NAVIGATING

VISIONS

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Mendoza Camba, Maria. “Aping the Filipino Image: Probing the Conception of the Filipino Global Identity through Early American Print Culture,” Navigating Visions: Re:Locations Conference Proceedings 1, no. 1, 2020: 86-102

Organizers Symposium and Exhibition Co-Chairs:

Julia Lum (Scripps College) & Brittany Myburgh (University of Toronto)

Conference Proceedings Editors in Chief:

Brittany Myburgh (University of Toronto) & Aaron Throness (University of British Columbia)

Re:Locations Symposium and Journal Committee:

Natalie Cheung, Laura Facciolo, Anastasia Gordichyuk, Eunbi Lee, Sneha Mandhan, & Alexandre Paquet

Toronto, 2020

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

86

Aping the Filipino Image: Probing the Conception of the

Filipino Global Identity through

Early American Print Culture

Maria Mendoza Camba, University of Toronto

In an 1898 edition of the Minneapolis Tribune, an American cartoonist depicted then US president William McKinley grasping a Filipino child by the neck (Fig. 1). Portrayed in a grass skirt with the word ‘Philippines’ affixed to it, the savaged child looks up in horror as McKinley clenches him at the edge of a cliff marked “To Spain”. In the far-left corner, the world, personified in a European gentleman’s garb, looks on. The message of this image is clear. America is supreme and its defeat and acquisition of a personified Philippines shows this. One of the many images distributed through visual media platforms in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries, this kind of imagery played a substantial role in advancing colonial agendas. Using publication as an instrument of propaganda, America’s distribution of visual images that depicted its conquered nations has resulted in lasting stereotypes about its once-subjugated territories.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

87

Figure 1. Unknown author, “What will he do?”

Minneapolis Tribune, 1898.1

While imperialist projects of expansion may be a bygone notion, the consequences of early colonialism remain visible. Its impact permeates the recesses of present social structures and fundamentally shapes societal perspectives. The history of American imperialism in the Philippines reveals the penalties of this discourse. Seized by the United States in 1898, the archipelago became a recurring subject of American print culture, set on documenting and justifying its annexation. Primarily, editorial cartoons were the main instruments in disseminating images of Filipinos. Employing deceptive and sensational tropes, these caricatures were widely distributed in magazines and periodicals, providing the American public with debasing suppositions that characterized the Filipino individual. As a result, the Philippines and its populace gained false attributions spawned by their erroneous portrayal in American media. This mechanism was

1https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McKinleyPhilippinesCartoon.jpg

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

88

crucial in advancing the colonial agenda. At the height of colonization, sovereignties consolidated their power by stressing their supremacy over nations they conquered. They mechanized this endeavour by marginalizing their subjects, bestowing upon them labels that reinforced their supposed otherness, mediocrity, and trivialness. The complicity of colonizers in producing and perpetuating these stereotypes led to implicit bias.2 Homi Bhabha describes stereotypes as a form of knowledge and identification vacillating between “what is always ‘in place’, already known and something that needs to be anxiously repeated.”3 Thus, stereotypes remain an inescapable component in constructing identities, inevitably categorizing nations and societies based on fabricated assumptions, which colonizers sustained through centuries of imperialism. It is then useful to examine how stereotypes were constructed and what can be done to disrupt their universality.

This research argues that the deceptive depiction of the Philippines in Early American print culture has aided in constructing Filipino stereotypes of inferiority and servitude, consequently sustaining the nation in the margins. Examining the creation of the Filipino identity through early American periodicals fulfills this endeavour. This essay begins with an analysis of the exemplifications used by editorial cartoonists to illustrate the Filipino individual. Next, it reviews the kinds of strategies exploited by the American media that solidified the Filipino archetype in public perception. Finally, it examines the impact of the Filipino’s representation in the scheme of American imperialism.

