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The so-called “Fight of the Century” between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao has long been over. But in Toronto, Canada a completely different fight has broken out over the fact that a Toronto Star newspaper columnist named Rosie DiManno labeled Pinoys in Las Vegas as mainly nannies in an opinion piece published during the match.
Iffy alphabet
The now-controversial entry in DiManno’s column in the Toronto Star came out on the day of the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight day, May 2. It was entitled, “Mayweather-Pacquiao — from A-Z and beyond.”
Under the letter “F,” DiManno wrote: “F: Filipinos, 138,000 of whom live in Nevada, mostly in Vegas, and all in thrall to Pacquiao. Guess there’s a high demand here for nannies. (Oh relax people.)”
However, to “relax” is the last thing on the minds of Fil-Canadians who got offended by DiManno’s “nannies” quip.
DiManno’s defense
But DiManno told Balitang America that she did not mean to offend anyone with her column.
In an email, DiManno said there is no adverse inference in being a Filipino nanny, saying it is as noble a job as any other.
She added that statistics show that there are a great number of Filipinos working as nannies in both Canada and the US and there was absolutely no offense intended.
DiManno insisted that she never considered it a racially-loaded remark.
Toronto Star‘s apology
However, Toronto Star editors have issued a statement apologizing for the lack of oversight prior to the editorial’s publication after a Filipino reader named Patrick Ruiz complained on the racist and derogatory stereotyping of Filipino nannies in DiManno’s article.
In fact, Toronto Star’s public editor Kathy English’s wrote about the entry in DiManno’s colum. Her piece was entitled, “Hurtful stereotypes don’t belong in Toronto Star.” In it, English said, “For the Star to publish a gratuitous joke about Filipino nannies seems to me to be a case of the powerful making fun of the powerless — a cheap shot that added nothing to the fight story.”
English went on to say, “As I told Ruiz, had any senior editor seen this in advance, I don’t expect it would have been published. The column was filed Saturday evening and went to print without any significant editorial oversight. Neither sports editor Jennifer Quinn, nor managing editor Jane Davenport had read it before it was published. Both were troubled that it was. Davenport says the line was ‘insensitive and wrong.'”
English added: “Editor Michael Cooke agrees and apologizes for the lack of oversight that resulted in publication: ‘It’s exactly the type of crude stereotyping we can’t have in our publications.'” —with a report from Veronica Silva, ABS-CBN North America Bureau for Balitang America
Photo: Torontoist (screengrab)
