"This has to do with OFWs. Among Filipinos, they experience perhaps the
most brutal forms of racial injustice, especially domestic workers. In places like
Singapore or the Gulf States, they tend to live in slave-like conditions.
Unprotected by local laws, they are subject to gross exploitation by recruiters,
employers, and even Embassy personnel. They are also vulnerable to being
trafficked and sexually abused. Symptomatic of this racial abjection is the way
“Filipina” has come to be synonymous with "maid” or “care giver" in many places
abroad.
Vicente, R. L. (2015). Racism in the Philippines: Does it matter?
Processing Questions:
1. How their conditions reveal as labor, an integral - and tragic - part of our
current history?
2. Why does race continue to provoke? Why does it even matter?
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Answer:
1. Thus are OFWS positioned by the host country as a race apart. Their slave-like conditions reveal with great clarity the tight chains that bind racism with the gendered exploitation of labor that is an integral – and tragic – part of our current history.
2. Race matters because it is an imperfect proxy for racism and racial discrimination. Clearly, race doesn’t matter as a genetic concept. The idea that race is important because of a notion of genetic homogeneity has been thoroughly debunked.