Following the Spanish Empire’s defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded control of the Philippine Islands to the

2 Michael Brownstein, "Implicit Bias,” The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2017 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicit-bias/. Accessed November 15, 2019. Brownstein explains that implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. It exists in everyone and resides deep in our subconscious and these associations cause us to have feelings about others based on various characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age and appearance. 3 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 66.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

89

United States, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam for 20 million dollars.4 Under the Treaty of Paris, the Philippines, a nation under Spanish rule for over three hundred years, now faced a new invader. This procurement, however, was not without problems. Debates surrounded its colonial acquisition, dividing the American public’s opinion. While the proponents of imperialism justified the cause under the guise of “Benevolent Assimilation,”5 avowing that the Philippines was a nation unfit for self-governance, anti-imperialists feared the expansion and believed that like “Negroes”, “Asiatics” were intrinsically inferior to white people, and were thus incapable of adapting to the American way of life.6 Despite differences in attitudes, one harmonizing perspective stands: that the Filipino race was inferior to the Americans. This perspective informed the United States’ rationale for the war they waged in the archipelago. The Filipinos’ supposed inferiority justified America’s foreign rulership not as an unwelcome invasion but rather as an act of guardianship over the Filipino people.

This alleged ineffectualness of the Philippines steered Filipino representation in American publications. The media bridged the gap of information between the government and the public by providing an arena to showcase the developments of the unfolding conquest. Primarily, cartoons were forefront in presenting the urgencies of expansion as visual imageries. Bonnie Miller postulates that cartoonists held a critical role in condensing

4 Treaty of Peace (Treaty of Paris), December 10, 1898. Article. From the Library of Congress. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/b-es-ust000011-0615.pdf. 5 William McKinley, “Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation (1898)” in Asian America: A Primary Source Reader, edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Scott Wong, K and Jason Oliver Chang (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1998), 126. In 1898, US President William McKinley issued a proclamation in Washington D.C., declaring U.S. authority over the Philippine Islands. He declared that the American mission was one of benevolent assimilation and presented the U.S. military with the rightful administration over the Philippines. 6 Christopher Lasch, “The Anti-Imperialists, The Philippines and the Inequality of Man,” The Journal of Southern History 24, no. 3 (1958): 319. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954987.

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

90

information into “simple and concise visual statements.”7 The use of simple imagery, paired with humour, was vital and effective in communicating the missives that cartoons aimed to convey. She further asserts that cartoons carry “opinion-moulding” and “opinion-reflecting” abilities that employ familiar visual references to entice their readers and facilitate understanding.8 Thus, cartoonists became powerful agents of propagating allusions that advanced imperialism’s agenda. “The Filipino” in the Eyes of America In an 1899 cover by the satirical magazine Judge (fig. 2), McKinley is shown holding the brush of education, as he attempts to bathe a defiant Filipino child in the waters of civilization. Further behind are Cuba and Puerto Rico, exemplified as children who just had their own bath and are in the midst of clothing themselves in the American flag. Labelled The Filipino’s First Bath, the cover represented the United States as it began to impose its colonial rule over the archipelago. The child’s resistance aptly signified the Filipinos’ emotions during this moment. At the time that the publication was circulated, the United States and the First Philippine Republic had entered into armed conflict, with the archipelago fighting for its independence upon realizing that America sought to subjugate their nation after the Spanish-American war.9 The trappings of suppression are immediately present in this image. First, the exemplification of the Philippines as infantile paints an immature country that lacked the maturity to make its own choices. It maligned the capabilities of the nation, solidifying their alleged impotence. Second, juxtaposing the youth with a dignified adult highlighted the necessity of ‘adult’ supervision over the ‘unruly child’. Bonnie Miller states that the appropriation of the child as a “western colonial icon” used to

7 Bonnie Miller, “The Image-Makers’ Arsenal in an age of War and Empire, 1898-1899: A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of the Minneapolis Journal) and Albert Wilbur Steele (of the Denver Post),” The Journal of American Studies 45 (2011): 55. 8 Ibid. Miller cites Lucy Shelton Caswell in her article, “Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons”. 9 “The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902,” Office of the Historian, Department of State, United States of America, accessed December 1, 2018. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

