The Philippines has an extensive history of colonization. Four hundred years long—first by Spain starting in 1521 and subsequently by the United States in 1898 up until the twentieth century. With this long history of colonialism and cultural imperialism in Filipino history, this paper seeks to examine if and how colonial mentality is experienced by Filipino people and how this may manifest in their everyday lives. This research paper is an empirical, qualitative study delving into colonial mentality, a theory which according to David and Okazaki (2006a), is the perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority, a form of internalized oppression, that is “a specific consequence of centuries of colonization under Spain and the U.S. and it involves an automatic and uncritical rejection of anything Filipino and an automatic and uncritical preference for anything American” (p.241). The idea of decolonizing the mind was also investigated. Strobel (1997) defined decolonization of the mind as a “process of reconnecting with the past to understand the present.
“Colonial mentality is defined as the perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority and a form of internalized racial oppression. It is deemed a direct consequence of the Philippines’ long history of colonialism. This empirical, qualitative study explored whether colonial mentality resonated with Filipino Americans who were born and raised in the United States. This study also investigated if and how the process of decolonization