The Colonial Legacy of Racism Among Filipinos
/(Excerpts from the author’s presentation for Positively Filipino’s first of a series of webinars on “Racism and the Filipino American”, June 29, 2020)
In the Philippines, popular culture is steeped in Caucasian aesthetic standards, as can be seen in the popularity of light-complexioned celebrities as well as the persistent market demand for skin whiteners. Filipinos who come to the United States integrate into a society with its own historically rooted racialized social dynamics. The distorted values based on skin color that we harbor have roots in the history of colonization of the Philippines, first by Spain, then by the United States. Here are some highlights.
Spanish Colonization Revisited
Curiously, Antonio Pigafetta, Ferdinand Magellan's chronicler, observed of their first encounter with Visayan natives in 1521 that the women were "as white as our girls, and large." When they saw some Chinese traders in Cebu, he thought too, that they were white. This is notable given that he described the people they encountered in South America as dark and savage. Historian Resil Mojares believes that Pigafetta was writing to convince their Royal patrons in Spain that the natives were not quite savages, and that they could easily be colonized and converted to Christianity. Pigafetta was right on this hunch, as 20 years later, Spain sent an expedition to begin a successful colonization of the archipelago.
In 1565, Legaspi successfully subdued Manila's chiefdoms, building a settlement at the mouth of Pasig River, where later rose a walled city called Intramuros. As it turned out, Pigafetta was wrong in thinking that "white"-looking native women or white-looking Chinese would be more acceptable to Spanish sensibilities. They were not allowed inside the walls of Manila, with the Chinese subjected to discriminatory laws and several massacres.
“Whiteness was not a revolutionary ideal. The ideal woman, was a native woman with a golden brown complexion the Tagalogs called “kayumanggi,” and the Spanish called morena.”
18th c. Creolization
For most of the three hundred years of colonial rule, Spanish Manila was segregated. In its colony, bloodlines were carefully measured and classified in a graduating scale of whiteness.
In time, by the 19th century Spanish Manila, long secluded from the international community by a monopolistic galleon trade between China and Mexico, would loosen up its racial hierarchy as intermarriages between Spanish-Chinese, Chinese-Native, Spanish-Chinese-Native muddled social distinctions, allowing mestizos access to white Spanish elite. Mestizos, mostly with Chinese ancestry, now had access to colonial jobs (clerks, tax collectors, village governors) and higher education that was previously exclusive to the white population.
Families with means (farmlands or sold merchandising) sent their sons to Madrid. Jose Rizal, the Luna brothers Antonio and Juan, and surnames now familiar in Philippine history, soaked in the rising libertarian ideas of Europe. The more political-minded demanded that the Philippines be assimilated as a province of the Spanish empire. Known as ilustrados, they shaped a Filipino national identity within a colonial setting. Previously, "Filipino" was a white Spaniard born in the Philippines. Natives formerly called “Indio mestizo” by the Spanish, were now a Christianized, Hispanicized population in the lowland and coastal regions of the Philippines.
However, a more vernacular version of the Filipino national identity emerged without the mestizo coating among the likes of revolutionary, separatist leader Andres Bonifacio and native urban workers, farmers, low-level government functionaries. Rooted in Tagalog idioms, Bonifacio’s Katipunan conflated the idea of nation (bayan) with skin complexion. Whiteness was not a revolutionary ideal. The ideal woman, was a native woman with a golden brown complexion the Tagalogs called "kayumanggi," and the Spanish called morena. The nation was "bayan Tagalog"; nationhood was "Inang Bayan." Motherland was brown.
The mestizos who had better resources and regional alliances took over Bonifacio’s revolution. Now led by Emilio Aguinaldo, a mestizo elite family south of Manila, the rebels were forced into a stalemate with the Spanish forces. Their leadership, including Aquinaldo, self-exiled in Hong Kong to await better opportunities. It came in 1898 when Commodore George Dewey sailed into Manila Bay to trounce the Spanish Navy and end the Spanish American War. Aguinaldo returned to Manila aboard one of Dewey’s ships. The rest is the ensuing Philippine-American War and American colonization.
Americanization
Aguinaldo, like many of his mestizo advisers, misread American intentions and the underlying racist attitudes prevailing in the U.S. that time.
The U.S. press promoted the Spanish American War as one that would liberate colored colonial subjects in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish tyranny, to lead “little brown brothers” to civilization, the “White Man’s burden,” in the words of Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of imperialism.
