Benign racism

I once asked a mainland American for his opinion on the Article 12 land alienation provision in our local constitution; and to my utter shock and dismay, he expressed strong support for it. When I asked him why he felt this way, he said that the land rightfully belonged to the indigenous people, and he felt no right to own any part of it.

This was the kind of liberal American who strongly supports the protection and preservation of the local culture. There are a lot of mainland Americans who feel this way. Most of them are PSS teacher types (since you can’t attend a university without being heavily exposed to–and indoctrinated with–a wide variety of screwy liberal ideas.)

These Americans are the liberal do-gooders, the altruist volunteer types, the environmentalists. They are usually opposed to economic growth and development.

I don’t mean to present a flagrantly menacing picture of this type of mainland American, because, in most cases, they appear to be extremely sincere and kind individuals–very warm and gracious, oozing with ostensible good will. And they do mean well.

So when they vote “yes” on the popular initiative to restrict the upcoming Article 12 referendum to indigenous people only, they really do believe that they are doing the right thing; that they are rising above petty self-interest and complying with what is good and noble.

Unfortunately, when considered objectively, their caring and compassion basically amounts to a benign form of racism. For the desire to protect the indigenous people is really the epitome of supreme condescension.

The whole premise of Article 12 is the sheer incompetence of the indigenous population. Why else would they require such a constitutional protection in the first place?

The underlying assumption is that the average local person is stupid: that he is completely incapable of making a sound economic decision. Therefore, he has to be protected in this way, to ensure that he is not exploited by a ruthless, greedy–and smarter–foreign investor. There is no other justification for Article 12.

So that when the compassionate (liberal) mainland American says he fully endorses Article 12, what he is essentially declaring is this: “I agree that the indigenous people are stupid. I also agree that stupid people are vulnerable to brutal commercial exploitation. Therefore, I agree that they should be constitutionally protected in this manner.”

It is really an insult to the local people, because the local people are not actually that stupid. A number of local businessmen are quite astute, in fact; they are the ones exploiting the foreign investors, not the other way around. I hardly think that local businessmen such as Clarence Tenorio, J.M. Guerrero, Juan Tenorio, Juan
Pan and others are victims of foreign investor exploitation. I believe that, in some cases, they are the ones doing the “exploiting.”

The Japanese “investment” frenzy in the late 1980s and early 1990s was proof positive that Japanese investors were the real victims of economic exploitation. They paid irrational premiums for overvalued real estate in the CNMI as well as in the United States, which they later had to liquidate at a substantial loss.

The local people are not complete idiots. They do not need to be unreasonably protected. Vote “No” on the Article 12 ballot initiative this November.