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The Psychological Study of Colonial Mentality Among Filipino Americans The classical colonial model describes four phases of colonization (Fanon, 1965), with the first phase involving the forced entry of a foreign group into a geographic territory with the intention of exploiting the native people’s natural resources. The second phase involves the establishment of a colonial society that is characterized by cultural imposition, cultural disintegration, and cultural recreation of the native’s indigenous culture, all of which are intended to further create a contrast between the superior colonizer and the inferior colonized. In the third phase, once the colonial society has established a clear distinction between the colonizer and the colonized, the colonized are portrayed as wild, savage peoples that the colonizer have to police and tame, in essence putting oppression and domination into practice. All of these colonial phases eventually lead to the final phase that involves the establishment of a race-based societal system in which the political, social, and economic institutions in the colony are designed to benefit the colonizer and continually subjugate the colonized. Postcolonial studies, which Sagar (1996; quoted in Bhatia & Ram, 2001) described as the study of “all the effects of European colonization in the majority of the cultures in the world” (p. 423), have examined the legacy of colonialism, largely from humanistic disciplinary traditions. In considering the psychological consequences of colonialism, scholars have recognized a condition of internalized oppression is common to many colonized or formerly colonized individuals. Based on his work with colonized people in Algeria, psychiatrist Fanon (1965) argued that colonialism’s systematic denigration of the colonized person and the continuous denial of the colonized person’s humanity often leads to self-doubt, identity confusion, or feelings of inferiority among the colonized. Memmi (1965), based on his observations of French colonized Tunisia and Algeria, echoed Fanon’s arguments but also added that the colonized individual may eventually come to believe an identity that is consistent with the colonizers’ stereotyped perceptions of the colonized. Freire (1970) further contended that because of the inferior connotations attached to their cultural and ethnic characteristics, the colonized might develop an intense desire to distance himself/herself from such mythical, stereotypical, and inferior identities and try to become as much like the colonizer as possible. Within ethnic minority psychology in the U.S., the impact of slavery and other racial oppression for African Americans and of historical trauma such as displacement and genocide for American Indians are analogous to the effects of colonialism. Although there is no forceful entry or an overt control by a foreign group, internal colonialism mirrors classical colonialism with respect to social inequities based on racism, cultural imposition of the dominant group on the minority groups, and cultural disintegration and recreation of the oppressed groups. In his analysis of the psychological impact of racism on American Blacks, Harrell (1999) invokes the term Manichean, which the French psychiatrist and activist Fanon used to describe the world of the colonized. This term originates from the philosopher Manicheaus in the third century A.D. Philosophically, the Manichean world order consisted of irreconcilable opposites such as good versus evil, light versus darkness, white versus black. Harrell argued that the Manichean analogy is suited to describing the psychological experiences that racial oppression generates, as the Manichean order permeates semantics (where words connoting blackness and darkness are ascribed negative characteristics), aesthetics (especially with reference to African physical characteristics deemed undesirable), and history and culture (where historical and cultural memory of the oppressed are reinterpreted, diminished, or destroyed). In turn, Harell argues that the Manichean social order creates conditions that encourage African people to behave in a self-destructive manner. Similarly, the colonial theory was proposed as a viable explanatory model for the high rates of crime and delinquency among African Americans (Tatum, 1994), where one can view crime and delinquency as the behavioral responses to a society that perpetuates and maintains an environment in which there are limited opportunities for social mobility because of one’s race. In American Indian psychology, McBride (2002) argued that the legacy of historical oppression, such as the boarding school era and geographic displacement, leads to loss of identity, spirituality, and culture. She further asserted that the oppression of American Indians, both historically and contemporarily, contributes to cultural isolation, vocational stresses, and stress-related dysfunctional behaviors such as substance abuse and domestic violence. Duran and Duran (1995) and Brave Heart (1998) have also reported that perceptions of cultural or ethnic inferiority may be further promoted by continued oppression, lack of opportunities to critically understand such histories, forced assimilation, and familial socialization. These authors also suggest that such a history of oppression and its internalization may