Why the Desperate Housewives joke about the Philippines wasn’t racist.

Filipinos around the world are up in arms over this line of dialog in last Sunday’s season premiere of Desperate Housewives, which spurred an online petition and eventually an apology from ABC.

During a regular check up, Susan, played by Teri Hatcher, is told by the doctor that she is exhibiting symptoms of menopause.

Doctor: Listen, Susan, I know for a lot of women the word “menopause” has negative connotations. You hear “aging,” “brittle bones,” “loss of sexual desire.”

Susan: OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren’t, like, from some med school in the Philippines?

Now anyone who knows anything knows that Filipino-trained doctors and nurses are among the finest around and there’s a reason you’ll find us in hospitals around the world. I know a lot of my brothers and sisters are pissed off because it looks like ABC and Desperate Housewives allowed a racial insult against Filipinos into the show, but I think this I anger is misguided.

The character of Susan Meyer isn’t the brightest tool in the shed. Aside from extremely ditzy, she’s also extremely insecure, vain, and self-centered, and cultural enlightentment is not something I expect on Wisteria Lane. It should seem only natural for her to say something this dumb.

Let’s break this down:

• Susan implies that the education of Filipino doctors isn’t as good as Americans.
• This statement is just not true, and there is plenty of evidence to back this up.
• This makes Susan ignorant and stupid, which is basically true to her character.

If you look at the dialog in its proper context, there is not one iota of racism in it. There’s the ignorance of a character on the show, and that’s it.

The online petition started by Kevin Nadal (Filipino Performance Artist/ Activist) compares this incident to recent derogatory remarks made by other celebrities:

Given the recent amounts of media attention that has been given to Michael Richards (against African Americans), Isaiah Washington (against gays), and Rosie O’Donnell (against Asian/ Chinese Americans), it is ridiculous that this type of hateful speech made it through various screenwriters, the show’s producers, the show’s actors, and ABC itself.

(emphasis added)

Is this dialog really hateful? Really? I found it innocuous at best, especially considering the rest of the things that make it on Desperate Housewives without protest. (You could argue that Desperate Housewives is an extremely poor portrayal of women in general, but that’s a much deeper issue than this one.)

To quote my wife:

While I took umbrage at all three aforementioned incidents (Richards, Washington, O’Donnell), I see this case as different. No slurs were directed at a race or marginalized group of people. While I don’t condone deprecating an entire country’s medical schooling system, it’s not the same thing as calling someone an ethnic slur.

The anger that’s been generated over the last few days is completely overblown, and there are bigger issues in our community and the world than this throwaway line. A couple seasons ago, there was a season-long storyline that featured an illegal immigrant Chinese surrogate mother that was carrying Carlos and Gabrielle’s child, and eventually slept with Carlos. That storyline was infinitely more “problematic” and lasted for a entire season. Did Chinese Americans or the Chinese government or anyone else for that matter protest, even when Gabrielle exploited the surrogate and made some pretty harsh anti-illegal immigrant comments? (Oh, the irony of a well-to-do Latino making these remarks to an illegal Chinese person)

The petition did illicit an apology from ABC, but aren’t they apologizing for something (a racist comment) that really wasn’t racist?

The Real Problem
Filipinos are an underrepresented minority in American media. We don’t speak up enough about things that affect our community. The real problem with this dialog is that the rest of America might believe Susan’s misconception and think all Filipino doctors and nurses in America are inferior. The real reason Filipinos are pissed off is because, well, we think that the general public is basically ignorant about us and believes everything they see on TV.

The other problem is the lack of awareness exhibited by ABC and the producers and writers of Desperate Housewives. While not racist, that piece of dialog was written, shot, edited and approved all the way up the chain of command at ABC without even considering that a large percentage of the nursing and medical community would be offended by it. This ignorance is frustrating, but I still don’t consider it racist.

I guess if this mobilizes Filipinos to become more involved in speaking out on issues that affect the community, then that’s great, but let’s be careful about what we call racist or in the future it might look like we’re crying wolf.

~ by One Drop on October 4, 2007.