We Ain't All That - Savannah's 2nd Blog

We Ain’t All That – Blog Week 2

As a social work major, many of the classes I have taken in college have highlighted the way in which society is responsible for the way people with various identities are social constructed. I am trying to wrap my head around what it means for Pilipino people to be Pilipino and how that identity has been constructed by society. So far I have noticed a subtle desire for Pilipino people to become more “American.” Skin whitening products line the shelves of drug stores, there are hair salons dedicated, solely, to straightening hair, and the bombardment of images that crowd the streets of Manila advertise white or pale skinned models promoting American or Eurocentric products. The language played on the radio and on TV is English. When we were in Baguio, a local expressed his preference of speaking English over his own traditional language. I have been looking for Pilipino Pride stickers for some family and I have not been able to find any yet. In many ways, ironically, I see American representation here but lack a good grip on what Pilipino culture truly is.

I cannot speak on be half of any Pilipino identifying person, but it seems that there is a deep desire, for some, to distance oneself from being anything that is not seen as westernized. In the United States we have learned that this process is known as assimilation, unlike here in the Philippines, where, according to what Dr. Shaw said in lecture on Wednesday, the term assimilation is just beginning to be explored. I never realized before how prevalent assimilation to “American” culture can be for people in another country.

Our readings for class this week evoke a particular feeling of disgust I have for my own country and sadness for the people of the Philippines. I find myself asking why any person would want to embrace the culture of a country that is responsible for the slaughter, dehumanization, control, and deceiving nature of their people as depicted in the comic by Zinn (2008). The blanket has been pulled so tightly over everyone’s eyes, including people from the US, that people have forgotten what really happened in the Pilipino-American war and how the US colonized the Philippines (Twain, 2002).

Americans have manipulated the history of the Philippines to make themselves look better and to take away power from the Filipinos. “To image Filipinos warring with Americans simply contradicts the dominant tropes of the Philippine-American relationship… The Philippine-American relationship has been a special one, expressed in kinship terms like ‘compadre colonialism’ and ‘little brown brother.’ ‘Mother America’ is owed a lifelong inner debt, or untang na loob, to the Filipino people she nurtured” (Ileto, 1998, pp. 3). Terms such as little “brown brother” may seem enduring, but they are only cover-ups for a condescending and depowering name. Language like this has been used so much to describe the Pilipino- American relationship that it has become an internalized acceptance that compadre colonialism is what really took place. “In short, the generations of Filipinos who learned their Philippine history in American colonial schools did not see the war as the U.S. suppression of their cherished revolutionary and nationalist dreams. Instead it was more of a misguided, even stupid, rejection of a gift of further enlightenment” (Ileto, 1998, pp. 4). Zinn’s (2008) cartoon depicts a contradiction in American logic further, as is illustrates President McKinley claiming that Filipinos “were unfit for self-government” and “There was nothing left to do but to take over the islands and educate the Philipinos.” At the same time, the cartoon illustrates the Pilipino government and how, on the contrary to what McKinley said, it was functional and effective. The cartoon depicts Pilipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, saying “We have our own constitution, our own republic, and we’ve liberated ourselves from Spanish Tyranny” (Zinn, 2008, pp. 56). I am not sure what United States decision makers were responsible for painting this façade but their manipulation of the role the United States played in Pilipino colonialism has brainwashed people into believing what they want them to believe in order to control them.

The article by Mark Twain (2002) sarcastically and ironically depicts these phenomena. He highlights the American decision maker’s perspective in his conquest to advance his business, that is, further exploit the Philippine Islands for ways that will benefit the United States in a win/ lose situation. “But now-right now- is the best time to do some profitable rehabilitating work—work that will set us up and make us comfortable, discouraging gossip” (Twain, 2002, pp. 68). It highlights the desire by the United States to both exploit the Philippine and maintain a good image while doing it. This is where the mental control came in, the brain washing, the subtle acts of that illustrate dominance for Americans and inferiority for Filipino’s. “And as for the flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our states do it: we can have just our usual flag, with white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross bones” (Twain, 2002, pp. 68). It makes me begin to question why the Pilipino flag is red, white, and blue and who came up with that idea. It makes me question why Jose Rizal, a man who displayed westernized mentality and a desire to work with colonialist, is the Pilipino national hero. I am beginning to realize more and more that, even after their independence, Pilipino people are still being controlled. Perhaps the desire to be more westernized is not a personal desire but has been forcefully instilled to exist in their mentality, so discretely that they do not even realize it. We as Americans should realize that people in other countries want to “be like us,” not because we are somehow more advance, more appealing, or over all better than them, but that this notion has been taught and forced upon them, so much so that people have died to resist conforming to it. In the cross fire, many Pilipino people have lost what it really means to be Indigenous to the Philippine islands and what their culture was like before Spanish and American colonialism.

Discussion Question: What separate’s Pilipino people from identifying as indigenous or as solely Pilipino? Was this socially constructed and if so, where did this construction come from or develop out of?

Citations

Ileto, R.C. (1998). The Philippine-American War, Friendship and Forgetting. In Shaw, A.V. &

Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 3-21). New York: New York Press.

Twain, M. (2002). To the person sitting in darkness. In Shaw, A.V. &

Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 57-68). New York: New York Press.

Zinn, H. (2008). Invasion of the Philippines. In A people’s history of American empire. (pp.53-

72) NY: Metropolitan Books.