Racism is fundamentally wrong. As an ideology, it violates the dignity of human beings. Racism is rooted in the belief that one race is superior and another is inferior. While this is apparent from a cultural perspective, racial prejudice caused great atrocities, the most infamous being the Holocaust which resulted in the murder of six million Jews on orders of Adolf Hitler. Hitler misinterpreted Charles Darwin and wrongly applied the theory of evolution. The Nazis saw themselves as human gods and Jews were labeled as sub-humans. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, they implemented a policy of repression and intimidation to terrorize Jews.

Idolatry may have something to do with Nazi fanaticism. Heinrich Himmler and his henchmen even went to the Himalayas in the name of pseudo-science to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. The Nazis created pogroms, separating Jews from the general population. Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka ring horror. In these extermination camps, Adolf Eichmann transported two million Jews in Europe to gas chambers, in a program called
The Final Solution. The Holocaust was a result of Hitler’s hatred for the Jewish people.

Nazi SS commandos, composed of young men recruited by Himmler, led these systematic mass murders, all in the name of the state. SS officers were not docile individuals. They were men and women of letters – doctors, academics, economists, philosophers who convinced their fellow Germans that the Jews are the enemy of the state.

Joseph Goebbels, through state propaganda, controlled and manipulated the German population to believe that Jews caused their misery. In a totalitarian society, people worship false leaders, false gods, and false beliefs.
But the evil that is racism dates back to the slave trade. Natives in the African continent were hunted and captured like beasts, brought into the New World and sold to work in plantations in the Southern states of America. The American Civil War was rooted on a singular question – the right to own slaves, a thing that Abraham Lincoln wanted to abolish. That all men are born equal remains to be the most fundamental principle in political theory. Recently, the Netherlands has apologized for its role in the slave trade.

In 1905, US scientists started a eugenics program meant to create a perfect race. The science of eugenics was meant to correct infirmities in the human species by selecting the best breed. This was copied by the Nazis. The T4 program, approved by Hitler, sterilized thousands of couples. Parents surrendered 400,000 children with mental impairment or physical deformity only to be euthanized by Nazi doctors and nurses. Joseph Mengele, the physician known as the angel of death, performed horrendous experiments on innocent children.

In Kosovo, 8,000 Albanians were run over by tanks on orders of Slobodan Milosevic. In 1994, Hutus massacred 800,000 Tutsis in the Rwandan ethnic cleansing. More than 500,000 Rohingya people have been driven out of Myanmar, many of them, reports from Human Rights groups indicate, raped by the military and militiamen. Racism kills and as history has taught us, it has resulted to the suffering and deaths of millions of human beings.

Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi dedicated their lives against the subjugation of people. Racism has no place in this world. It wrongly privileges a people who see themselves as intellectually, culturally, and socially superior. Jesse Owens proved Hitler wrong in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Edmund Husserl were Jews who contributed so much to the advancement of human knowledge. Without their important contributions, human society will not be able to understand the underlying principles in the sciences and philosophy.

Racism is a plague that must be put to an end. It is pure evil. George Floyd’s death has since ignited a radical protest that intends to usher a social consciousness against racism. Racism is used to demean, degrade, and dehumanize the powerless. Human achievement sees no color in our skin. Reason knows no boundary. Human intelligence is not exclusive to any race or nation. No man has a right to deprive another of one’s moral worth. We are equal not only as humans. We are all equal in dignity as humans.

“Kindness has no religion. Religions are like narrow tracks but kindness is like an open sky.” – Amit Ray in Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

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In these days of information superhighway and crass materialism, a little kindness goes a long, long way. But to some people, they expect kindness to be offered to them on a silver platter – and without any return.

Recently, I went to Davao City and rode in a bus. In Sta. Cruz, the bus stopped to drop some passengers.

But there were more passengers going to Davao so by the time the bus left, it was fully loaded.

Near the place where I was sitting, a woman was wondering if someone would offer her a seat.

Being a gentleman, I stood up and the woman took the place. Without smiling at me or even thanking me for what I did, she immediately went on texting.

The incident reminded me of a story related to me by a friend. The same scenario happened on a bus. When the woman felt that no one was offering her a seat, she started complaining loudly.

“Well, those days of gallantry when men gave their seat to women who are standing in a bus,” she said.

And looking at the man who was sitting beside her, she added, “There are men who know a woman needs a seat and he won’t even bother to give her his seat.”

The woman kept on rambling. Twenty minutes later, the man shouted, “Stop!” Still, this didn’t stop the woman to grumble, “Finally, he is going down. He could not take what I said.”

But before the woman could say another word, the man asked the conductor to give him his crutches.

He was having a hard time going down and all eyes were on him. The woman, who took the place, pretended to sleep until it arrived at its destination.

In an office of a non-government organization, this passage was posted in an area where everyone could see and read: “If someone were to pay you P100 for every kind word you ever spoke and collect P50 for every unkind word, would you be rich or poor?”

“Kindness is more than deeds,” C. Neil Strait once reminded. “It is an attitude, an expression, a look, a touch. It is anything that lifts another person.”

In Wonder, R.J. Palacio wrote: “What I want you, my students, to take away from your middle-school experience,” he continued, “is the sure knowledge that, in the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible.

“If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary – the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God,” Palacio added.

But there are some instances where a person who has rendered kindness gets in trouble because of the kindness he extended to the other person. If that sounds equivocal to you, let me share the story of an Indonesian journalist who attended an international conference in Cairns, Australia.

It was a long trip from Jakarta to Sydney. Now, she was ready to take her final flight from Sydney to Cairns.

