Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Seares: Xenophobic? Rubbish By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
ON a radio talk show, a tourism advocate suggested that the police go easy on foreign lawbreakers. “They are guests who pour money into the economy. We can’t be seen abroad as xenophobic,” he said.
Xenophobia, we are told, is fear or hate of strangers or foreigners or anything strange or foreign.
Are we xenophobic? There’s no hostility towards foreigners or anything foreign. Instead, we are friendly and sometimes we bend rules for our guests.
Our tolerance of the excesses of some foreigners is so high that it must appall others. We don’t call the police when we see foreigners escort kids in public places, with the huge gap in ages screaming pedophilia. We don’t even raise eyebrows when foreigners tow rental Cebuanas, or Cebuanos, in malls and other public places.
Ecstatic
We don’t hate things foreign. Instead, we are ecstatic over foreign brands. Stores and markets teem with articles from abroad. Many of us opt for Americano at Starbucks instead of Bo’s (yet Bo’s is cozier, less pricey, and without bus-depot noise and clutter).
For a while, there were eruptions of xenophobia over made-in-China candies and toys. But they quickly died down.
Xenophobia? Rubbish. But there are foreigners we prefer to stay away: those who corrupt children or women, execute business rivals or strafe their shops or bars Asian-mafia-style, use our islets for shooting porno films, or publicly call Filipinos monkeys.
And we jail lawbreakers: sex abusers, killers, swindlers and other scoundrels. But their being foreigners has nothing to do with it.
It’s not xenophobia. It’s called keeping the peace and protecting the community.
