I’ve never considered my parents racist, with one exception- Filipinos.
Both of them work in the medical field, and both claim that they will get a Filipino co-worker that will pull strings to get his/her brother, sister, cousin, niece, and second-godson-thrice-removed to work there with them. Both parents have also had to deal with work drama where a filipino coworker will use his/her relatives to cover their incompetence/mistakes.
Its hard to separate fact from fiction. Like i said, other than this, my parents aren’t racists; they grew up in diverse neighborhoods in California and never stereotyped anyone (except Filipinos).
I personally don’t have any problem with Filipinos at all, and never had to deal with the same problem they did. So I really don’t know if this is racism or something cultural (using family members to get jobs, gravitating toward the medical field, etc)
My girlfriend’s family is mixed Chinese/Filipino and they do all seem to be involved in the medical community. Her uncle owns a laser surgery place, her other uncle is I think a heart surgeon, her aunts all seem to be nurses, etc. I’ve also noticed Indians to be overrepresented in medicine.
But let me tell you something: EVERYBODY uses family members to get jobs! Nepotism knows no ethnic or cultural boundary.
Your last sentence threw me off, as I wasn’t sure about what you were asking was racial or not.
And, of course, you don’t provide enough information about what your parents have said or done WRT Filipinos for me to opine whether they might be racist or not.
At any rate, even if the Filipinos that they work with pull strings in order to get jobs for relatives, so what? They wouldn’t be the first ethnic group to do it, and they sure as hell won’t be the last. I trust that you don’t need me to go into how Whites in America have been doing this for…well, ever.
Ahh, on preview, I see that **Argent Towers ** has beat me to it.
But it does demonstrate an interesting amount of ethnic and cultural variation. I attended a seminar given by a woman who teaches and consults on international/ intercultural issues in business. She gave some interesting examples about setting up NGOs in middle eastern countries. Obviously, mileage may vary, but this was her experience. She found that they would hire the head of the organization, and the organization would then be completely staffed by relatives. The way she described it, that person would be looked down on in their culture if they failed to provide jobs for their family members, given the opportunity. Kind of like “How can he be a good person, if he doesn’t even provide for his brother, his father-in-law, and his second cousin twice removed?” Whereas to a US perspective, that was waaaay too much nepotism. Also, to the US this looks like a hotbed of conflicts of interest, and therefore we’d question the integrity of the organization. To their perspective, family members were the most trustworthy, so of course the best to hire.
Now, this says nothing about Filipino culture, and it’s not meant to imply that people in the US never use family connections, but I’m trying to contribute the point that the appropriate use of such connections varies in different cultures.
If the OP is asking when these type of cultural judgments become racist, IMHO it is when individuals are prejudged. Even in the US, there are certain legitimate things you can do to get friends and family hired where you work. If you make an assumption that an individual Filipino will go beyond those legitimate things based on what other Filipinos have done, that to me would be racial prejudice.
That’s true in Peru as well. There just aren’t as many opportunities for work that pays well, and if you have an “in”, it’s expected that you’ll at least recommend someone for an interview or hire them yourself if you can.
There’s “racist” and then there’s “it sure seems like every Filipino around here is trying to get everyone of their family members employed here.”
Get out there for a while and see what you think about different ethnic groups. You know what? Every Chinese guy in this office spits and hawks loogies (sometimes into their trashcans) like there’s no tomorrow, and NO white people do it.
Am I racist for saying that?
Does some Sociology 101 student want to chime in, “you just notice it when the Chinese do it, and not when Americans do it”? That’s always clever.
You can talk about things that other cultures do even if you deem them negative without being racist.
Now, if your parents didn’t want you to marry a Filipino because they just don’t like Filipinos, we’re getting into the territory of racist. I wouldn’t worry about them griping about something they see the Filipinos doing.
I work in the medical field too as a lab tech. We have the opposite problem in our lab, because we cannot get enough Filipino techs to work here. I there are currently of them mizxed in the evening and night roations, and they are without a doubt the best employees I’ve ever had a chance to work with (btw, I’m white guy, mid-20’s). They are all working under contract with the hospital providing work visas. Whenever there is an opening and the opportunity to recruit more we jump at the chance. We just got a new guy, young 30’s, who took almost a half a year to clear up immigration status to get to come over here. the lab never once stopped trying to hire him no matter how convoluted the moving process got.
They are all nice, punctual, friendly on the phones, competant at their work, and not the least of lazy or likely to make (and cover up) mistakes.
We need more!
I think you just provided an excellent example of the true meaning of reverse racism.
It’s just as logically flawed as vanilla racism, by the way. There’s really as much reason for you to expect future Filipinos to be good workers as there is for me to expect black women to call in sick five days a month so they can pick up shifts at the strip club.
I think I just a little enthusiastic lauding them just because I’ve worked at several places, including my current lab, where I am surrounded by people I can’t stand to work with. I just miss working with those guys on a full time basis. Like good scouting in baseball I think we’ve just done a very good job recruiting very competent people who happen to come from the Phillipines.
