FILIPINOS COLONIAL MENTALITY, AND MENTALITY HEALTH

I was just in the Philippines recently, where I saw skin-whitening products and clinics
everywhere! It is also where I saw the pervasive vestiges of western colonial influences,
from the widespread use of English and the regard of it as the language of the educated
or upper class, to the abundance of western restaurants and shops that make Manila
seem more Americanized than many places in America itself. All of these, of course, are
remnants of the Philippines’ long history of colonization under Spain and the United
States. So colonialism, and its most insidious legacy, colonial mentality, has been on
my mind.

And it seems like it has been on other Filipinos’ minds lately too. For instance, the viral
AJ+ video featuring Kristian Kabuay shows that his quest to revive Baybayin is
his attempt to restore and repair the immense cultural damages that colonialism brought
onto Filipinos. Also, Asia Jackson’s viral AJ+ video on colorism and anti-dark skin
attitudes among Filipinos touch on colonial mentality as well. And even further, I
definitely made sure I brought up colonial mentality with major media executives and
politicians while I was in the Philippines, so it was at least temporarily in their minds.

So yes, colonial mentality—particularly skin-whitening—has been on many Filipinos’

minds lately. But as Philippines Vice President Leny Robredoacknowledged when I
asked her about it, it’s a centuries-old issue, and there’s been plenty of work on it, going
as far back as Jose Rizal! Indeed, many folks have documented and shared their
painful stories, struggles, confusions, and heartaches about colonial mentality
throughout the years.

And over the past 15 years, there has been some efforts to quantify and “scientifically”
capture colonial mentality among Filipinos. First, there’s the Colonial Mentality Scale
(CMS), which is a typical questionnaire that directly asks people if they hold some signs
of colonial mentality. The CMS asks people to indicate their level of agreement or
disagreement with statements such as, “There are situations where I feel inferior
because of my ethnic background,” “There are situations where I feel ashamed of my
ethnic background,” "I would like to have a skin tone that is lighter than the skin tone I
have," “I make fun of, tease, or bad mouth Filipinos who speak English with strong
accents," and “Filipinos should be thankful to Spain and the United States for
transforming the Filipino ways of life into a White/European American way of life."
However, because people may easily lie, deny, or not know too much about their own
attitudes and behaviors to accurately report it, I also developed the Colonial Mentality
Implicit Association Test (CMIAT), which attempts to capture whether Filipinos have
strongly and automatically associated Filipino culture with inferiority.

Although far from being complete and perfect, tools such as the CMS and CMIAT have
allowed us to attach some “numbers” to the very real stories that people have been
sharing for generations.
 And so, what does the data tell us about colonial mentality among Filipinos?

Here’s an easily-accessible infographic summarizing some findings, and below it are a

few more details:

Based on the CMS, there seem to be at least five indicators of CM among Filipinos:

1. Feelings of inferiority for being Filipino;

2. Feelings of shame, embarrassment, resentment, or self-hate about being a person of
Filipino heritage;

3. Denigration of the Filipino body (regarding white physical characteristics as more

attractive, advantageous, and desirable than typical Filipino physical traits such as
brown skin and flat nose);
4. Discriminating against less-westernized Filipinos (e.g., making fun of people from the
provinces—“Promdi”—or indigenous peoples and regarding them as “backward”);
and

5. Tolerating or minimizing historical and contemporary oppression of Filipinos (because

such oppression is accepted as the appropriate cost of civilization).
The CMS also allowed us to have an estimate on how common CM is among Filipino
Americans. When explicitly asked about colonial mentality, approximately 30 percent of
Filipino Americans admitted to having at least one of the five “symptoms” of colonial
mentality. Only around 1 percent admitted feeling ashamed and embarrassed of their
heritage, and 9.6 percent admitted to feeling inferior for being Filipino. Only around 3.5
percent admitted to discriminating against less-westernized Filipinos, and 10.5 percent
admitted to regarding Filipino physical traits as less desirable than white physical traits.
Finally, 16.4 percent admitted feeling fortunate for having been colonized and feeling
indebted to their past colonizers.

ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT

However, when the CMIAT was used—a more subtle and less-direct way of capturing
CM—approximately 56 percent of Filipino Americans showed a tendency to
automatically associate inferiority with Filipino culture and superiority with American
culture. In addition to providing us with what is probably a more accurate estimate of the
prevalence of CM among Filipinos, what the CMIAT studies also suggest is that CM
may exist and operate outside of our awareness, intention, or control. In other words, it
seems as though many of us may have internalized the oppression of our culture
and ethnicity so deeply that it now exists and affects us automatically.

