THE OTHER day, I read online in the International Herald Tribune an op-ed piece entitled, ?Too Tall for Japan,? by a Japanese writer named Kumiko Makihara. She wrote about racial profiling by the police, and complained that she herself, ?a Japanese woman living in Japan,? had often been pulled aside by police on suspicion that she was an illegal alien. When finally she demanded an explanation, an officer replied, ?You are tall and dark-colored and look like a foreigner? Every day we catch four to five overstays this way.?

The Japanese, she said, ?who are often uncomfortable with dealings outside of their familiar zones,? have this ?microscopic vision for sniffing out differences.?

As I scrolled down the screen, I came upon a reference first to Chinese, and then to Filipinos. I reproduce the excerpt below:

?Such typecasting takes on racist overtones when applied to foreigners. ?Chinese don?t know train manners,? I overheard a man say recently in response to a Chinese woman talking loudly on her cell phone in the compartment. On a bus tour of the Western city of Nara, several Japanese passengers complained that the Filipinos aboard who had trouble keeping up with the rushed sightseeing pace ?don?t understand dantai kodo?, or group behavior. When one of the Filipinos went to the restroom, a Japanese woman grumbled that she should have held back in deference to the group schedule. Such intolerance?when the government is on a major campaign to increase tourism to the country ?.?

To Kumiko?s credit, she dissociated herself from the views she cited. But, my dear reader, in your heart of hearts, don?t you think those Japanese bus tourists were right? That we Pinoys don?t have a strong sense of commitment to group interests? In other words, isn?t the stereotype in fact accurate? But conversely, in the jargon of equal protection clause, let us grant that indeed there is a ?fit? between the trait (putting self above group) and the proxy criterion (being Pinoy). Is it just to apply a generalized stereotype upon an individual who doesn?t fit the profile, that is to say, upon a Filipino who is exceptionally disciplined, communally oriented, obsessively organized and perennially on time? No, it isn?t?though you might ask if such a Pinoy truly exists. I?m sure he does, but maybe he has no friends.

But this is obviously harmless and innocuous compared to the more sinister use of racial profiling for immigration purposes (as in the Japanese example above and of the new Arizona law that allows police to stop suspected illegal migrants in the streets, likewise mentioned in the IHT article). Some law enforcement authorities abroad equate ?Pinoy? with ?illegal alien.?

On the lighter side, do you recall the scene in the recent movie ?Up in the Air,? where a veteran traveler was giving tips to a newbie on how to find the fast lane at airport check-in counters? If I recall right, his advice was: Go for the line of Asian tourists with little luggage. Actually I was bracing myself in case the next scene would comment on Filipinos. The next counter would be at immigration, what would be the slowest lane? It?s the lane with Filipino-looking travelers, to be more precise, those traveling on a Philippine passport. What should be a badge of honor becomes a red-flag for the anti-TNT squad. The desk officer at the arrival station might wave in other travelers with a routine Q-and-A, but Pinoys warrant a full-blown grilling. Worse, young Filipinas traveling alone are given the evil lascivious gaze from head to foot, based on yet another invidious stereotype.

Even more worrisome is race-based anti-terrorist profiling. Right now, Pinoys may be blasé about racial profiling as a security measure because we are confident they?re not out to get us. It?s the Middle Eastern-looking men they?re after. In the immediate post-Sept. 11, 2001 world, that may have been true. But in the post-Bali Bombing world, before long, the racial profile of terrorists will match the racial profile of the Malay- looking Filipino. Southeast Asia is the home base of notorious groups like Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Abu Sayyaf, and Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM). Best to get a good haircut and shave if you?re traveling, unless you want to risk wasting a half-hour with the immigration police.

I have in the past used the dangers of anti-Filipino profiling abroad as an argument to end Filipinos? own bigotry at home. I castigated the anti-Chinese rhetoric that arose in the wake of the ZTE-NBN scandal. I lampooned the Comelec?s anti-gay and anti-lesbian rhetoric when it dis-accredited the party-list group Ang Ladlad. I have lambasted the Darwinian tendency to exclude persons with disabilities, and to bar them from airplanes, from opening bank accounts and, recently, from testifying in court!

Now let me just draw attention to the less dramatic but no less painful of the cannibalistic stereotyping hereabouts. It?s the pecking order based on being English-speaking, ideally with a Manila accent. This is plain stupid. Manila, Cebuano, or Ilonggo accents are all equally strange and foreign to the native English ear, that is to say, equal in their strangeness. For Manileños to privilege their accent over the others? is an act of sheer power, truly Manila imperialism as Cebuanos say. Mercifully the Filipino language, decades after Manuel Quezon decreed so, has become national. Sadly, teachers still mistake a good English speaker as a bright kid, and treat those kids whose Filipino is better than their English as second-class citizens in the classroom. Profiling based on regional accents is bad enough, but profiling based on the denial of our Filipino-ness is really the pits.

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