Grappling With ‘Colonial Mentality’

For the first time in perhaps 40 years I was an active participant in a conversation about ‘colonial mentality’. The occasion was an early dinner meeting with former high school classmates of the graduating class of 1960. It was a pleasant enough rendezvous, savoring Filipino cuisine in a Santa Clara, California restaurant. I cannot exactly recall how the conversation drifted into the issue of ‘colonial mentality’, but it did.

Are we the possessors of a ‘colonial mentality’? Do we harbor deep seated, albeit unconscious, admiration for our colonizers, first the Spaniards and then the Americans, and therefore speak and act with a pronounced bias for their values and ways?

I remember that in the course of my abbreviated college tenure, the early 1960’s, there was a stigma, among the young, that was associated with the perceived harboring of a ‘colonial mentality’. It was a phrase we liberally used to describe what we considered the ‘antiquated’ thinking of our elders, who, as survivors of WWII had a great affinity for Americans.

At this dinner in Santa Clara I was asked directly whether we should, as immigrants to the US, consider ourselves as possessors of a ‘colonial mentality’.
Well, on the one level, I made a conscious effort to immigrate, and, upon completion of my naturalization process I swore allegiance to the American flag and renounced allegiance to any other country. I took, and continue to take, my naturalization vows quite seriously, as I’m sure millions of immigrants likewise do.

I also was impressed by the words of the judge administering the oath who, in his post-ceremony remarks urged us to be “good Americans”. Be good neighbors, he said. “Value liberty and be prepared to protect it in every way you can. Pay your taxes diligently. Obey our laws. Honor our traditions. Love and support your new country. Bring the best from your past and your cultures to your new land and enhance this mosaic that is America”. And those words resonated with me and helped drive my transformation.

So back to the question that my colleague at dinner asked, do I then harbor a ‘colonial mentality’? Well, not only did I adopt the ways of our erstwhile colonizers, I actually moved over to join them and be one of them. Did I possess a ‘colonial mentality’ when I was still in the Philippines and is this what propelled me to come over and join the ‘enemy’, so to speak?
I, like many from my generation, and that of my parents, had an affinity for things American. We wore jeans, we smoked Marlboros, most of my English major friends all wanted to be the 2nd coming of Ernest Hemingway and we of course expressed ourselves in American English. We danced to American music and most of our singers were copycats of whichever singer was in vogue. Frank Sinatra had a huge Filipino male following among the elder generation( my late father included) hence a Filipino party usually featured someone belting out “My Way”). The younger generations swayed to Elvis Presley’s hips. And, needless to say, we were, many of us, brainwashed by our parents who had great affinity for America because many of them were educated by Americans during that period between the two world wars. And Americans were considered more down to earth, friendlier, in comparison to our previous colonizers, the Spaniards.

( The famed Philippine author Nick Joaquin wrote a novel titled “ A Woman with Two Navels” a metaphorical allusion to the indelible scars – in the form of navels- the result of the Philippines’ seeming umbilical attachment to two colonizing cultures, Spain and America.)

I remember in the 1969 presidential election, Serging Osmena Jr., responding to remarks that he was “America’s boy”, dared his opponents to publicly make that statement, understanding that a majority of Filipinos at that time, if they were asked to vote, would support outright statehood. It also brought to mind that famous quote attributed to Manuel L. Quezon in the 1930’s ,who, discussing options for the Philippines including statehood, supposedly averred that, “I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos, than one run like heaven by Americans.”

Well, judging from the tenures of the Marcoses, the Estradas and the Macapagal-Arroyos, and the “hell” they have left in their tracks, I doubt if Quezon would feel the same way.

Speaking for myself economics was a factor for emigrating, for sure. But probably more than that it was opportunity that was the main consideration. As in, if I stayed back home my opportunities were very limited, whereas if I emigrated my vista of opportunities widened. And I am sure the millions of Filipinos who are now US citizens share this sentiment.

Yet it is really more than that. Our exposure to America was not limited to Marlboros, movies and Hemingway. We were also exposed to the ideas of freedom, equality and fair play.( Ideals that may have been direly tested many a time as I’m sure many of us have, from time to time at least, perhaps felt the painful sting of racial discrimination and unfair treatment).

America is replete with examples of immigrants making good in many fields of endeavor or commercial enterprise. In America we have a chance at achieving our many dreams, opportunities which, in our country of origin, may have been limited to a few. The fact that 8 million Filipinos (and counting) have taken contractual overseas employment even as maids, underscores the drought of opportunities in the Philippines.

So to the charge of ‘colonial mentality’? Perhaps viewed from the prism of the 1960’s when a revived sense of nationalism was sweeping the Philippine youth movement, sure, at that time I too despised ‘colonial mentality’. But by the time I left in 1972 I had a different mindset. And today my honest response is that it is an irrelevant question. While I love my adopted country I have not in any way diminished my love for the Philippines. There is a book authored by Carlos Bulosan, an immigrant in the 1930’s titled “America is in the Heart”. That statement, in a sense, perhaps helps explain the lure of America. Not only Filipinos, but millions of people around the world continue to look at America as an ideal, and what it stands for is engraved in many hearts. Sure, America has problems but it is a country and a situation very few would trade for anything else regardless their 'mentality'