And as previously mentioned, CM has existed for generations. So how is it passed

down intergenerationally? Research suggests that our peers, family, and community
seem to influence the development of CM among Filipino Americans. Overall 96
percent of Filipino immigrants to the United States report being exposed to Filipino
inferiorizing messages while they were still living in the Philippines. Specifically, 85
percent reported seeing CM from their family, 88 percent from their friends, and 90
percent from their general community. Perhaps the most egregious example of CM in
the Philippines is the abundance of skin-whitening products and clinics being advertised
and sold everywhere. And according to a survey conducted by Synovate Philippines
(2004, Skin Whitening in Southeast Asia), at least 50 percent of Filipinos use skin-
whitening products. Furthermore, recent research also shows that skin-whitening use is
most common among Filipinas, and among the lower class and less-educated people in
the Philippines.

Research also suggests that current experiences of racism are also related to CM
among Filipino Americans. That is, the more Filipino Americans experience the
denigration of their culture and ethnicity, the more likely they are to develop CM.
And research shows that 99 percent of Filipino Americans report experiencing racism in
the past year. Thus, it is very likely that many Filipino Americans may hold CM.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
But so what if Filipinos have CM, and so what if they’ve had CM for generations? Is
having CM such a bad thing?

According to the World Health Organization, the use of skin-whitening has been
associated with mental and physical health damages. Overall, using tools such as the
CMS and the CMIAT, CM has been shown to relate to poorer mental health.
Specifically, it has been shown to be related to lower levels of self-esteem,
more depression symptoms, more anxiety symptoms, and lower levels of life satisfaction.
These correlates of CM are concerning as research also shows that they typically co-
occur with other troubling conditions like alcohol and drug use, and poor school or job
performance. So yes, having CM is a bad thing.

Although we have continued to improve our understanding of CM, there are still plenty
more research questions that we need to explore concerning CM and its implications. I
truly hope that the tools we have now will make it easier for us to engage in these
explorations, and that more Filipinos will take up the task of tackling these questions.

(URLhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unseen-and-
unheard/201711/filipinos-colonial-mentality-and-mental-health
Website TitlePsychology Today
Article TitleFilipinos, Colonial Mentality, and Mental Health
Date AccessedSeptember 21, 2018)
MISSION: To foster FILIPINO NATIONALISM. "Shake the
foundations." Seek knowledge/understand/think critically
about roots of socioeconomic-political predicaments in our
homeland; educate ourselves, expose lies/hidden truths and
fight IGNORANCE of our true history. Learn from: our
nationalist heroes/intellectuals/Asian neighbors/other
nations;therefrom to plan/decide/act for the "common good" of
the native [Malay/indio] Filipino majority. THIS BLOG IS NOT
FOR PROFIT.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Our Colonial Mentality,Damaged Culture and Their Roots

“The HISTORY of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its
conquerors.” - Meridel Le Sueur, American writer, 1900-1996

What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold and/or underlined words are
HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posting/article. Forwarding the postings to
relatives and friends,especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated).

Then and now, an American -who has replaced more subtly, efficiently and effectively
the Spaniard- seems to reside in the mind of each Filipino in each generation since the
US conquest and occupation of the Philippines. Consequently, the Filipino has been
conditioned to -knowingly or unknowingly- think and analyze economic and political
issues in our homeland from the American point of view.

To change this way of thinking, the American in his mind need to be removed to
arouse Filipinismin his heart and mind in matters of national interests; for Filipinism to
take over when dealing with the American government/transnational corporations (for
that matter: any other foreign country, people or entity.)

The primary task for Filipinos is to raise their nationalistic consciousness, either
through self or formal/informal education, beginning with a recognition and appreciation
of their colonial mentality and exerting a conscious effort to discard it. It is only
with Filipino nationalism, a nationalistic consciousness in his mind and heart will the
Filipino be able to fight, deal and work with utmost determination for his own betterment
and those of his children and grandchildren.

Below is an excellent article, quite dated but still extremely relevant, written in 1984
by Leticia Constantino (wife of the great Filipino nationalist of recent history - the
late Prof. Renato Constantino). In the Foreword to her book from which I extracted the
article, Mrs. Constantino wrote that while her husband's tasks were to analyze
Philippine Education Today and other impediments to realizing Filipino Nationalism, her
task was to answer the question "What Is To Be Done?"