contribute to the high rates of suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence among Native Americans. Among Hispanic Americans (e.g., Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, etc.), the implicit effect of skin color on determining important life factors such as employment, income, and self-concept that exists in American society has been argued to be especially problematic for this ethnic minority group – a group that is “characterized by a rainbow of skin colors and diverse physical attributes” (Hall, 1994, p. 307). Hall argued that colonization and its accompanying “domination model of assimilation” (pp. 309-310) leads many Hispanic Americans to believe that light skin is the most advantageous, attractive, and desirable skin color. The internalization of such a skin-color ideal that is perpetuated in American society consequently results into a perceived necessity to become as white as possible in order for social mobility. This desire to shed one’s natural, but societally undesired, physical traits has been argued to lead many Hispanic Americans to use “beauty” creams and other products such as bleach in order to whiten their skin, a phenomenon known as the “bleaching syndrome” (Hall, 1994). Indeed, according to Hall, many Hispanic Americans “will value and internalize all aspects of the mainstream culture – including the idealizations of light skin color – at the expense of their culture” (p. 310). Empirically, using a Mexican American sample, Codina and Montalvo (1994) found that darker skin color and loss of Spanish culture (i.e., language) was associated with higher levels of depression. A specific Hispanic American ethnic group that has received some psychological research attention in terms of their experiences of internalized colonialism is the Puerto Rican population. Strikingly comparable to the colonial experiences of Filipinos, Puerto Ricans were also colonized by Spain in 1493 and were sold to the U.S. during the same Treaty of Paris in 1898. Puerto Rico remains an American territory and Puerto Ricans continue to be regarded as U.S. nationals to this day. The effects of centuries of Spanish and American colonialism on the psychological experiences of modern day Puerto Ricans are remarkably similar to David and Okazaki’s (2006a; 2006b) description of the psychological consequences of Spanish and American colonialism among Filipino Americans. For instance, Varas-Diaz and Serrano-Garcia (2003) found that it is common for Puerto Ricans to experience identity confusion, feel ashamed of their ethnic and cultural identity, feel inferior about being Puerto Rican, and not have national pride. Furthermore, these researchers also reported that Puerto Ricans despise the stereotypical and mythical perceptions often imposed on them by mainland Americans, including Puerto Ricans in the mainland U.S. Finally, they also found that negative emotions such as shame, anger, desperation, and disillusion were associated with what the researchers called “the Puerto Rican experience” (p. 112). However, little attention has been paid to the colonial and post-colonial psychological experiences of various Asian groups despite the fact that many Asian American immigrants come from Asian nations with recent history of colonization. India was colonized by Great Britain, as was Southeast Asia (“Indochina”) by France and the Netherlands in the 20th century. Japan was a colonizing presence in Korea, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. The legacies of Japan’s colonization have received media and scholarly attention, with the most dramatic example being the plight of former Korean “comfort women” who were conscripted as sexual slaves to the members of the Japanese military in the 1930’s and 1940’s (Min, 2003). Within Asian American psychology, Nagata’s (1990) work on the inter-generational consequences of systematic governmental oppression in the form of World War II internment of Japanese Americans is a rare exception to the dearth of literature on internalized oppression among the Asian American population. An understanding of the psychological legacy of colonial oppression among Asian populations necessarily involves a brief discussion of postcolonial theories surrounding the complex interaction between the West and the East. Most influential of these analyses is the literary critic Edward Said’s (1979) book Orientalism, which analyzed the ways that European colonialism created and maintained the image of the Orient (or non-Western “Others”) as inferior, primitive, exotic, and uncivilized. Within psychology, there has been a limited discussion of the ways in which psychology and related disciplines have continued to maintain Orientalist images of Asia and Asians (Bhatia, 2002). Indigenous psychology movements in China, the Philippines, and India arose in response to the perceived connections between colonialism and Western psychology (e.g., Enriquez, 1993; Sinha, 1997; Yang, 2000). Suggested Readings: David, E.J.R. & Okazaki, S. (2006a). Colonial Mentality: A review and recommendation for Filipino American psychology. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 12(1), 1-16. David, E.J.R., & Okazaki, S. (2006b). The Colonial Mentality Scale (CMS) for Filipino Americans: Scale construction and psychological implications. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53 (2), 241-252. |