91

symbolize colonies emphasized the dependence of subjugated nations, henceforth presenting US guardianship as a form of responsibility, and not of a self-seeking agenda.10

Figure 2. Grant Hamilton, “The Filipino’s First Bath”, Judge Magazine, June 10, 1899.11

Interestingly, the image of McKinley in water evokes the rites of baptism, a Christian sacrament that signifies admission to the religion and the rules of the church. As the cover’s by-line McKinley- oh, you dirty boy! proclaimed, McKinley’s act of “cleansing” implied the Filipinos’ perceived “impurities” and the need to be rid of them. Likewise, McKinley is placed in the position of the baptizer, comparable to that of the church in a baptismal rite. This metaphorical positioning of McKinley as a divine instrument was an effort to further skew and dissimulate the agenda of American imperialism as an altruistic mission. By epitomizing

10 Bonnie Miller, “The Image-Makers’ Arsenal in an Age of War and Empire, 1898-1899 A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of the Minneapolis Journal) and Albert Wilbur Steele (of the Denver Post),” 68. 11 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judge_06-10-1899.jpg

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

92

colonization as a godly duty, it venerated the mission as a selfless undertaking, and absolved the proponents of annexation from malicious implications. This interpretation harkens back to the concept of manifest destiny, a term used in 1840 to justify the

United States’ expansion within the North American continent.12 An element of manifest duty was the principle that America had been blessed with divine providence, which guided the political foundations of their project of expansion.13 Christopher Lasch argues that it was in this belief that Americans saw themselves as ‘carriers of civilization’ tasked to expand and uplift lower nations, hence validating their conquest regardless of how it was perceived by their colonies.14 Similarly, Lucy Shelton Caswell asserts that the use of glorification and ridicule are common techniques that have been historically used by cartoonists in rendering their images.15 What stands out in this particular image is the concurrent use of these devices, whereby the image simultaneously disparaged the Philippines as it lionized America, stressing the extreme polarities of both nations.

The use of prescriptive racial tropes to illustrate the physiognomies of the colonies lends to a larger program of emphasizing otherness. In The Filipino’s First Bath, both racial and sexual derisions are present. While McKinley appears stately in his suit, the dark-skinned child is stark naked, and spattered with clichés of primitivism.16 Whereby the West is dignified, the Filipino is portrayed as vulgar and diminutive. The idea of intrinsic racial inequality is not a uniquely American approach. Centuries of writings have attempted to define the concept of race. The eighteenth century, however, saw a paroxysm of naturalists and theorists who began to classify mankind according to their physical attributes and intellect. For example, Swedish botanist and

12 Mark Joy, American Expansionism 1783-1860: A Manifest Destiny? (New York: Routledge, 2014), preface xxvii. 13 Ibid. 14 Christopher Lasch, “The Anti-Imperialists, The Philippines and the Inequality of Man,” The Journal of Southern History 24, no. 3 (1958): 319. 15 Lucy Shelton Caswell, “Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons,” American Journalism 21, no. 2 (2004): 19. 16 In this context, primitivism refers to modes of aesthetic attributions that signify subservience and dependency.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

93

zoologist Carl Linnaeus introduced race as an explicit criterion for understanding the human type.17 He grouped humans into categories similar to the taxonomic group of animals – the kingdom animalia. Johnson asserts that his categorization appealed to the idea of using monstrosity as a scientific method to dehumanize colonial people.18 A keen follower of Linnaeus, Thomas Jefferson employed this concept in articulating his claim of white supremacy.

