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Excremental Colonialism

I found the intersection of public health and colonialism in the essay “Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution” written by Warwick Anderson quite fascinating and accurately representative of how multifaceted colonialism is. I especially found the recurring motif powerful, that we see the American body as closed and clean, while we see the Filipino body as open and “grotesque” (640). By “we,” I mean to represent the imperial mindset of the American men who colonized the Philippines and set out to rid of waste that got in the way of the morally correct American lifestyle. However, this waste that Anderson describes as pollution was more about the colonized bodies rather than actual filth that could endanger public health. Therefore, aligning well with the step-by-step procedures of colonialism, these American colonizers sought out to turn the Filipinos into acceptable members of society according to the prototype of the Western world’s cultures and customs. Because the colonized bodies were disposable to the colonizers, if this “training” and conversion did not work, they had no use for them. The goal of public health was to benefit the colonizers, not the colonized. Another predictable aspect of colonialism has been the long history of pseudoscience and its use in racially discriminating against colonized people. As for tropical diseases in the Philippines, the Westerners victimized themselves and villainized the Filipinos, arguing that “evolution had apparently fashioned Filipinos as natural carriers of tropical pathogens” (645). This further divided the two groups, instilling fear in the public about going anywhere near Filipinos who were associated with filth, disease, and gore—the things that are also associated with open bodies. I think that Anderson puts this connection quite well: “This open body, all apertures, ‘is not separated from the world by clearly defined boundaries; it is blended with the world, with animals, with objects” (648). In everyday life, Filipinos were objectified as disregarded as human beings who required the same necessities and respect; they were also demoralized and ridiculed as being equivalent to a child who needed the white man’s moral guidance to go from savage to somewhat civilized. Additionally, Filipinos were dehumanized in laboratory and medical procedures in a more literal sense, as Western physicians used their bodies for experimentation, seeing no value in their lives. I found Anderson’s analogy very powerful: “If the anus was a synecdoche for the medicalized Filipino body, the mouth just as surely symbolized the American presence” (649). Not only did Americans view themselves as surely superior to Filipinos who were disgusting and helpless, but they also viewed themselves as ideal and “classical” forms of the human body who were educated enough to use their mouths to speak, write, etc. Physicians spoke on behalf of all bodies, describing the American body as the archetype of civilization. The power of these physicians and researchers made the laboratory the ultimate center of colonialism. Anderson even quotes James A. Le Roy who suggested that the Philippines was a laboratory itself. As Americans worked to change the country’s ways of sanitation and living, like building toilets, Filipinos were essentially “confess[ing] repeatedly their filthiness” (661). Although public health is not often discussed extensively in conversations about colonialism, I have definitely learned what an important aspect of colonialism and imperialism it is.

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"Humanizing Animals" - Erica Tom

From the very first page of “Humanizing Animals” by Erica Tom, I predicted the strong tone of this essay, though I was surprised at the continued motif of horses throughout its entirety. Tom’s initial imagery of the horse’s “oversexual behavior” reflects the piece’s overall message about the dehumanization of black and brown peoples, even compared to literal animals like horses. The words used to describe prisoners, of whom a disproportionate number are black and brown minority groups, essentially liken them to savage animals that are perhaps even inferior to horses. I found this particularly curious, because I had not been aware of the respect that horses are given to the point of Tom arguing against their deanimalization.

I agree with Tom’s point about the increasing worldview, especially in capitalist societies and political systems, that to be of use is to bring profit in some way. I know that even in medical anthropology, there are some theories of thinking in which illness is viewed as a social deviance because the individual is no longer fit to function in society like everyone else. It is interesting, therefore, that Tom put it this way: “those categorized as unfit for or not of use to society are often locked up” (124). This puts into perspective the similarities between those who are incarcerated and horses, in that they are simply viewed as commodities rated based on their acquired utility for financial gain rather than as living beings beyond that.

