My regards to our former colonizers for making us racist to ourselves
White supremacy doesn’t criminalize us. They’re criminals for robbing us of our national identity.
Following the #BlackLivesMatter protests around the world, Filipinos expressed their unity — even relief that racism in the country is not as threatening as the West.
It made me laugh. A lot.
Racism in former colonies is too ingrained in our cultures to be recognized. And it has traversed through our political, social, economic, educational, and pop cultural institutions. Our own racism handcuffs us with insults, jokes, and disadvantages brought by white privilege.
I was told that my Filipino nose wasn’t gonna make me beautiful enough
I always hear the phrase, “Bagay sa’yo kasi maputi ka,” (“It looks good on you ’cause you’re white.”) on anything I wear. I was born with fair skin, as my family comes from of Portuguese descent. I grew up believing my fair skin was my biggest asset, and my flat nose was my worst flaw. I cannot count the number of times someone told me,“Maganda ka sana, kaso pango ka.” (“You could’ve been pretty, but your nose is flat.”) In time, I joined everyone in making jokes about my nose, only to realize later on how insulting I was of people with the same feature as mine. Many Filipinos have victimized themselves over their features, not knowing this is a by-product of white supremacy and colonization.
The Philippines was colonized by two Western powers, more than any other Southeast Asian country in the world. This 16th century-old practice has created a division between the superior race (the colonizer), and the inferior race (the colonized).
Racism is so ingrained in culture be recognized
For more than 300 years under the Spanish, it was the rich and half-foreign Filipinos that were privileged to get an education, and the lower class Filipinos worked for Spanish monopolies under oppressive working conditions — synonymous to the slave trade in the US.
American colonization in the 20th century extensively whitewashed Filipinos. Alongside the Native Americans and Africans, Filipinos were treated like exotic creatures in their infamous human zoos.
More about this inhumane experience below:
Filipinos were made to believe that Western colonization saved them from being uncivilized, when they only victimized themselves of colonial mentality and ethnocentrism.
Today, Education is still a luxury. No matter how illogical or stupid your remarks are, speaking in English will make you sound educated. “Spokening dollars” connotes that you are well-paid. Crookedly speaking the language is an embarrassment, and where Jo Koy finds creative inspiration.
Filipino entertainment has deep wounds of racism
Look at the highest-paid actors in the Philippines. Blessed with the most number of films & tv shows, endorsements and Instagram followers, notice that majority of them are mixed race or at least have Western features.
Non-Western features as a comedic trope
Actors with non-Western features don’t even have to say anything because their face is already the joke.
Filipinos’ Hollywood obsession normalized watching Caucasian features onscreen. Non-whites have then been misrepresented due to the dominance of actors with Western features. A Filipino film in 2013 featured a character named Snow White (that’s the joke) was notoriously depicted with the Blackface. She was frequently likened to smoke belching, pollution, ghosts, dirty canals, squid — all things known to be black. She was also characterized as the not-so-intelligent in the group, compared to her “smart” and gwapo (or good looking in English) brother, Ariel, named after a local detergent. This film garnered a Php 421 M (or $ 8.3 M) revenue, and was even nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Make Up awards. In a Filipino comedy show, a skit showed its actors sporting the Blackface to depict the Binays, a family of Filipino politicians. In her 2013 senatorial campaign, Nancy Binay faced a lot of discrimination for her skin color.
Blackness is poor & unhygenic: the skin whitening industry
The economy doesn’t seem to care because it madly benefits, anyway. Its skin whitening industry boasts a revenue of Php 85 M ($ 1.7 M) in 2020 alone.
Vox extensively talks about how a billion dollar industry is fed by colorism:
A racist beauty culture is synonymous to a racist marriage culture
Research from the University of California, Berkeley shows that Filipinos prefer fair skinned partners because of its association with wealth and beauty in general. Having lighter skinned offspring is also believed to relieve them from further discrimination. We can’t blame these people for settling into “practical advice”. Their ancestors and they themselves have suffered much oppression they do not wish on their future children.
“Stop making everything about you”
Before somebody raises that card, well.. it’s not really about us. It’s about a 600-year old ethnocentric myth on the basis of features inevitably developed by different geographic environments. Whether we’re Asian, African, Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, (and the list goes on) we will always be held to a higher standard set by a race with so much audacity. So if you think that #BlackLivesMatter is about an inhumane police force, think again:
