What I actually learned from Vince's rant

Aedan Roberts

Blog post Week 2

           At some point during Prof. Rafael’s endless, uninvited lecture today he posed an interesting hypothetical: “What would you do if you found out the father you know and love was a mass murderer?” How would you handle such a fundamental contradiction?

            It’s a useful analogy to use as a framework for approaching the topic we’ve been discussing all week: historical revisionism. Filipino history is chock full of different narratives that completely contradict one another. In order to resolve these contradictions, events in history tend to be forgotten when they don’t fit with the dominant version of truth, prescribed by whichever force is in control. This process of contradiction-solving has the power to revise troublesome aspects of history all the way from Spanish colonial rule (like in the Augustinian Church we visited, in which Tyrannical Spanish friars were referred to as “the messengers of love”) to the contemporary fascist regime (as Susan Quimpo demonstrated to us on Wednesday with the pro-Marcos propaganda video that has been circulating Filipino social media.) Time and time again the father is pardoned for his murders, and the ugly past is forgiven and forgotten.

Aguinaldo's statue, above pro-American rhetoric

In struggling with perhaps the greatest historical edit in Philippine history, the non-event of the Philippine-American war, Reynaldo Ileto invokes my analysis: “Perhaps the myth of a ‘splendid little war’ persists because it helps to conceal a profound contradiction” (Ileto, 1998, pp. 5.) On the one hand a “friendship” with the United States is deeply rooted in Filipino national identity construction all the way back to the Philippine revolution. At the shrine to Emilio Aguinaldo that we visited on Friday, a copy of the Filipino declaration of independence was immortalized in stone, describing the Philippine flag. “The colors blue, red, and white commemorate those of the flag of the United States of North America, in manifestation of our profound gratitude towards that great nation for the disinterested protection she is extending to us and will continue to extend to us” (Aguinaldo Shrine.)  This language of friendship is crucial to the American colonial rhetoric of “benevolent assimilation.” A somewhat obnoxiously drawn President McKinnley is pictured in Howard Zinn’s “Invasion of the Philippines” saying “we have to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos, for whom christ also died,” a sentiment echoed from top to bottom of the official American agenda (Zinn, 2008, pp. 55.) This “friendship” dialogue simplifies Filipino history, and portrays it as a sort of perfect linear model toward “civilization.” On the other hand, as Ileto points out, “a war with the United States simply does not fit into the historical trajectory from colonialism to independence, tradition to modernity” (Ileto, 1998, pp. 3.) Ileto, as well as Zinh, go on to describe the utter horror of the war’s historical reality: mass rape, burning and pillaging of property, and the murder of untold thousands of innocent civilians. As Mark Twain concludes in his satirical essay about the war, “the Person sitting in Darkness is almost sure to say: ‘There is something curious about this […] There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him on his land” (Twain, 1901, pp. 64.) I seriously question the nature of the “Darkness” that this Person is sitting in (Twain was definitely a bigot too), but I think it’s safe to say that the Person in question was forced to resolve the conflict and forget the second America ever existed, or risk losing their life or, at the very least, their sanity.

To end the discussion I’d like to take a look inward. As a white American man, my whole being has been frustrated with an ever-present internal contradiction. On the one hand these histories of utter exploitation, murder, and oppression I am learning are my own histories. On the other, I hold dear to my heart the belief that I am, in fact, a “Good Person.” My impulse is what Peggy McIntosh described seeing in so many men: to maintain my self-perception as “Good” by absolving myself of any personal connection to these systemic injustices and horrific histories. It’s the classic “but I’m not racist” cop-out. It’s something I have to fight, without ever actually being sure of how to fight it. I personally identified very much with McIntosh when she said “my schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture” (McIntosh, 1998, pp. 97.) Everything I’ve learned I’ve had to go out of my way to learn myself, but the more I know the deeper the contradiction becomes, and the further it seems I am pulled from ever coming to a place of existential peace. But I guess that’s the way it has to be.

Are historical contradictions as important to forget for the oppressor as well as the oppressed?  To what extent was the American rhetoric of benevolent assimilation less an attempt to pacify Filipino resistance and more for the sake of the consciences of the Americans behind it– who, like me, desperately need to see themselves as "Good People?"

Not related to what I was talking about but: to what extent did American's bring American racial logic to the Philippines (U.S. troops using the "N" word etc.), and how has that way of thinking permeated into the modern Filipino understanding of race?

Work Cited:

Ileto, R.C. (1998). The Philippine-American War, Friendship and Forgetting. In Shaw, A.V & FRancia, L.H. Vestiges of war. New York: New York Press.

McIntosh, P. (1998). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. In K. Tupper, Introduction to women's studies: Women 200 (2nd ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Twain, M. (1901). To the person sitting in darkness. In Shaw, A.V. & Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. New York: New York Press

Zinn, H. (2008). Invasion of the Philippines. In A people's history of American empire. New York: Metropolitan Books.