The descriptions of specific imprisoned individuals who confess the helpfulness of the horses in teaching them to be empathetic and compassionate also reminded me of psychology studies that animal companions in nursing homes decrease death rates and drug expenses because these dogs, cats, birds, etc. provide people meaning in their lives. I see this same theme in Noël Jiménez, one of the individuals whom Tom describes as learning to control his anger by seeing the horses as mirrors (129-30). Although this story is a happy and successful one, I also greatly agree with Tom’s point that anecdotes such as these in some ways perpetuate the negative prejudices against prisoners as lacking basic human traits like empathy and compassion, because they had to learn it from horses. Moreover, the stereotype and regard of horses as valuable only because they have been useful in contexts like these continues. It is certainly difficult to find any optimal balance in a society that is so prejudiced and driven by divides, whether that be racial or socioeconomic. This is especially true due to the institutional racism that pervades the criminal justice system and overpopulates prisons in the United States with minority populations. I am reminded of our class discussions about the death penalty and the prison system being a form of modern-day slavery.

Now circling back to my initial point, I was quite shocked to read this sentence towards the end of Tom’s writing: “we must also consider that the framing of the horse as a healer can sometimes deanimalize the horse” (134). I was in disbelief that while we fight for the humanization of real human beings who are incarcerated, nonhuman animals like horses are almost too humanized. It is the opposite problem for them. Nonetheless, neither are yet fully seen as having “complexities, needs, and desires” that are worthy of caring about (134). This is horrifying to think about.

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"We are the Land, and the Land is Us" - Dian Million

The very first paragraph of this chapter shocked and captivated me, priming me for the strong and personal essay that was to follow. In this first paragraph, the writer, Dian Million, likens the 2016 drillings at Missouri River to “an act of rape” (20). While at first, I had been taken aback by such controversial and emotionally charged language, now that I have read the entirety of this chapter, I understand the significance of Million’s diction. Through her writing, I have learned extensively the first-hand account of an Indigenous person’s views on Western colonialism and all of the violence and invasion that comes with it. I had already been somewhat familiar with the stance of the Indigenous through my own educational background, such as their eco-centric values and their long and painful history of colonialism. Moreover, Million’s argument that “in the statistics that account for the racial and economic fabric of the United States, the racialization of American Indian and Alaska Native peoples disappears them” reminded me much of what I learned in my public health classes (22). It is true that important statistics and studies omit this group of people, subliminally telling them that they are not as important or significant to report on. I had learned that in terms of scientific studies, Indigenous people are often underrepresented or not even part of the sample population studied, which is not as much of an issue for the “main” ethnic groups usually represented such as White, Black, Hispanic Latino, and Non-Hispanic Latino. I even see such a problem in the generalization of “Asian” in publications, which oversimplifies the diversity of cultures, nations, struggles, histories, and much, much more within that vast continent. For example, a scientific study on heart disease could not possibly affect Indians the same way as Koreans or Cambodians or Filipinos. This is especially relevant considering current events that now shed light on such institutionally racist issues. However, no light is shed on Indigenous populations still, though they experience similar obstacles being “singularly reduced to a race, ‘Indian’” (23).

I found it very interesting that Million found the root of this exclusion of Indigenous peoples as the sort of dehumanization of this population and repackaging as “frontiers”—things, entities, resources, and properties to be conquered. As people, they appear to have no value to Western capitalism, but as capital and resources, they do. This objectification of an entire population of humans is evident through the displacement and gentrification that Indigenous communities have experienced for so long. Million puts “capital development” powerfully as “moving unwanted and unproductive (and uncapitalized) people elsewhere” (24). This modern-day colonialism is certainly horrific for any. However, for the Indigenous who are so intrinsically and strongly tied to nature and the ground upon which they reside, grow their food, worship, etc., this must be infinitely worse. Their values and traditions are not respected at all, for their land and everything associated with them is merely reduced to places of extraction and resources for capital gain. Miller associates the Indigenous “last frontier” with “empty,” “rural,” and “open,” for which she provides many examples and reasons. They all essentially boil down to disregard and disrespect on behalf of the American and European settlers and colonizers.

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"An Indigenous People's History of the United States - Redskins" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

During extensive discussions about race as a social construct during our past few classes, I was constantly reminded of imperialism. And it aligns well that this week’s reading, “Redskins” by activist and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, perfectly encapsulates Western imperialism and exploitation of land, people, and property. What I found especially surprising about the text was the fact that during all my years of historical education surrounding imperialism, colonialism, and the Enlightenment, I had never learned about the origins of the derogatory term “redskins” for Native Americans. It is horrifying how human beings could be subject to so much torture just because of the manmade categorization of people into classes and hierarchies that have been designed to determine a human life’s value.

