Just think how this story would be written if CJ Giles was just the import for some PBA bottom-feeder like Barako Bull. Sports writers would be seething at the American for losing his cool and getting involved in a fight. I'm pretty sure they teach the anti-import article/column in the first week of Pinoy Sports Writer Academy. It comes immediately after the class on what to do with those mysterious envelopes people keep handing you.

Back to the import hatred -- look up Quinito's 180 on Lee Benson from the 2008 Fiesta conference. First, he did the obligatory "Lee Benson went to prison and turned his life around story." A few weeks later, when SLR held him out of the playoffs (they said he was threatening to throw the game if they didn't give him more money), Quinito penned a pretty ugly smear calling him a criminal. If C.J. Giles were a regular import, this story would play differently.

However did you find those PhilStar stories! Their Web site is impossible to search.

It never surprised me that racial attitudes in the Philippines were a bit behind those in the U.S., since the Philippines has a much different racial history. Both countries have their baggage, but the States has to deal with the legacy of slavery, which is where racism against African-Americans comes from. There are relatively so few black immigrants or half-black Filipinos that it's not a surprise that the Philippines hasn't had to come to terms with that kind of racism.

You definitely see it in basketball, where imports are lauded as athletes but viewed with a sharp-edged paternalism, where teams spy on their black American players to make sure they aren't running wild like the O.G. Black Superman, Billy Ray Bates. When imports are in public, people try to touch their hair or ask why it's so curly, ignorant racism that most players graciously ignore. It's like because most Pinoys see relatively few black people, they've never had to update their dated, racist attitudes about them.

It's interesting that Howie Severino framed his blog in terms of Filipino-Americans, because of the generational divide in that group, where many older Fil-Ams exhibit the kind of racism Howie wrote about, but younger Fil-Ams identify with American youth culture, so much of which comes from black trendsetters. Plus, if they play basketball, their idols are black NBA players, and their teammates are probably black, too. I've heard young Fil-Ams say, sometimes with pride and sometimes with annoyance, that they're known as the blackest of the Asians, i.e. they're good at breakdancing, basketball, DJing, etc. It's a generational dichotomy that somebody who's done some real research will have to parse out better than I have here.

Hey! I just wrote my first blog post in months! Time to repost.