The U.S. troops that fought in the ensuing Philippine-American War were mostly volunteers, many with experience in fighting the “Indian wars” that forcibly migrated Native Americans into reservations for their "own good" and to end their "savage ways." Barely thirty years from the nightmare of a racial civil war and the abolition of slavery in the US, white supremacy continued to persist in popular culture if not, in law. Small wonder that, as shown by The Forbidden Book (Dela Cruz, Abraham, Toribio and Emmanuel), graphic covers of popular publications such as Life Magazine, reflected the racist nature of American imperialism. They depicted Filipinos with the same physical features of Black Americans. To the new colonizers, they all looked the same.
U.S. soldiers sent to fight the Filipino forces brought with them racist attitudes prevalent in American society. A snippet of a popular marching song went:
Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos, cross-eyed khakiac ladrones,
Underneath our starry flag, civilize 'em with a Krag,
And return us to our own beloved homes.
Aguinaldo, only saw the positive picture. Reading Dewey's tacit support that we now know was a strategic decision to reduce Spanish resistance to his invasion of Manila, hence reduce the loss of American lives, Dewey refused to recognize Aguinaldo's republic when the Filipinos declared independence from Spain on June 12, 1898. It was the first republic ever in Asia. Now with an estimated 20,000 troops, Aguinaldo besieged the walled city. Victory appeared to be on hand only to suffer a setback and an insult.
Feeding on the racist attitudes of the time, the commander of the besieged walled city, Spanish Governor General Jaudenes sent feelers to Dewey, that he feared surrendering to Aguinaldo's Indio army. Suggesting to Dewey that the Filipinos will massacre them if given entry to the city. Steep in racist lore, Dewey agreed to a mock battle between the Spanish and the Americans and thus secure Manila from the Filipinos.
Racial Segregation in American Colonial Manila
American colonialism reconfigured Philippine society based on prevailing notions of white supremacy in the early 20th century. Through a variety of methods, they allowed the Filipinos to govern themselves by encouraging assimilation with American ideals of democracy but disciplined them through a colonial administration and scientific management practices. To manage the colony, the U.S. had to groom the same mestizo class that had waged war on them. Some of them were already collaborating, especially the wealthier and propertied class who understood the opportunity American colonization offered. Aguinaldo's revolution was doomed once these classes defected.
Historian Patricio Abinales explains in his book, State and Society in the Philippines, that the American administrators privileged the mestizos, who were more attuned to American ideas of individualism, commercialism, and progress because of their European exposure.
Institutionalizing race and ethnic relations
Ethnic and racial sorting was an important tool for U.S. colonization. Historian Vince Rafael, in his book White Love, shows how racist theory utilized scientific classification techniques like census surveys, allowing for efficient colonial management by essentially confining subjects to behave within their classifications.
Although the Spanish also conducted their surveys for tax collection purposes, the American census went beyond taxes. Rafael explains an elaborate scheme to assign developmental characteristics to census categories. Skin color became a socioeconomic classification with numeric values, while posing the possibility of homogenizing it through colonization.
“Skin-whitening cosmetic commercials and advertisements contribute in perpetuating Filipino cultural identity crisis.”
The Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes
Organized by David Barrows, an anthropologist (who later will become a UC Berkeley president), the Bureau attempted to gather ethnographic data from “tribes” throughout the Philippines, distinguishing them from the general population who have been Christianized, hence Hispanicized. As the census established "color” as a category, the diversity of tribes was a treasure trove for ethnographers, especially those intent on showing “racial”progress, e.g., from savage to civilized.
Researcher Mary Jane Rodriquez, summarizes the Bureau’s success:
"After announcing the success of preliminary investigations, Barrows concluded that ‘we have tribes representing the whole scale of culture from savagery to civilization...
‘Civilized’ versus ‘primitive,’ ‘industrious,’ versus ‘lazy,’ ‘clean’ as against ‘filthy’– these were categories used in the annual reports of the Philippine Commission to differentiate Christians from non-Christians. These binary oppositions, including the images of non-Christians as ‘noble savages,’ ‘savage gentlemen,’ ‘headhunters,’ ‘primitive Philippine tribes.’ would eventually find their way into the anthropological literature of that era…”
William Henry Scott, an expert in Cordillera studies, had this to say:
“Thus, by the magic of the colonial alchemy, those who changed most became today's Filipinos, while those who changed least were actually denied this designation by a former president of the state university. In this way, a cultural minority was created where none had existed.”
