In a Few Generations: Debating Race,Colonial Development,and Independence in the US Colonial Field

Abstract

After the Spanish-American War of 1898, anti-imperialists and imperialists hotly debated whether to keep the Philippines as a colony. The ‘generation’ schema, which communicated racialized views of Filipinos/as and their ability to self-govern once they had been educated by white Americans, developed in these debates. For both imperialists and anti-imperialists, the ‘generation’ schema was rooted in racialized neo-Lamarckian notions of how the environment (i.e. US tutelage and training) could change the character of a non-white group. Therefore, this article analyzes debates between anti-imperialists, imperialists, and Filipinos/as as they each deployed ‘generations’ in the field of the colonial state. Using archival sources authored by imperialists, anti-imperialists, and Filipinos I find imperialists argued that future generations of Filipinas/os held more hope for independence in order to dismiss Filipina/o and anti-imperialist demands for immediate independence, while anti-imperialists and Filipinos/as used the schema to garner policies that incrementally led to independence in 1946.