As a modus for justifying slavery and expressing his racial politics19, Jefferson vilified the black race, drawing on Linnaeus’ predilection to relate blacks with primates in portraying them as a monstrous race. Jefferson avowed that their physiognomies, sexual desires, and intellect were inherently bestial in comparison to those of white people.20 His ideology reinforced the concept of intrinsic black inferiority within the American consciousness, underpinning disparaging associations between the black race, simians, and subservience. This insinuation became indispensable in magnifying polarities between the United States and their colonies. In editorial cartoons, this produced the visual prototype for proclaiming otherness. Similar to Caswell’s assertion that in the context of wartime cartoons, satirists used visual models of the ‘enemy’ such as the uncivilized barbarian and subhuman creatures to depict their rivals to substantiate the justification for killing them.21 In a similar manner, cartoonists of imperialism employed visual prototypes of ‘otherness’ to depict their colonies, further validating the American conquest.

In an 1899 front page of The Boston Sunday Globe (Fig. 3), the Filipino is visibly aped, or given animal posturing and features. Entitled Expansion, before and after, the clipping portrays the transformation of the Filipino from “savage” to “civilized” in a

17 Sylvester Johnson, “Monstrosity, Colonialism and the Racial State,” 184. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://muse.jhu.edu.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/article/578938/pdf. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 185. Johnson elucidates that apart from Jefferson’s deep dislike for the blacks, he was mainly concerned with “the political architecture of the white-settler state and the membership in the political body of the white republic” which defined his racial ideology. 20 Ibid., 184-186. 21 Lucy Shelton Caswell, “Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons,” American Journalism 21, no. 2 (2004): 18-19.

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

94

montage of images. Two profiles in the middle of the front page summarized the Filipino’s transformation before and after the expansion. An oval medallion labelled The Filipino before expansion shows a full-length profile of a man wearing nothing but a grass skirt while holding a spear and a set of bow and arrows. Meanwhile, a bigger profile of a grinning male, dressed in a western gentleman’s clothing is labelled The Filipino after expansion. The appearance of the Filipino individual is arresting. The use of blackface is poignant. Likewise, the Filipino is revealed in various scenes of gangling and brutish behaviour, further amplifying the ape-like depiction. For example, in the monograph labelled “He could exchange the war club for a baseball bat readily”, the character is shown in the act of gauchely chasing another man with a club. On a larger register, the same man is dressed in a baseball uniform, signifying the aftermath of the transformation, yet he still exhibits racist visual tropes. The animalization of the Filipino magnified their distinction from the white race, underscoring their otherness. Bhabha explains that the construction of colonial subjects and practice of colonial power necessitated an expression of systems of racial and sexual difference.22 By aligning the Filipino race at a level with apes, employing the idea of monstrosity to define the colonized,23 their subjugation became acceptable due to their inherent racial inferiority. In The Boston Sunday Globe’s front page, ape-like characteristics were twice as amplified in the panoramas that show the result of conversion. This portrayal asserts that no matter their acclimatization, the Filipino race would always remain subservient to their American counterpart.

22 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 67. 23 Sylvester Johnson, “Monstrosity, Colonialism and the Racial State,” The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 3, no. 1 (2015): 182. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://muse.jhu.edu.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/article/578938/pdf.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

95

Figure 3. Unknown author. “Expansion, Before and After” The Boston

Sunday Globe, March 5, 1899.24 Filtration, Repetition, and Immutability The mass circulation of imageries and use of familiar visual tropes in interpreting the efforts of expansionism provided cartoonists with considerable power in the developing discourse of American foreign policy.25 Along with images, their mechanism of dissemination was equally significant in communicating a particular message to the American public. To sustain the Filipino’s depiction, cartoonists employed devices of filtration, repetition, and immutability. The visual characteristics of the Filipino in cartoons remained steadfastly consistent. Qualities of blackface, nakedness, infantile appearance, ape-like features, and tribal trimmings solidified the concept of the ‘savage and barbaric’ Filipino that US expansionists sought to ‘civilize’. In this process, cartoonists ignored other representations of Filipino identity that were in line with Western concepts of modernity. Larger Filipino populations were comparably living in modern and industrial conditions equal to the West. During the advent of the United

24https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Racist_Newspaper_Clipping_Filipino.jpg 25 Bonnie Miller, “The Image-Makers’ Arsenal in an age of War and Empire, 1898-1899: A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of the Minneapolis Journal) and Albert Wilbur Steele (of the Denver Post),” The Journal of American Studies 45, (2011): 58.

