Lebanese NGO KAFA (Enough) Violence & Exploitation has released a new video tackling the ever-persistent racism against African and Asian migrant domestic workers when it comes to their hygiene.
The video is part of a broader campaign KAFA worked on a few months ago about employers' perceptions and treatment of domestic workers. The research for the campaign was conducted by the American University of Beirut with support from the International Labor Organization.
According to the study, 27 percent of Lebanese employers think domestic workers aren't clean.
KAFA's satirical video introduces a mock-up soap that is marketed to Lebanese employers' looking to improve the domestic workers' body odor.
The video kicks off with a conversation between the seller and a woman about the unpleasant odor that accompanies Ethiopians, basically because they are black. The woman goes on to say that black people in general have a strong body odor, regardless of how clean they are. She then compares Ethiopians to workers from Nepal, who she claims do not have poor body odor.
The video continues to feature a man who immediately brings race into his argument. When offered the soap, he argues that people cannot generalize and assume all migrant domestic workers workers aren't clean. He says you have to see which continent they come from because skin types vary between African and Asian continents.
However, there was one man who came to the domestic workers' defense, emphasizing that we are not better than them and that "there is nothing uglier than racial discrimination."
It's about time racial discrimination against domestic workers comes to an end.
There are estimated to be between 200,000 and 250,000 domestic workers in Lebanon. A majority of households in Lebanon hire female migrants to help around the house. Despite their long working hours and doing things that are outside their scope of work, many Lebanese do not appreciate what's being done for them, and even worse, many treat workers like property.