Lost Heritage: Why Aetas Face Discrimination in the Philippines

The Aeta people are the indigenous people of the Philippines and belong to the Negritos of Southeast Asia. Anthropologists assume that the Aeta were the first inhabitants of the Philippine islands prior to Austronesian immigration. Today, they are predominantly resident in the Northern regions of Luzon.

Aeta people suffer from racial discrimination in the Philippines. As the video below reveals, employment is barely offered to people of color and curled hair (in Tagalog, the term kulot is used for people of curled hair, which also literally means the latter). Therefore, it is especially Aeta women who use alleged skin whiteners, such as papaya soap, with hopes to achieve a brighter skin color, but also due to random offensive remarks by non-Aeta citizens who believe darker people to be "dirty" and "malodorous."

The reason for this discrimination against Aeta people is rooted in the colonial era. Due to Spanish and American colonization, white imperialists imposed on them the Western standard and forced the Filipinos into believing that dark skin equals inferiority. Until today, Filipinos, Negrito or not, strive to become "white." Taking a short glance at the media will underline this statement: it is mostly mestizas and mestizos (i.e., half whites) who dominate popular culture, and even politics tend to have brighter skin than the majority of the Filipino population.

Coming to the Philippines as a Westerner, one will be greeted with hospitality and admiration for their non-Filipino physical traits, such as white skin color, to name only one. Many visitors tend to be flattered - however, there are also such who perceive this as a self-destructive behavior of insufficient self-appreciation.

This sentiment was imposed on the Filipinos during colonization, when beside Spanish and American imperialists also Chinese degraded the brown-skinned people as savages and inferior. The following depiction of Filipinos during American imperialism demonstrates the derogative manner white supremacy has influenced the Philippines until today:

By The Boston Sunday Globe - The Boston Sunday Globe, March 5, 1899, Public Domain, Link

Instead of embracing the natural heritage of their own people, the Filipinos rather deny it, in fear of offensive attacks by other nations. Due to depctions as the one above, among many other derogative offense, the people in the Philippines are apprehensive of being discriminated. Consequently yet paradoxically, they attack those who have darker complexions in order to defend themselves from being considered dark and savage. 

The Filipino people are proud of their bright-skinned, mixed-race beauty queens and artistas, yet tend to forget what their own people look like. They embrace their Western standardized culture: the more it resembles American popular culture, the more pride it awakes. What makes the Philippines special, however, is not the imitations of U. S. Pop, but their indigenous peoples, their tribal cultures and traditions, their beautiful and often forsaken landscapes. If the Filipinos start to recognize their cultural value and embrace their heritage, Aetas and other Negritos might have a chance to regain their reputation they lost to imperialism, and the real and native Philippine culture might have a chance to be more known and appreciated.

By anonymous - Page 29 of The history and conquest of the Philippines and our other island possessions; embracing our war with the Filipinos in 1899 by Alden March, published in 1899., Gemeinfrei, Link

By Dnacario - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link