Simply because Indigenous peoples had different lifestyles, religions and rituals, physical appearances, languages, and cultures than those of the European and American settlers, they were reduced to subhuman. This reminds me of “The Racial Contract” readings by philosopher Charles Mills in that the Social Contract—theorized by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau—which keeps every member of society in harmony under the assumption that all men are equals, only applies to one class of people, one “race”—whites. Therefore, anyone else is automatically excluded because their inferior subhuman status does not qualify as “equal.” By the same token, I felt that the Indigenous populations were reduced to animals for hunting sport, a sort of prize to be won and paraded. The white colonizers’ financial encouragement of the capturing and scalping of the Indigenous men, women, and children made “scalp hunting … a lucrative commercial practice” (Dunbar-Ortiz 65). This tactic was certainly a win-win for both the colonial officials as well as the rest of the settlers because this financial incentive not only facilitated the colonization process, but also created a literal profitable market for human lives and slavery. As a result, the Indigenous populations were additionally reduced to commodities and currency among whites because both their lives (through labor via slavery) and their deaths were economically capitalized off of by white settlers. It is this dehumanization that Western imperialism used to justify itself, with claims of racial inferiority and the white man’s “duty” to enlighten the savage nonwhite races of the world.

I also found this quotation in the text by John Grenier quite fascinating: “they established the large-scale privatization of war within American frontier communities” (Dunbar-Ortiz 65). The whole big-picture claim of Western imperialism was the “American frontier” that marked the rapid growth of colonialism, giving rise to expansionist movements like Manifest Destiny and the White Man’s Burden. This ties into the part of “The Racial Contract” when Miller describes the “epistemology of ignorance” and the “achieve[ment] of Whiteness” (Miller 18). To white colonizers, to expand the frontier meant to spread their whiteness, meaning that they claimed to be saving people from their own savagery and uncouth cultures. This is also reflected in the very products of colonialism in which cultures are stripped away and made homogeneously in line with Western culture. Therefore, scalping became its very own sort of war, a racial war if you will.

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The Racial Contract

Although this week’s reading is merely a 7-page introduction to an entire book, it has been one of my favorites so far, not due to its content or prose but due to the relief I have gained in finally covering race in a philosophy class. As a whole, I particularly agree with and support the writer’s critique of the “mainstream” philosophy that we learn and read about in the American education system as always containing an “abstractness [that] typically elides ... the experience of racial minorities” (2). I had always noted the homogeneity of authors, poets, and writers covered in my humanities classes, of course notwithstanding the solely white male philosophers whose works I was exclusively exposed to during my schooling. While Kant’s exploration of Enlightenment and Rousseau’s theories of human nature were somewhat interesting to read and analyze in said classes, I had never felt particularly connected to the texts. I realize through this week’s reading that that may have been due to the lack of representation of minority experiences I saw and the subsequent belief I have since developed that philosophy and existential thought are reserved for the privileged. I was also somewhat surprised that Arendt in “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture” mentioned a similar sentiment: “man has an inclination and, unless pressed by more urgent needs of living ... to think beyond the limitations of knowledge” (also known as philosophy) (Arendt 11). This not only applies to those living in poverty or poor countries who indeed do not have the time or luxury to contemplate abstract ideas about life and morality, but also to racial minorities in general who cannot find representation in the literature they read. Hence, it certainly is a privilege to engage in “the ‘whitest’ of the humanities” (2). This week’s writer also importantly notes that even African American philosophers tend not to deviate from their white peers in order to make significant change in the “white supremacy” that has dictated philosophy since its birth. And still, I have never been told to read an African American philosopher’s work. Perhaps this can be attributed to what the writer calls the “informal rule” of white supremacy as a political system that avoids any topic of race (3).

I therefore appreciate the writer’s framing of the “Racial Contract” as a new theory, by acknowledging that previous philosophers’ discussion of concepts like the “social contract” never accounted for race, because white privilege is always taken for granted. I agree with the writer’s desire to bridge the gap between white and minority thought, so that everyone may be equal in practice, not just in theory. The writer explains how white philosophers and politicians discuss “justice and rights in the abstract” while racial minorities go much more in depth, discussing “conquest, imperialism, colonialism ...” (4). I suspect that this is due to the fact that these specific subtopics of injustice revolve around the immoral actions of whites and, therefore, white male philosophers do not wish to discuss morality if it involves the acknowledgement of their (or their ancestors’) lack of it. It is therefore important that we discuss such topics as racism and imperialism in philosophy.