“Meet the winner of Ms. Racist 2013”

Before anything else, i would like to say first that I am not bashing or trashtalking anyone…im just trying to give my opinion in this issue. The title was one of the labels given to Ms. Sharma by the netizens, i just saw it from a tweet in tweeter. So, yeah.

Racism and stereotyping, as far as i know, are two very different aspects. Racism is an act of degrading ones race while stereotyping is the act of associating a general characteristic of a group to an individual member. Stereotyping is not really that bad compared to racism but what if these two are combined? Well, that’s what our main character did that made her viral in social networking sites such as facebook.

Meet Devina Sharma (aka. Devina DeViva), 26, a singaporean born indian who is the trending topic now in most social networking sites. What did she do? Well, apparently, her infamy rooted from her racist comments in facebook towards the 2013 Miss World winner Ms. Megan Young – and actually bashing the whole filipino population by calling our country as a “country of maids”.

I dont know what’s her motive for saying such discriminating posts against filipino, may it be for fame, for hurting emotions or other weird and unspeakable reason but she really captured the attention of the whole internet people or “netizens”. She mentioned comments about filipinos like “they are less priviledged” and “they are smelly from cleaning our toilets” and “they are uneducated”. Grrr…these comments really spark the anger in me. As an accountancy student with a full elementary and highschool diploma and with medals, the last comment really struck me. I am here, talking like a proper person and someone out there was thinking that I am a smelly, toilet cleaning, uneducated person. And her comments were full of grammatical errors and shortcuts like r for are and u for you. Atleast, if you want to tell someone that another person is uneducated, please show that you are an educated person.

Not that I am saying toilet cleaning filipinos are the worst, that would just level me with DeDiva. In fact, I have high respect for those who work abroad. Little do foreigners know, the literacy rate here in the Philippines is very high. Most of the working population have a college degree. The only problem is that the unemployment rate here is low, that’s why most of them choose to work abroad. A huge percentage of Overseas Filipino Workers are college degree holders so calling them smelly and uneducated really is degrading, especially for educated people. And since the OFWs are just foreigners, they are usually given very lowly jobs abroad. Most of them arrives on domestic care and labor works even though it is not in line with the program that they took in college. They’d rather earn first for their family than be bitchy about what job is given to them. I know i am generalizing now but as a filipino with friends who long for their relatives working abroad, this is pretty much what’s happening here. So calling filipinos stinky and uneducated is really discriminating.

I really don’t like calling DeDiva names or giving rude comments about her or even say bad words against her since I am an educated person and doing that would just show that I am as benighted as she is. But seriously, discriminating a whole country? And not only that, she also mentioned something like no one can stop her comments since she has the freedom of speech. Actually, its not only her that has the freedom of speech. Almost everyone has the freedom of speech, especially now that we are in the technological age. But why is she the only one giving those rude comments? Well apparently, almost all the people who has the freedom of speech is educated enough to know that freedom of speech has its rules too…first is not saying anything degrading, offending or indignifying. I know, i know, i just made up that rule…but its just common sense, right? If she really can’t believe that a filipina won the Ms. World, can’t she find a nicer way to say it? Does she really have to insult all filipinos?

I dont want to mention her other comments since it really hurts me as a filipina.

And now, apparently, the whole internet population is bashing her. From my fellow filipinos, to australians and even from her fellow singaporeans and indians. And because of that, she deactivated her accounts but the remarks that she left were gathered by the populace and were now used against her. And now, because of those insulting comments, facebook groups were formed against her, journalists were writing open letters with regards to her attitude and the whole netizen populace are now trying to hunt her down and try go slap the sense out of her. I guess what my friend told me before was true: karma really is digital nowadays.

What I want to say to ms. DeVida, even though i know she wont be able to read this, and to all other racist people out there is that racism is already a thing of the past. Dont try to make “racism” happen, it wont happen – according to an internet meme i read. It means that racism is a thing of the past and no one can ever make it a thing of the now. With the technology we have today, it is very easy to share all our opinions and comments in the whole world wide web, but please, be accountable with the things you say online. Be responsible enough to filter out the words you’d release in the internet and be sensitive enough to know whether your words would hurt anyone or not. Let this be a lesson to everyone that whatever you say will come back to you. Maybe not immediately, like in DeVida’s case, but it will eventually. Im sure of it.