. My Aunt Leona sent it to me as a law school graduation present a few years before she died.

Since my aunt’s murder, one childhood memory keeps haunting me. I was eight, staying at my family’s splendid hacienda-style house in Manila. It was before dawn, still dark. Wide awake, I decided to get a drink from the kitchen. I must have gone down an extra flight of stairs, because I stumbled on to six male bodies. I had found the male servants’ quarters, where my family’s houseboys, gardeners, and chauffeurs – I sometimes imagine that Nilo Abique was among them – were sleeping on mats on a dirt floor. The place stank of sweat and urine. I was horrified.

I mentioned the incident to my Aunt Leona, who laughed affectionately and explained that the Filipino servants were fortunate to be working for our family. If not for their positions, they would be living among rats and open sewers. A Filipino maid then walked in; she had a bowl of food for my aunt’s Pekingese. My aunt took the bowl but kept talking as if the maid were not there. The Filipinos, she continued – in Chinese, but not caring whether the maid understood or not – were lazy and unintelligent. If they didn’t like working for us, they were free to leave.

Nearly two thirds of the roughly 80m ethnic Filipinos in the Philippines live on less than $2 a day. But poverty by itself does not make people kill. To poverty must be added indignity, hopelessness and grievance. In the Philippines, millions of Filipinos work for Chinese; almost no Chinese work for Filipinos. The Chinese dominate industry and commerce at every level of society. Global markets intensify this dominance: When foreign investors do business in the Philippines, they deal almost exclusively with Chinese. Apart from a handful of corrupt politicians and a few aristocratic Spanish mestizo families, all of the Philippines’ billionaires are of Chinese descent. My relatives live literally walled off from the Filipino masses, in a luxurious, all-Chinese residential enclave, on streets named Harvard and Princeton. The entry points are manned by armed guards.

Each time I think of Nilo Abique – he was nearly six feet tall and my aunt was 4’11″ – I find myself welling up with a hatred and revulsion so intense it is actually consoling. But over time I have also had glimpses of how the vast majority of Filipinos, especially someone like Abique, must see the Chinese: as exploiters, foreign intruders, their wealth inexplicable, their superiority intolerable. I will never forget the entry in the police report for Abique’s “motive for murder.” The motive given was not robbery, despite the fact that jewels and money were taken. Instead there was just one word – “revenge.”

My aunt’s killing was just a pinprick in a violent world. But there is a connection between her murder and the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the murder of 800,000 Tutsis by ordinary Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, the mobs in Indonesia in 1998 which looted hundreds of Chinese properties leaving nearly 2,000 dead and even the terror attacks of 11th September. The connection lies in the relationship among the three most powerful forces operating in the world today: markets, democracy and ethnic hatred. There exists today a phenomenon – pervasive outside the west yet rarely acknowledged, indeed often viewed as taboo – that turns free market democracy into an engine of ethnic conflagration. I am speaking of the phenomenon of market-dominant minorities: ethnic minorities who, for varying reasons, tend under market conditions to dominate economically, often to a startling extent, the indigenous majorities.

Market-dominant minorities can be found in every part of the world. The Chinese are a market-dominant minority throughout southeast Asia. In 1998, Chinese Indonesians, only 3 per cent of the population, controlled roughly 70 per cent of the private economy, including all of the big conglomerates. In Myanmar, the Chinese dominate the economies of Mandalay and Rangoon. Whites are a market-dominant minority in South Africa – and, in a more complex sense, in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala and much of Latin America. Indians have historically been a market-dominant minority in east Africa, the Lebanese in west Africa and the Ibo in Nigeria. Croats were a market-dominant minority in Yugoslavia, as Jews are in post-communist Russia (six of the seven biggest “oligarchs” are of Jewish origin). India has no market-dominant minority at the national level but plenty at the state level.

Market-dominant minorities are the Achilles heel of free market democracy. In societies with such a minority, markets and democracy favour not just different people or different classes but different ethnic groups. Markets concentrate wealth, often spectacular wealth, in the hands of the market-dominant minority, while democracy increases the political power of the impoverished majority. In these circumstances, the pursuit of free market democracy becomes an engine of potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism, pitting a frustrated indigenous majority, easily aroused by opportunistic politicians, against a resented, wealthy ethnic minority. This conflict is playing out in country after country today, from Bolivia to Sierra Leone, from Indonesia to Zimbabwe, from Russia to the middle east.

Since 11th September, the conflict has been brought home to the US. Americans are not an ethnic minority. But Americans are perceived as the world’s market-dominant minority, wielding disproportionate economic power. As a result, they have become the object of the same kind of popular resentment that afflicts the Chinese of southeast Asia, the whites of Zimbabwe, and the Jews of Russia....

Click here to read the remainder of the essay in Prospect Magazine.

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.