In establishing the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, staffed by educated Filipinos, the “civilizing” mission of the American colonial policy created an enduring process of differentiation among Filipinos, leading to the marginalization of indigenous peoples. For instance, it took a hundred years before the Agta community could see one of its own graduate from the University of the Philippines
Education
An important tenet of the benevolent assimilation policy was the promotion of English as the official language of the Philippines. The Filipino middle class was more than proficient in Spanish. But a wider literacy campaign was launched to embed colonial policy into public consciousness and to address the problem of managing multiple language groups. A crash public education was instituted with hundreds of white American school teachers. Within a single generation, English replaced Spanish as the language of choice among the literate. American values were promoted, like Good Manners and Right Conduct. “Bahay Kubo” (My Little Hut) exhorted quaintness, not greatness; the song “Negritos of the mountain what food do you eat?” marked dark-skinned Filipinos as the Other. The spread of American popular culture, Hollywood movies and products like Coca Cola helped shift the Filipino outlook from Europe to the United States.
Meanwhile, social segregation persisted in exclusive clubs and residences of the colonial elite. It was not until 1930s that the Filipino mestizo elite gained entry to the American Polo Club or were able to take residence in the American summer capital, Baguio.
Neocolonialism: Desire, Belonging, Whiteness
Despite the inroads of Hollywood, native imagery persisted in art works. Paintings by Fernando Amorsolo and Botong Francisco extolled the native, often in rural scenes. This imagery continued the nationalistic vision that emerged from the Philippine revolution.
The valorization of whiteness however, had stronger promoters in the movie and advertising industries. Whiteness sold products, employed people. Rumors were that Coca Cola, San Miguel Brewery, and Philippine Airlines, companies owned by wealthy mestizos, only hired mestizo-looking prospects. Even the national dance company, the Bayanihan Dance Co., was criticized for having dancers that did not reflect national diversity.
It was not just whiteness that was valorized, but everything else associated with it was. The 19th century "promise of the foreign," postulates Vince Rafael, was actualized in modern times. Cultural critic Renato Constantino appropriately called it miseducation.
Cosmetic industries have tapped a deep popular desire to belong to the colonizing metropolis. Skin whitening products feed this desire, with the Philippines as a major market. Skin whitening advertising exploit the insecurities of employees who think they need a light complexion to have a competitive edge in the job market.
In her study on the effects of whitening advertising in the Philippines, Rose Natividad (2006) concludes that "skin-whitening cosmetic commercials and advertisements contribute in perpetuating Filipino cultural identity crisis… The association of whiteness with superiority continues to diminish Filipinos' sense of pride and to uphold social inequality in Philippine society, instead of struggling to liberate themselves from white domination".
In U.S. study by Goldsmith linking wages to whiteness, a correlation between skin tone and earning power has been highlighted. The images speaks for itself.
White
Light black
Medium black
Dark black
Racism has complex intersections with colonial history, economics, gender, and culture. Understanding the processes that engender racism is just the first step in overcoming it.
Answers to Questions from the Webinar
Are there any community organizations or online resources where millennials can go to enhance their knowledge on Ethnic/racial studies?
There is no central site to go to that is curated solely to focus on US-Filipino race studies that I know off-hand, in part because there are many interest groups each with their own affiliations. Google search will bring you to specific topics you want to learn about, especially books and blogs. As with anything on the web, you need to verify sources for accuracy.
For the Filipino experience in the US you may wish to start with FAHNS: http://fanhs-national.org/filam/
General history of Filipino immigration to US:
https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/filipinos-in-america/DEdY4bxrM5vKRej0 - Smithsonian resource site especially for educators
At City College of San Francisco Philippine Studies, I teach an online course on Philippine History and Society Thru Film. You can check the website for availability.
“Ethnic and racial sorting was an important tool for U.S. colonization.”
Is rankism the new racism in most workplaces now? It certainly cannot be extricated from racism. Filipinos here who are educated and cultured may still be discriminated against because of color perception.
Rankism to me is an expression of a power relationship between superior and inferior entities, and more specific. Racism is a cultural ideology with embedded legal and extralegal practices based on the idea that there is a superior race above others. Rankism may not spill over to racism but has the same power dynamic and may set the conditions of racism if normalized.
We can't play both sides. What a great statement for today. Thanks so much for this discussion. It's also good to recognize that most of the civil rights Filipinos enjoy in America today are granted to us because of the struggles of Black Americans, including birthright citizenship, the right to vote, and equal employment laws.
Glad to be help in raising awareness to these issues. Indeed the civil rights movement opened a lot of spaces for Filipinos that were closed off to Black American and other communities of color. Filipinos in the 1920's were treated no better than the Blacks when they migrated to work in US farms. Blacks have allied with Filipinos in many instances as early as 1899.