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

96

States’ conquest, the nation was already in the midst of modern progress. The arrival of the Spaniards in 1565 marked the establishment of Christian missionary schools and the Catholic religion in the Philippines, becoming the first ‘westernized’ country in the far-east, espousing institutions and ideas current to Western Europe.26 This progressively led to the establishment of universities and numerous types of schools; by the time the Americans arrived in the archipelago, the general Filipino population was not only educated in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also in various forms of vocation.27 Furthermore, the milieu of Philippine societies was far from primeval. Infrastructures reflecting European colonial architecture abounded. The concept of “bahay na bato” or stone houses in erecting Filipino residences was extant. Yet these representations were unequivocally absent from Filipino depictions in American publications, who rather looked towards the most marginalized communities to establish racist tropes. Indigenous groups in the Philippines, like the Igorots and Negritos, were devastatingly impacted through racist representation and exhibition in colonial World’s Fairs. Their oppression sought to establish a universal Filipino identity in the Western imagination. It is in this simplification that the Filipinos were treated as uncivilized, ‘in need of taming’ by the American people. Bhabha explains that the construction of stereotype is one that is rooted in “fantasy and defense”, manufacturing a “false representation of a given reality.”28 Likewise, this universal exemplification was consistently repeated not only in editorial cartoons but in other forms of visual culture. Colonial expositions and ethnographic photographs, for example, delivered similar embryonic images of the Filipinos, corroborating the overarching schema of portraying a nation that is primordial. This immutable representation further congealed the

26 Encarnacion Alzona, A History of Education in the Philippines 1565-1930 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1932), 17. Electronic Book. Accessed December 2, 2018. https://search-alexanderstreet-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C3195270#page/30/mode/1/chapter/bibliographic_entity%7Cdocument%7C3195280. 27 Encarnacion Alzona, A History of Education in the Philippines 1565-1930 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1932), 43. 28 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 75.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

97

Filipino archetype in the eyes of American society. Bhabha explains that the mythology of colonial culture presented the subject with a fundamental “either/or” situation, wherein the colonized is posed by its conqueror as either a fixed hostile body or a “new kind of man or genus.”29 The process of filtration, repetition, and immutability is present in the expansionists’ agenda such that they filtered their portrayal of the Filipino, sustained an unyielding representation of the nation’s identity, and ultimately entrenched an illusive characterization of the Filipino in the minds of American people.

The Façade of ‘Benevolent Assimilation’ The portrayal of Filipino people in editorial cartoons solidified the cause of American imperialism. In another image from Judge magazine (Fig. 4), the Filipino is seen along with other colonies riding on the back of Uncle Sam as he toils in carrying them across a mountain emblazoned with the word ‘civilization’. Together with John Bull,30 Uncle Sam hikes up a mountain of boulders, labelled with inane qualities, as he ventured to reach the top. The image’s title The White Man’s Burden represented the missive that the cartoon aimed to convey. Here, America depicts its ‘philanthropic’ pursuit to civilize those that are barbaric. Once again, the image attempts to pilot the concept of colonization as a necessary process to fulfill an altruistic mission. The United States was aware of the connotations that expansionism contained. In fact, they were cognizant that imperialism was not only injudicious but also unjust and against the principles of the Declaration of Independence.31 Sylvester Johnson explains that the need to subjugate speaks volumes to the political and economic gains of conquering. Hence, maligning the abilities of the conquered morally justifies the

29 Ibid. 30 Miles Taylor, “John Bull,” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68195. John Bull is the fictitious personification of English and British imperialism. 31 Christopher Lasch, “The Anti-Imperialists, The Philippines and the Inequality of Man,” The Journal of Southern History 24, no. 3 (1958): 320.

