Hello everyone! Welcome to IN THE WHITE. Hope you all are doing well and enjoying the current festive season. The following write-up is an essay I wrote sometime ago for one of my Politics unit. Hope you find it interesting and informative.

The Begining

Whenever the agenda of colonialism is discussed, the topic of race is often followed. It is like the two go hand in hand. In most colonized countries the race card was commonly used by the colonizers to rule its colonies. This was no exception in the case of the Philippines when the United States took power in 1898. This essay looks at “Race” as a key element to understand the United States’ decision to colonize and the brutal treatment in the Philippines between 1898 and 1920.

Before contextualizing the concept of race and concluding the American choice of colonizing the Philippines. First, it is important to note how race was perceived in the context of the Filipinos. The Americans had two different perspectives of the natives of the Philippines. One group consisting of military soldiers, who had been on the island since its occupation labeled the Filipinos as “nigggers”.[1] The term was commonly used to distinguish class between the Filipinos and the Americans, hence, indicating white superiority. The other view was of an imperial mind, where Albert Beveridge read a speech before the senate in 1900, where he labeled the Filipinos as a “Barbarous race”[2], referring to the three centuries of contact with the Spanish. Beveridge claimed that as a result of their biological constitution, “Filipinos were incapable of governing themselves.”[3] He described the Filipinos as “Orientals and Malaya’s,” although they differed biologically, blood and stock.[4]

To begin with, the Philippine- American war is a major event in understanding the U.S. decision to colonize the Philippines, particularly in the context of race. The battle which is referred to as the “race war”[5] was fought between 1899 to 1902. While addressing a large crowd on Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt classified his country’s soldiers brutal acts in the Philippines as a “race war.” Although aware of the atrocities done by the U.S. soldiers, Roosevelt justified the actions by saying “for every American atrocity, a very cruel and treacherous enemy had done a hundred acts of far greater atrocities.”[6] Like Roosevelt, Stuart Creighton Miller in his writing puts “racism at the core of the U.S. troops conduct.”[7]  

Racial ideologies and changes in strategy moved side- by side in a dark, violent spiral. Political culture and patterns of warfare gave the Philippines its racial status from the Europeans and Americans. The U.S. natives disliked the way the Filipinos fought the war and classified them as “civilized” and the others “savage.” The civilized were the ones who understood the conventional war, while those who did not were tagged as guerrillas. Given the nature of the fight, the American soldiers saw the Filipinos as savage[8].

The war at Manila Bay marked the start of a crucial six months for both the Philippines and the United States, as the two sides faced off for the first time, unaware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The first inaugural encounter between the Filipinos and the Americans was over “food, liquor, transport, and sex”[9]. Constant pressure forced the U.S. to capture Manila and its municipal government, which did not go well with the Filipinos who tried to avoid defeat. At this stage, “colluding interests, mutual suspiciousness and questions over laws easily sparked conflicts”[10] where drunk American soldiers labeled Filipinos as “filthy, diseased, lazy and sometimes described them as niggers”[11].  One black solder recalled the war and said, “The confrontation had not have initially taken place if the Americans had treated us like humans.”[12] It is unfortunate to learn that the American media and its citizens saw the Spanish empire as a threat and deemed its destruction as necessary to establish their own[13]. The Americans viewed themselves as heroes of civilization and peace on the island.     

The “1898 Treaty of Paris”[14]  is a significant document in the Philippines-American conflict as it transferred the country’s governing powers from Spain to the United States for a sum of twenty million dollars, which saw the U.S. expand its powers and desires. The United State political agenda, literature, and scientific racism promoted westernization and living standards. According to the U.S. government, the Filipinos were not to run the affairs of their island nation due to a lack of guidance “on a more civilized western culture.”[15]   

It comes as no surprise, that class, social status, and hierarchy played a strong role in this game of race. According to the organized structure, Anglo-Saxons were put at the very top and people of color were placed at the bottom. The colonizers believed that they had a duty to civilize the lowest-ranked colored population using “culture, religion and political values”[16] of the foreign powers.

Further to this discrimination, it is interesting to learn how a few educated Americans viewed Filipinos. One of America’s prominent experts on the Philippines noted a typical understanding of white superiority. C. Worcester, the man who carried out research work on the Philippines described the Filipinos as having a childlike nature, possessing deceitful traits and dishonesty. Worcester claims that there are more than eighty ethnic groups in the Philippines that were put into three different categories, namely “Malayans, Indonesians and wooly headed, black, savage dwarf and Negritos,” who were later excluded from the human count at once.[17]  

Talking about American contact with the Filipinos after 1898, there was very little change to the perceptions of the Americans regarding the islanders. They continued to view the Filipinos as “lazy and having childish behavior.”[18] The U.S. Army General, Robert Hughes once said in a congress meeting that the Filipino’s only worry was “to attend cock fights, gamble and whet their bolos.”[19] The Americans were quick to make comparisons between the Filipinos and other non-whites, sometimes comparing them to American Indians. Another example of this comparison is reflected in the U.S. Army General, Charles King’s comments, where he describes the Filipinos as “utterly without conscience and full of treachery as the people of Arizona.

The term “nigger”[20] was again emphasized on by Mark D, van Ells, in his article called “Assuming the White Man’s Burden: The Seizure of the Philippines, 1898-1902”, where he also mentions of a new word “gugu” or goo-goo” invented by the Americans as a hate vocabulary for the Filipinos. Filipino women were not spared of this dirty game of racism either, as a Filipino women were labeled as “squaw”[21] by the whites.