NOTE: All her thoughts before journalist James Fallows visited and wrote his popular
piece about our "damaged culture," i.e. absence of Filipino nationalism, in 1987.
Fallows must have read this essay by Mrs. Constantino. Again, we Filipinos due to our
colonial mentality would tend to appreciate and pay attention to what foreigners, i.e.
mostly Americans like Fallows, say. In contrast, we Filipinos would tend to ignore,
belittle and argue vehemently against what our own nationalist intellectuals already
knew and understood, said or wrote about (in certain issues ourAmericanized minds,
consciously or unconsciously, make us more American than Americans -repeatedly
demonstrating to the world our mendicant/servile attitude).

(Source: Issues Without Tears - A Layman's Manual of Current Issues, Volume 1, 1984)

Neocolonialism - The dominance of strong nations over weak nations, not by direct
political control (as in traditional colonialism), but by economic and cultural influence.

“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Prof. Renato Constantino (1919-1999)

=================================

ROOTS OF OUR COLONIAL MENTALITY

We often hear Filipinos complain that as a nation we are afflicted with a colonial
mentality. By this they usually mean that we are excessively subservient to foreigners
and unduly impressed by foreign goods. But an even more harmful aspect of colonial
mentality and one that is less recognized is our failure to pinpoint our real
national interests apart and distinct from those of our foreign colonizers. Despite
35 years of independence, this trait has not been eradicated.

Colonial mentality has deep roots in our history: first, in the level of social and
economic development we attained before colonization; second, in the nature of
Spanish colonization; third, in the impact of American rule; fourth, in the way we
obtained our independence and fifth, in the neo-colonial policies of the United States up
to the present time.

1. Unlike India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, we did not confront

our Spanish conquerors as a people with a highly developed culture and
social structure. Our forebears lived in small, scattered communities based
on kinship ties and relied mainly on primitive agriculture which provided barely
enough for their needs. We were not a nation since these communities were
separate, autonomous barangays. Trade among barangays and with the
people from neighboring countries was occasional and by barter. Religion was
likewise primitive with no organized body of beliefs or priestly hierarchy. All
these made physical conquest and cultural domination quite easy for the
Spanish colonizers.

Unlike the Cambodians with their Angkor Vat and the Indonesians with their
Borobudur, we had no monuments which could remind our people of an
ancient glory. When nations with advanced social structures and a firmly
established culture are colonized, their past achievements constitute the
source of their separate identity which enables the conquered to confront their
colonizers with dignity and sometimes even a feeling of superiority. They do
not easily lose their sense of racial worth.

Unfortunately for us, we were colonized before our own society could develop
sufficiently. Having but few cultural defenses against our conquerors, we soon
accepted their superiority and began to acquire what we now call a colonial
mentality.

2. Other Western powers initially instituted a system of indirect rule in their

Asian colonies by exploiting the people through their chiefs, leaving native
social and cultural institutions largely intact. In the Philippines however, our
two colonizers consolidated their rule by working on the native
consciousness, thus effecting great changes in Filipino values and
customs.

The Spaniards forcibly resettled the scattered barangays into larger

communities where the people could more easily be Christianized and where
every aspect of their lives, their customs and ideas could be scrutinized and
shaped in the desired colonial mode. In most communities, the Spanish friars
represented both the power of the cross and the power of the sword. As pillars
of the colonial establishment, most priests sought to develop in their flock the
virtues of obedience, humility and resignation. Spanish superiority was
maintained and the "indio" was kept in his inferior position by denying
him education (there was no system of national education until 1863). The
people were trained to follow and were discouraged from thinking for
themselves. A thirst for knowledge was considered a dangerous and
subversive trait which often brought actual misfortune or the threat of hell.
The "indio" acquired the habit of allowing his economic and social superiors to
do the thinking for him, and this attitude persists among us today, seriously
undermining any movement for greater democracy. Under the Spaniards,
inferiority complexevolved into a national trait of Filipinos.

3. Ironically enough, by satisfying the Filipinos' desire for education and self-
government, the American colonizers developed a new, and is some
ways, a more pernicious form of colonial mentality. For while the Spanish
arrogance and bread anger and rebellion, American education transformed the
United States in the eyes of the Filipinos from an aggressor who had robbed
them of their independence to a generous benefactor.

The school system began Americanizing the Filipino consciousnessby

misrepresenting US expansionism and US economic policies as American
altruism toward the Filipinos; by denying young Filipinos of any knowledge of
Filipino resistance to American occupation and the atrocities committed the
American military; by filling young minds with stories that glorify the American
way of life, American heroes and American institutions.

Americanization was greatly facilitated by the imposition of English as

the sole medium of instruction. This made possible the use of American
textbooks. Education taught the Filipino youth to regard American culture as
superior to their own and American society as the best model for Philippine
society. Of course, our Americanization has been profitable to the Americans
because it kept on producing new generations of avid consumers of American
goods. All these were ingredients of a new type of colonial mentality.

4. Our so-called tutelage in self-government at the end of which we

received our independence from our "generous teacher and guardian"
is partly responsible for our persistent failure to recognize that our real
national interests are distinct from and, more often than not, contrary to
those of the United States. American colonial policy gave the Filipinos their
first experience in self-government in the legislative field. Since executive
power remained in the hands of the American governor-general and real,
overall power resided in Washington, Filipino leaders learned the art of
adapting to American economic requirements while catering to their
Filipino constituents' desire for independence.

Periodic elections focused public attention on "politics", a superficial

democratic exercise during which most politicians pledged to secure
"immediate, absolute, complete independence" without explaining that the
economic dependence of the Philippines on the US market would such
independence an empty one. The Philippine elite, landowners who grew rich
on agricultural exports to the US, largely controlled Philippine politics, so most
politicians in fact supported this economic dependence. Politicians
therefore concentrated on the issue of political independence and the people
received little enlightenment on economic issues except from radical labor and
peasant groups in the 1930s. The Filipino dream of independence
remained limited to political sovereignty.

The fact that we obtained independence as a "grant" and not as a result of a

victorious, anti-colonial revolution has obscured the real contradictions
between our interests and those of the US [we had no such blinders toward
either Spain or Japan; we recognized the conflict of interests between them
and us.]

5. But all the foregoing is part of the past. The Philippine republic is now 35
years old. Why have we not outgrown our colonial mentality? Of course,
we now have an appreciation of our national identity, a feeling of cultural
nationalism. We have discovered ethnic culture and take pride in local art and
music. In fact, US global policies can tolerate and even encourage such
expressions of a separate identity especially when they can be used to mask
continuing economic domination.

Economic control is now exercised in more subtle forms - through

transnational corporations (TNCs) whose requirements are incorporated
in Philippine laws and policies, through various forms of aid from countries
like the US and Japan which help to shape economic priorities and
consumption patterns in ways favorable to the aid givers, through TNC
advertising and Western mass media which create new needs and tastes and
mold our view of world events and, above all, through loans from our World
Bank and other international institutions (IMF, ADB,etc) which require as a
prior condition our acceptance of a national development program which
ensures continued satellization of our economy.

Theoretically, the laws and policies we adopt to attract TNCs, whether we

accept aid or not, whether we borrow from the World Bank or not, are
decisions freely arrived at by our own government. Rarely do we learn of the
pressures exerted, the demands made, the strings attached by these
foreign entities. Instead, our leaders deepen our misconception of the role
and power of these external forces by presenting foreign-designed programs
that will further reinforce our dependence as examples of self-reliance and
independence.

We must examine carefully from a nationalist perspective all aid offered,all

loans granted, all programs suggested by foreign governments and
institutions. Only then can we begin to rid ourselves of our unfortunate inability
to see the contradiction between our interests and theirs, a feeling which is
today the most serious aspect of our colonial mentality.
 The Phillipines makes a decent representative example of the US' first official
exercise incolonial imperialism and formal empire [*], also referred to
as "civilizational imperialism" - a project we're presently repeating. "Lest this
seem to be the bellicose pipe dream of some dyspeptic desk soldier, let us
remember that the military deal of our country has never been defensive
warfare. Since the Revolution, only the United Kingdom has beaten our record
for square miles of territory acquired by military conquest. Our exploits against
the American Indian, against the Filipinos, the Mexicans, and against Spain
are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan, the Japanese in Manchuria
and the African attack of Mussolini. No country has ever declared war on us
before we first obliged them with that gesture. Our whole history shows we
have never fought a defensive war. And at the rate our armed forces are being
implemented at present, the odds are against our fighting one in the near
future." - -- Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, America's Armed Forces: 'In Time
of Peace', 1935. 1898-1914: The Phillipines.

(URLhttp://www.thefilipinomind.com/2008/01/our-colonial-mentality-damaged-
culture.html
Website TitleTHE FILIPINO MIND
Article TitleOur Colonial Mentality,Damaged Culture and Their Roots
Date PublishedJanuary 01, 1970
Date AccessedSeptember 21, 2018)