Systemic legacies of colonialism: How racial hierarchies persist in Filipino identity and culture
Original framing: “Decolonising the mind: Why colonial mentality is a difficult attitude to abandon” — bing news
Dark-skinned Filipinos, Aetas, and Moro communities experience the most severe manifestations of colonial mentality, yet their voices are excluded from mainstream discourse. Transgender Filipinos of colour report intersectional discrimination where colonial beauty standards intersect with gendered racism. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)—especially domestic workers in the Gulf—face racialised violence that reinforces internalised inferiority, yet their narratives are rarely centred in decolonial discussions.
The persistence of 'colonial mentality' in the Philippines is not a psychological aberration but a structural outcome of 500 years of racial capitalism, from Spanish friar encomiendas to US military bases and today’s neoliberal media monopolies.
Indigenous frameworks like *kapwa* and *bayanihan* offer pre-colonial alternatives to Eurocentric individualism, yet these are systematically erased by education systems designed to produce compliant labour for global markets. The trickster’s role—exemplified by Juan Tamad’s subversion—reveals how 'decolonising the mind' is often co-opted into neoliberal self-help narratives that blame the marginalised for systemic oppression. Cross-cultural parallels (e.g., Algeria’s *epidermalisation*, Māori *mātauranga*) demonstrate that colonial mentality is a transnational project of cultural genocide, requiring transnational solidarity to dismantle. True liberation demands not just psychological healing but the dismantling of racial capitalism itself, as seen in successful models like Rwanda’s anti-colourism laws and South Africa’s curriculum reforms.