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

98

actions that ran opposite to the subjugators’ egalitarian principles.32 He further posits that more than the assertion that the subjugated is substandard, it was more important in this case to affirm the need to sustain others in inferior roles, the mechanism of exploiting various forms of reason to substantiate American imperialism. 33 Apart from defining themselves as ‘agents of humanity and civilization’ through messianic representations, the proponents of expansion drew on scientific paradigms to justify their actions of subjugation. 34 By qualifying the Filipino as a congenitally inferior race, the United States validated their suppression and sovereignty over a weak nation without disavowing their democratic principles.

Figure 4. Victor Gillam, “The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Kipling)” Judge Magazine, 1899.35

The concept of racial hierarchy stemmed from the belief that because of obvious racial disproportions in cultural achievements,

32 Sylvester Johnson, “Monstrosity, Colonialism and the Racial State,” The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 3, no. 1 (2015): 249. 33 Ibid. 34 See Figure 2, Grant Hamilton, “The Filipino’s First Bath”, Judge Magazine. 35https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22The_White_Man%27s_Burden%22_Judge_1899.png

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

99

men must have originated at various points in time and that out of this origination, the “Caucasoid man” emerged ahead of other races, explaining their early advancement over others.36 This elicits Herbert Spencer’s theory that racial conflict was a key to social progress as it necessitated a continuous purification and extermination of inferior groups by the more powerful groups.37 In extenuating American slavery, Social Darwinist William Graham Sumner posited that enslavement, in fact, advanced humanity as it permitted ‘superior groups’ to “construct and develop more refined cultures.”38 Subsequently, determining the classifications of those that belonged to ‘superior and inferior’ groups became necessary to advance these ideas. Francis Galton’s social theory of eugenics39 disputed the natural equality of men, postulating that racial structure was a product of natural selection. In the course of establishing his principle, he points out that Anglo-Saxons were the dominant race, sustained by their enjoyment of “political, cultural and economic hegemony” over non-Anglo-Saxon peoples.40 The admission that racial superiority and inferiority were grounded in biology provided the United States with the confidence to warrant their chauvinistic agendas through scientific racism. Referring to slavery, Mendehall poses the question, “what better way for slaveholders to validate their representation of blacks as innately inferior and their slave codes as consistent with natural law than by attributing to science and laws of nature?”41 Lasch saw the effects of this dogmatic principle in American imperialism. Accepting the

36 Nancy D. Fortney, “The Anthropological Concept of Race,” Journal of Black Studies 8, no. 1 (1977): 39. 37 Rutledge M. Dennis, “Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism and the Metaphysics of Race,” Journal of Negro Education 64 (3): 244. 38 Ibid. 39 Rutledge M. Dennis, “Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism and the Metaphysics of Race,” 246. In further advancing his theory on eugenics, Galton conducted a series of ‘intelligence tests’ to corroborate his belief that hereditary factors were paramount to intellectual abilities and that men are innately categorized through their genetic make-up. This attempt to corroborate his theory through ‘testing’ became a basis for scientific racism 40 Ibid., 244. 41 Allen Mendenhall, “From Natural Law to Natural Inferiority: The Construction of Racist Jurisprudence in Early Virginia,” PEER English 8 (2013): 22. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2214462.

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

100

inequality of men as established facts of life, Americans believed that Filipinos were ethnically subservient and second-class, finding it impossible to accord them the same rights that Americans enjoyed.42 This ideology is present in the cartoonists’ fabricated illustrations of the Filipino individual. Through visual portrayals of ‘Filipino inadequacy’, the proponents of annexation validated their desire to subjugate as the images concealed the malevolent fundamentals of their oppression by positioning their oppressing objectives as philanthropic.