She was already sitting for a few minutes inside the plane when the lone seat next to her was taken by a little Australian boy. “Are you alone?” she inquired. The boy answered negatively. “My father is sitting out there,” he pointed out.

The flight was fully booked and there was no way the father and son could be together. Since it was still a three-hour flight, she stood up and told the father he could take her seat so the two could be together.

They were already flying when she remembered that she placed her notebook computer at the back of the seat where she previously occupied. She stood up and asked the father of the little boy if he saw the computer.

“Yes, I did,” the man replied. “I gave it to the stewardess. I thought it belonged to a previous passenger before this flight.” The journalist answered, “But you know that I occupied this seat before. Why didn’t you bother to ask me first?”

The journalist went to the stewardess and asked for her computer. She was told that it was left in Sydney because they thought it was left by a previous passenger, as what the man told them.

All throughout the flight, the Indonesian journalist was fuming mad. “And this is what I get for extending kindness to them?” she told herself. It was not until two days later that she took hold of her computer again.

“Constant kindness can accomplish much,” said Albert Schweitzer. “As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”

“I hope you choose kindness,” urged Kirsten Robinson in Evergreen. “Even when others are being cruel. When someone asks you to give them your heart all warm and full of trust, they give you something makeshift and full of barbed wire in return: be kind. Some people need to feel your heart wrap around them more than you know.”

Remembering the works on social activism of our heroes like Jose Rizal is made easy through the use of different platforms like movies, plays and TV series.

Music, literature and social activism are intimately linked with each other due to their complementary nature.

People write, raise their voices to highlight injustice, and sing songs to memorialize their struggle.

Rizal’s two novels , “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” inspired many of those who fought for freedom, including Katipunan founder Andres Bonifacio. In turn, many playwrights and composers have honored Rizal through their works.

Rizal dedicated his novel El Filibusterismo to the memory of GOMBURZA which stands for the surnames of the three priests who were implicated in the 1872 Cavite mutiny and later executed via the gruesome garrote on February 17, 1872 — Fr. Mariano Gomez , Fr. Jose Burgos and Fr. Jacinto Zamora.

“Let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your unknown tombs, and let it be understood that everyone who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands in your blood!,” Rizal said.

The film GOMBURZA won seven awards during the 2023 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) including best actor for Cedrick Juan as Fr. Jose Burgos , best director for Pepe Diokno, 2nd best picture, Gatpuno Antonio Villegas cultural award, best cinematography, best production design and best sound design.

The film focuses on the rise of the secularization movement led by Roman Catholic priest Pedro Pelaez (Piolo Pascual ) in the Spanish Philippines as well as the struggles and execution of GomBurZa. In the opening scene, Peláez argued against parishes being taken from “seculars” (priests who were not members of a religious or friar order) and turned over to Spanish friars who discriminated against native priests and even “Filipinos” (Insular Spaniards who were born in the Philippines rather than Peninsular Spaniards born in Spain). Aside from Juan, Dante Rivero played Fr. Gomez while Enchong Dee acted as Fr. Zamora.

It was considered the first spark of patriotism that forged the “Filipino” identity that eventually united inhabitants of these islands into one nation in the last quarter of the 19th century.

It depicts the martyrdom of GomBurZa from the perspective of a young witness—Jose Rizal who was mentored by his brother Paciano, who in turn was mentored by Padre Jose Burgos, and who, in turn was also mentored by Padre Pedro Pelaez.

The story of GomBurZa was shared to Jose Rizal by his older brother Paciano, who was also one of the students of Padre Burgos.

I earlier watched Piolo Pascual as Crisostomo Ibarra of the award-winning musical play “Ibarra” (original title Kanser) written by Jomar Fleras. It had its run June 2023 at the GSIS theatre that coincided with the country’s 125th Independence Day.

It is based on Rizal’s book “Noli Me Tangere,” published in 1887 and written in Spanish, which is a sweeping and passionate unmasking of the brutality and corruption of Spanish rule in the Philippines (1565–1898) that are seen as a disease of the society, thus the title, Latin for “touch me not.”

The story follows Crisostomo Ibarra, who went back home after his European studies. He rekindled his romance with childhood sweetheart Maria Clara, but triggered an old rift with the town friar, Padre Damaso. As the story progressed, Ibarra realized that the malady of oppression and colonial brutality has been killing not only his town, but his motherland as well.

Fleras explained that “Kanser” was retitled into “Ibarra” so that the younger generation will associate the play more to the iconic character of Crisostomo Ibarra than the meaning of Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer).

“Ibarra” bagged nine major awards during the recent 36th ALIW Awards including best lead actor in a musical for Piolo Pascual, best musical, best ensemble performance, best musical director, best composer, best director for Frannie Zamora, best lead actress for Myramae Meneses, best child actor for JD Tena, and best featured actor for Jon Joven Uy.

Directed by Zig Dulay, “Maria Clara at Ibarra” is a TV fantasy series aired over GMA Network that follows Klay Infantes (Barbie Forteza) , a Gen-Z nursing student who gets transported into the setting of Noli and El Fili where she met Maria Clara (Julie Anne San Jose), Crisostomo Ibarra (Dennis Trillo), and other characters. It had a total of 105 episodes that premiered on October 3, 2022 and concluded on February 24, 2023.

It won a Bronze award in the 2023 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards in the Entertainment Program Drama category.

The ideas behind the novels of Rizal evolves through the years but the message remains solid: Filipinos must not be silenced in the midst of ills and injustices in society.

(Peyups is the moniker of University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 0917-5025808 or 0908-8665786.)