"I've always said that we Filipinos start being racist not just when we go abroad but even while we languish here like prisoners dreaming of escape. Nothing shows that more than whitening lotion, which Thompson rightly points to. That has got to be one of the most mind-boggling things for foreigners who come here to get a tan. It speaks volumes about the mentality of the colonized. If you are dark-skinned in this country, you are reduced either to an object of ridicule or to comic relief. Spanish and American rule may have physically gone, but not so their psychological residue. To this day, I cannot forget what the mother of a Filipino contestant to a world beauty contest said, which was that she couldn't understand how the judges could prefer a "negra" to her daughter who was a mestiza.
Even now we suffer the fate of a people who have been whitewashed. By seeing only what is light, we are constantly kept in the dark."