Conclusion

Although American imperialism in the Philippines only lasted for forty-eight years, its consequences continue to be felt in modern times. The contemporary Filipino stereotype, although no longer explicitly allied with barbarism, remains connected to notions of subservience and inferiority.43 The Filipino identity continues to be seen as mediocre on a global scale, with Filipinos generally being commended for their utility as service workers rather than for their intellectual achievements. This bias may be seen as a consequence of the Filipino archetype that dominated early 20th century American visual culture. As a result, Philippine society itself remains an active participant of cultural subjugation. Discriminations that are reminiscent of similar biases held by the Americans are evident within Filipino communities. Qualities of skin color, the ability to express oneself in the English language, and adulation for western commodities pervade the Filipino

42 Christopher Lasch, “The Anti-Imperialists, The Philippines and the Inequality of Man,” The Journal of Southern History 24, no. 3 (1958): 319. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954987. 43 An example of this stereotype appears in a May 2, 2015 article from Toronto Star: “Mayweather-Pacquiao — from A-Z and beyond: DiManno.” Author Rosie Di Manno specifically writes: “F: Filipinos, 138,000 of whom live in Nevada, mostly in Vegas, and all in thrall to Pacquiao. Guess there’s a high demand here for nannies. (Oh relax people.)” Rosie Di Manno, “Mayweather-Pacquiao — from A-Z and beyond: DiManno,” Toronto Star, May 2, 2015. Accessed June 2, 2020. https://www.thestar.com/sports/2015/05/02/mayweather-pacquiao-from-a-z-and-beyond-dimanno.html.

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

101

psyche, suggesting that although imperialism is no longer present, its legacy continues to exist in Philippine society.

- Maria Mendoza Camba Bibliography Alzona, Encarnacion. A History of Education in the Philippines

1565-1930. Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1932. Electronic Book. https://search-alexanderstreet-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C3195270#page/30/mode/1/chapter/bibliographic_entity%7Cdocument%7C3195280.

Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 2004.

Brownstein, Michael, "Implicit Bias.” The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2017. Accessed December 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicitbias/.

Caswell, Lucy Shelton. "Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons." American Journalism 21, no. 2 (2004): 13-45. doi:10.1080/08821127.2004.10677580.

Dennis, Rutledge M. "Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race." The Journal of Negro Education 64, no. 3 (1995): 243-52. Accessed November 18, 2018. doi:10.2307/2967206.

DiManno, “Mayweather-Pacquiao — from A-Z and beyond: DiManno.” Toronto Star, May 2, 2015. Accessed June 2, 2020. https://www.thestar.com/sports/2015/05/02/mayweather-pacquiao-from-a-z-and-beyond-dimanno.html.

Fortney, Nancy D. “The Anthropological Concept of Race.” Journal of Black Studies 8, no. 1 (1977): 35-54. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ168948.

Johnson, Sylvester. “Monstrosity, Colonialism and the Racial State.” The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists

Re:Locations Journal, University of Toronto

102

3, no. 1 (2015): 173-181. http://muse.jhu.edu.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/article/578938/pdf.

Joy, Mark. American Expansionism 1783-1860: A Manifest Destiny?

New York: Routledge, 2014. Lasch, Christopher. “The Anti-Imperialists, The Philippines and

the Inequality of Man.” The Journal of Southern History 24, no. 3 (1958): 319-331.https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954987.

McKinley, William. “Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation (1898).” Asian America: A Primary Source Reader. Edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Scott Wong, K and Jason Oliver Chang. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1998.

Mendenhall, Allen. “From Natural Law to Natural Inferiority: The Construction of Racist Jurisprudence in Early Virginia.” PEER English 8 (2013): 20-29. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2214462.

Miller, Bonnie. “The Image-Makers’ Arsenal in an age of War and Empire, 1898-1899: A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of the Minneapolis Journal) and Albert Wilbur Steele (of the Denver Post).” The Journal of American Studies 45 (2011): 53-75.

“The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902.” Office of the Historian, Department of State, United States of America. Accessed December 1, 2018. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war.

Treaty of Peace (Treaty of Paris), December 10, 1898. Article. From the Library of Congress. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/b-es-ust000011-0615.pdf.

Taylor, Miles. “John Bull.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68195.