As far as the Filipino culture is concerned, the Americans refused to accept that the Filipino culture once existed. This, after Filipino elites were seen as “Glib” and able to run off phrases”[22], from what they had learnt in Spanish developed universities, but had hardships understanding difficult concepts. The catholic and protestant dispute also impacted the Philippines as as the Americans disliked the blending of the two cultures with the Filipino traditions.

To further stress on the point that there is “nothing such as Filipino culture”[23], Worcester claimed that the islanders were not fit for self-governance as a result of being derived racial segregation. He argued that the Philippines was not a nation, but made up of several tribes and its population’s loyalty are to their tribes[24]. However, when the statement was revisited many years later by Dr. Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, he found the idea of race and racial origin was primitive along with its ideological views superseding its contribution scientific veracity.     

Moreover, the ordinary American population viewed the Filipinos as models in a parade. The featuring of Filipinos in “various ethnological exhibitions throughout the United States and around the world”[25], could easily make one believe that the Filipinos were treated as objects of entertainment. The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition is a good example of this modeling, whereby the Philippine’s “mestizo class, the clever Visayans, the “strong followers of Mohammed and monkey-like” Negrito population”[26] were showcased in the event.   

Additionally, Philippines labor industry also felt the brunt of the ongoing racial marathon in the country. There were several labor programs introduced under the American regime to increase export market, as well as showcase its economic and military might. The issue of “education and race management”[27] was a major challenge for colonizers, therefore, they set up industrialized schools, a concept derived from the European and American continents. To tackle the problem of race management, stricter laws such as “imprisonment”[28] was put in place. Fascinatingly, Muslims in the Southern part of the Philippines were chosen to spread the developments made by the United States Empire, throughout the country. It is without a doubt that the elites benefited marvelously from this racial division. 

Lastly, the sports arena was not safe either, filled with racist remarks as Dean Worcester, in a 1914 publication claimed that prior to the arrival of the Americans the Filipinos did not know how to play and had no name worthy athletes. He states that it was the Americans who taught the Filipinos to play baseball and boxing, in order to strengthen their muscles and wrist. Another reason to encourage baseball was that, it was the United States official sport, and the fact that the Philippines was now a U.S. territory. The American led “Manila Times” went on to declare “baseball more than just a game but rather a method of influence or power for good.”[29] The impact of the sport was so strong that Filipino children began trying out the game long before the American teachers in 1901, and the inclusion of girls in the sport commenced in 1903[30]. This is somewhat a clear indication of the media and baseball being used as tools to transform Philippines into another United States[31].   

The Conclusion

To conclude, the Philippines became an American colony in 1898 when the Spanish ceded the island for a price of twenty million dollars and the Treaty of Paris. In an effort to refuse American rule, the Philippine-American war broke out, which is often referred to as “Race War” by American scholars and leaders. Dean C. Worcester, a prominent researcher on the Philippines, among other writers claim that the Philippines were not fit to govern themselves. The west argued that the Filipinos lacked the expertise of self-governance and needed to be westernized. It is sad to note, how the Americans saw the native Filipinos as filthy, lazy niggers. The bitter level was so high that new words such as “gugu” or “goo-goo was invented. To impose their governance, the whites questioned the existence of Filipino culture and origin. Apart from dictating the Philippine’s social, economic, political and industrial sectors, the U.S. also influenced the country’s sports arena by introducing the game of baseball and boxing to the Filipinos. Baseball in particular was highly rated as it was the official national sport of the Americans. Prior to the introduction of sports, the Americans perceived that the Filipinos did not have any idea of games or sporting activities. Finally, the events that took place in the Philippines under the colonial leadership of the United States suggest, that racism was used as a driving force to assert the powers of the U.S. around the world.  

Thank you for reading.

 

Bibliography

Ablett, Phillip. 3024. Colonialism in Denial: US Propaganda in the Philippine-American War. ResearchGate , July. Accessed June 9, 2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260125750 .

Blanco, John D. 2011. “Race as Praxis in the Philippines at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Southeast Asian Studies (Online) 49 (3). Accessed June 5, 2022. https://kyoto-seas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/490302.pdf.

Cadusale, M. Carmella. 2016. Allegiance and Identity: Race and Ethnicity in the Era of the Philippine-American War, 1898-1914. Youngtown State University , August. Accessed June 5, 2022. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=ysu1472243324&disposition=inline.

Charbonneau, Oliver. 2022. Colonizing Workers: Labor, Race, and U.S. Military Governance in the Southern Philippines. Online, Cambridge University Press, March 29. Accessed June 20, 2022. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2021.4 .

Ells, Mark D. Van. 1995. “Assuming the White Man’s Burden: The Seizure of the Philippines, 1898-1902.” Ateneo ( Ateneo de Manila University ) 43 (4). Accessed June 5, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42634171.

Gems, Gerald R. 2014. “The Athletic Crusade: Sport and Colonialism in the Philippines.” International Journal of History of Sport (Online) 1-4. Accessed JUNE 9, 2022. doi:10.1080/09523360412331305983.

Go, Julian. 2004. ““Racism” and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America’s Pacific Empire.” Article in Qualitative Sociology (University of Chicago) 35-58. Accessed June 9, 2022. doi:10.1023/B:QUAS.0000015543.66075.b4.

Kramer, Paul A. 2006. “Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire: The Philippine-American War as Race War.” Oxford Journals (Oxford University Press) 30 (2): 169-210. Accessed June 5, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24915090.