The Filipino Today

The Filipino Today By Alex Lacson, 2010 After the August 23 hostage drama, there is just too much negativity about and against the Filipino. "It is difficult to be a Filipino these days", says a friend who works in Hongkong. "Nakakahiya tayo", "Only in the Philippines" were some of the comments lawyer Trixie Cruz-Angeles received in her Facebook. There is this email supposedly written by a Dutch married to a Filipina, with 2 kids, making a litany of the supposed stupidity or idiocy of Filipinos in general. There was also this statement by Fermi Wong, founder of Unison HongKong, where she said - "Filipino maids have a very low status in our city". Then there is this article from a certain Daniel Wagner of Huffington Post, wherein he said he sees nothing good in our country's future. Clearly, the hostage crisis has spawned another crisis - a crisis of faith in the Filipino, one that exists in the minds of a significant number of Filipinos and some quarters in the world. It is important for us Filipinos to take stock of ourselves as a people - of who we truly are as a people. It is important that we remind ourselves who the Filipino really is, before our young children believe all this negativity that they hear and read about the Filipino. We have to protect and defend the Filipino in each one of us. The August 23 hostage fiasco is now part of us as Filipinos, it being part now of our country's and world's history. But that is not all that there is to the Filipino. Yes, we accept it as a failure on our part, a disappointment to HongKong, China and to the whole world. But there is so much more about the Filipino. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Hitler and his Nazi had killed more than 6 million Jews in Europe. But in 1939, when the Jews and their families were fleeing Europe at a time when several countries refused to open their doors to them, our Philippines did the highly risky and the unlikely -thru President Manuel L Quezon, we opened our country's doors and