Chuvaness.com alerts me to this billboard of GMA's newest soap, Nita Negrita. I knew there was something subtly wrong about the billboard, which disturbed me, but it took me a while to pin it down. It took a friend, CH Herrin, to point out that exactly what's wrong with the frame is that they portray someone who is supposed to be a Filipino African-American with a whitish kid painted black. As if saying that both are the same. They should have hired a real Filipino African-American instead.

I am willing to consider this an honest mistake on the part of producers at GMA Network. Thewrite up about the show hints at good intentions. The poor execution, however, is completely outrageous. If you are still not outraged, imagine this: an American network produces a show that tells the story of an inspiring Filipina nurse living in the US. But they hire, say, Miley Cyrus to portray the role and then paint her brown. Wouldn't that get you up in arms?

Why haven't I seen the the internet community in the Philippines fuming over this? Remember three years ago when we demanded an apology from ABC's Desperate Housewives for their slurabout Filipino medical professionals? Where has that cultural sensitivity gone to?

Billboards like this will not fly anywhere else. That this could be put up, even in the best of intentions, says something about our country's lack of racial sensitivity, borne out of the absence of constant exposure to true racial diversity.

Please GMA, take this show down.

ADDENDUM: Cess Celestino informs me that this is like Blackface. Incredible. This makes the Philippines 50 years behind in terms of the civil rights movement.