Emotional Filipinos: The American Myth of the Lazy Native and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines - Paperback

by George Baylon Radics (Author)

In the first half of the twentieth century, the United States attempted to build a colony in the Philippines in its own image--one fraught with racist notions of what it means to be civilized, developed, and worthy of self-rule. These imported notions of race and modernity left a profound imprint on the nation. More recently, we have seen a menacing rise of Islamic "terrorism," political polarization, populism, xenophobia, and isolationism. Conventional wisdom has attributed this rise to a "failed state" or economic insecurity and cultural backlash. In this book, however, George Radics explains this forgotten part of U.S. history with emotions as a driving force behind social action. The Philippines is currently experiencing the longest-running Muslim-Christian conflict in the modern world and an increasingly anti-Western populist government. By unpacking the role of emotions from the American colonial period to the present, Emotional Filipinos blurs the line between American colonizer and Muslim-Filipino "terrorist," highlighting the lasting effects of America's footprint in Southeast Asia. Radics humanizes this fraught history and reveals unexplored connections between past and present.

Author Biography

GEORGE BAYLON RADICS is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. After receiving his PhD in sociology from the National University of Singapore (NUS), he earned a juris doctor with a concentration in Asian law from the University of Washington and worked for the Supreme Court of Guam for two years. He is also a member of the New York Bar. His work involves the judicial system, notions of justice, human rights, minorities, and comparative legal studies, and his articles have been published in Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Journal of Human Rights, Current Sociology, and Philippine Sociological Review.