Growing up, my observation was there was always an emphasis on the lighter skinned, or “mestizo” Filipinos having a higher social standing. This is similar to other cultures with varying skin tones. How can we get past this bias and what are some recommendations on shifting this inclination?
In the Philippines, mestizo-ness connote a sense of privilege. This is the legacy of colonialism. Bad education and the 'promise of the foreign' that is perpetuated by advertising and amplified in social media is one colonial mentality hard to correct. Be a critical consumer – for example, do you really need that skin whitener? Being comfortable in one's skin is a step to decolonization. Calling out the dangers posed by cosmetic manufacturers is another step. School children must be reminded they are equal to everyone else.
Can we hear more about pre-colonial Philippines (i.e., BEFORE European contact), especially about indigenous ideas (if any) of skin color, race, nationality, etc.
Archeologists believed that the earliest inhabitants were present 500,000 years ago, earlier than the African data. The earliest mention about the islands came from Chinese reports around the 10th century. Arabs were also reported to have started Muslim communities in Sulu around this time. The islands were part of the triangle of spice commerce known as Melaka, Melayu, Manila. Manila was apparently 'prosperous' enough to attract Legaspi, the first Spanish settler in 1571. Gold and boats discovered in Butuan indicated that a vibrant community existed before Magellan came. It’s quite likely that there were intermarriages between island communities. The residents shared a common linguistic base called Austronesian which was widespread in Southeast Asia and nearby Oceanic islands. Magellan's translator Enrique, a slave he bought in Mallaca was able to communicate with the Visayans in 1521. The earliest pictorial description of the inhabitants from these island was published in a ca.1590 book called Boxer Codex.
How about the Muslims and locals who were not part of the Spanish colonization, where do they belong?
The Muslim or Moro is the irony in Philippine history. They never surrendered to the Spanish, but the government gave them the least attention since the Philippines became independent. US colonial rule treated the Moro as a separate entity thus contributing further to their differentiation from a majority Catholic society. This neglect has fostered separatist movements and calls for an independent Muslim province. Culturally, the Moros are part of the Southeast Asian arc of Islam culture ranging from Borneo, Indonesia, to Malaysia. Their rulers (sultan) claim genealogy with Arab Muslim prophets. Modern Moros are well assimilated into Filipino society and many hold important positions in government and private organizations.
What percent of the Philippine population is mestizo? What percent of the wealth do they own?
Hard to tell. First there are the Spanish-mestizos who own big parcels of real estate like Makati; then there are the Chinese mestizos like the Cojuangcos who own large plantations; then the Chinese mestizos who own hotel chains, department stores; then there are the Spanish-Chinese-Mestizos who own food and brewery businesses, publishing, transportation. Wealth is often shared or passed on by marriage between these groupings. It would be no exaggeration [to say that] if they move their wealth outside of the country, the economy would probably collapse.
Any significance in the fact that much of the leadership of the revolution was comprised of mestizos (the Luna brothers, Aguinaldo, etc.)?
As the wealthy middle class in a native society, they were among the first to be educated in colleges and have exposure in modern history and ideas of revolution.
Among Muslims, the “fair woman” is not the mestiza-Spanish or mestiza-Chinese but the woman from the Middle East. The Tausogs and Maguindanaos call them “Arabo.” Back home there is also the distinction between Chinese and Spanish mestizos. Being Chinese mestizo is more generally accepted while being Spanish-mestizo (Kastilaloy in slang) has an element of class and elitism on this.
The colonial Spanish did not widely intermarry with native Indios unlike in Mexico. The Chinese in 1600-1800 Philippines was the largest non-native population. Upon christianization (being 'heathens' before), intermarriage became possible. Some married well into native families with land. Others built trading businesses. Chinese mestizo wealth made Pampanga, Bulacan, and the Ilokos prosperous.
How about the brutal colonization and genocide against Native Americans - how did this contribute to the setting up of the US system of racism? Also how was treatment of Native Americans used in the violent US colonization of the Philippines?
US generals who fought and later became colonial administrators were veterans of the Indian War. Together with the Black Americans, the Native Americans were always a point of reference on how to treat the Filipinos. Counter insurgency tactics like population control were similar; "reservation" was replicated in the Philippines as "reconcentration" (concentration).
Click here to watch “Racism and the Filipino American: Pigments of History”
Dr. Mike Gonzalez
Dr. Michael Gonzalez has degrees in History, Anthropology, and Education. A professor at City College San Francisco, he teaches a popular course on Philippine History Thru Film. He also directs the NVM Gonzalez Writers' Workshop in California. http://nvmgonzalez.org/writersworkshop/index.html
More articles from Michael Gonzalez