What Columbus Had Wrought
Document Title: What Columbus Had Wrought
Document Ref No: R9301041
First Published: Reflections - Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 4th January 1993
Author's Name: Father Shay Cullen SSC
Christopher Columbus and those who came after him are said to have "discovered" much of the "New World".
What critics say in fact is that they discovered nothing. They just took for themselves what native people already had and justified much of the slaughter, mayhem and conquest by claiming that the inhabitants were sub-human, racially inferior or even non-human.
Whatever the verdict of history, a dominating colonial legacy has left its strange and unpleasant imprint on the Philippines.
The Filipino people are gentle, kind and hospitable. That openness and hospitality to the stranger, if manipulated and exploited can be used to enslave and make a nation that is today culturally diverse, politically fractionalized, and racially confused and easily controlled.
Is it an accident of history that Filipinos have come to feel inferior and be unjustly looked-down upon by others? Or is it a calculated policy crafted by the colonial powers in order to tame the fiery Filipino and produce a docile and accommodating population who will agree with policies that are manifestly against their own self-interest?
How else can we explain American flags plastered on Filipino buses and flying from Filipino cars and houses! In America such displays would be considered treasonous but here it is seen as loyalty and admiration of everything American!
Why is this so? Lets look at present society for clues .
"Weep and grind your teeth all ye who are not of fair complexion and Caucasian features. Pity thyself if ye are sun-burnt and of lowly peasant looks, because thou are far from the ideal Filipino male. "
That could well be the epithet chiseled on the tomb of Filipino dignity and national identity. If we believe the image spinners those advertising agents and movie moguls that foster on the public the racist notion that the ideal Filipino male has to look like film actor Richard Gomez. An article and bare chested photograph featuring the film actor in the Inquirer last 18 April 92 stated : " GOMEZ : He has become the symbol of the ideal Filipino."
Richard Gomez is an excellent actor and surely a good person of ideals and values. But he is not principally portrayed and packaged by the image makers for his inner convictions but more for his physique and out-ward looks, which happen to be more Caucasian than Filipino.
I question the racial bias of the spin artists who create and foster on the impressionable their subjective view of what is the ideal, the good and the beautiful. Beauty it is said is in the eye of the beholder but the confidence tricksters have convinced many that their colonial image of beauty is the ideal one by which all others should be judged.
The message conveyed is if you are not like this you are inferior. It can make people look down on themselves, have low self-esteem, have feelings of racial inferiority and react by craving acceptance by idolizing the foreigner, especially the wealthy blue-eyed Gods of plenty.
Did you ever feel embarrassed in company when some people give fawning deference to non-Filipinos? A racial bias shows.
Richard Gomez or any other actor of semi-Caucasian or mestizo features is not responsible for, nor is he or she a part of anything that smacks of racism. They just happen to be part of a society that seems to value and promote mestizo looks with Caucasian features more than Filipino features. Its a wide-spread phenomena.
I was going through an educational supply store recently and looked at the note-books on sale to students. Most portrayed the faces of some "Idol" actor or singer, most with mestizo looks. I noticed Alaska milk uses a blond Caucasian child to advertise its milk, Mead Johnson does the same.
Michael Jackson a North American black pop star is said to have had plastic surgery to change the shape of his nose from short and wide to long and narrow. Is there something to be ashamed of by having non-Caucasian features ? Apparently Jackson thinks so.
The image makers by promoting one particular set of racial features are thereby discriminating against another. They are in fact saying that a Filipino without Caucasian features is less than ideal and by inference is inferior and therefore a less worthy member of the human race.
This has enormous consequences because throughout history conquerors have justified their conquests, massacres and domination of others by claiming the vanquished were inferior human beings, less than human. This was the legacy of the Columbus conquests, the Spanish empire and American colonial period, the influence of which is still with us today.
But what is more devilish, clever and insidious than to convince the indigenous population that they are racially inferior by nature and that the master is racially superior and to be thanked for "bestowing civilization" on them.
This could explain the weakness of Philippine national identity, the over-Westernized society and the pursuit of sovereignty. The grovelling ease with which some Philippine leaders give into the demands and pressures of foreign powers when it is clearly not in the Philippine national interest is perhaps the most powerful evidence that we have a colonial conspiracy that worked.
Some television and print advertisements promote the same racial bias, magazine advertisements have an extraordinary number of advertisements that try to promote a mestizo look as the ideal. Alaska milk shows a blond blue-eyed baby on its cans. Why not a healthy Filipino baby?
Could the subliminal message behind this advertising strategy be something like this - if the product is good enough for a Caucasian baby how much more beneficial is it to a Filipino baby? The inference is that the blond baby is somehow superior and more important. Mead Johnson sells its baby milk powder with a similar slant.
The evidence shows that Philippines Airlines selects its stewards and stewardesses with predominantly mestizo features presumedly on the same premise.
Why should any particular set of features, skin-color or a particular racial background be singled out to be the standard of the ideal-Filipino. Does not this discriminating and unjust attitude put looks above ideals, out-ward show before inward convictions ?
But the colonial mentality which is a sad legacy of history has tended to inexplicably implant a tendency in some Filipinos to worship, admire and covet foreign products and foreign people to the detriment of their own indigenous traditional abilities self-interest and dignity. Through some quirk of history, cultural aberration or cleverly nurtured propaganda the colonial conqueror came to be cherished and slavishly admired by many rather than criticized and questioned for their plunder and imperialism.
Perhaps the Foreigner was so arrogantly superior and self-imposing wealth and arms to the vanquished Filipino that the Filipino had no option but to accept it as indisputable reality.
It is short step from military and economic superiority to fostering racial superiority. END
