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George Baylon Radics, "Emotional Filipinos: The American Myth of the 'Lazy Native' and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines" (U Georgia Press, 2026)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. George Bailon Radix about his book titled Emotional the American Myth of the quote unquote, Lazy Native and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2026. As suggested then by that subtitle, we're going to be going through a decent amount of history and in fact connecting two periods that maybe aren't always connected in the scholarship, right. The period under which the US colonized the Philippines and had all sorts of ideas about how that should work and how Filipinos should respond to this colonization and more recently, the decades long phenomenon of Islamic separatism in the Philippines, both of which have a decent amount of scholarship on them but aren't always looked at together. This book helps us understand why we might want to and what sorts of things we might be able to figure out by looking at the longer period together. So, George, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [01:13]
A
Thank you for that fantastic introduction and thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk with you about my book.
- [01:18]
B
Well, on the theme of introductions, could you please introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
- [01:26]
A
Sure. My name is George. I'm a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, where I've been since about 2014. And in 2023 I became the convener of Global Studies, based in the Political Science department. Now, about the book, it's based on my dissertation, which I completed many, many, many years ago. And the initial motivation is that I'm actually half Filipino. My mom is from the Philippines and growing up in Los Angeles, California, I didn't really have much contact with that side of my family until much later. So when I got to graduate school, I decided I want to write about the Philippines. And at that time, kind of at the early 2000s, the biggest topic, the biggest framework was terrorism. And the Philippines has one of the longest Muslim Christian conflicts in the history of the modern world. So there was a project there. Eventually as I started to write the dissertation, I realized terrorism isn't the best framework. And I started researching and writing more about nationalism and the post colonial nation building process, religious minorities and multicultural postcolonial Southeast Asia. But in particular, the dissertation looked at these issues through the sociology of emotions lens. And then eventually as I started to develop this project into a book, I start to look at the relationship between emotions and race or racialized emotions. Just to add one other thing. When I decided to write my dissertation or go to grad school in Southeast Asia, I didn't realize how much of an impact it would have on my scholarship, on my career, just generally my worldview. And I think one of the reasons why I really decided to just push forward with this book after so many years was because I thought it was important to kind of take some concepts and ideas that were developed in the Philippines after many years of research and writing and engagement with Filipino scholars and Southeast Asian scholars, so that I could try to push the global North a little bit, to insert a perspective that is grounded and developed in a Philippine and Southeast Asian context.
- [04:20]
B
Thank you for that lovely introduction. I always find it really interesting to understand how projects develop over time. Right. As you mentioned, this project started from a place of kind of grad school, but of course, one brings all sorts of learnings to it. Learning doesn't stop when grad school ends. So helpful to kind of get that sense of the perspectives that you're bringing into this project. And I think let's us get into then what you figured out and put in the book. So we're going to, I think, pursue this kind of chronologically looking at the American colonial period and sort of working our way towards the present. So starting with then those American colonizers. Your book, I think, does something interesting in terms of not regurgitating sort of how the US took over the Philippines. Like, obviously that's an important story, but we have a lot of scholarship on that. Instead, as the title of the book suggests, emotional. You're looking at emotions, but not just of the Filipinos. You also discuss, for example, the feelings of guilt that American colonizers have in the Philippines and what that means not in terms necessarily of, like what they wrote in their diaries, but what that meant in terms of practical policy implications. So can you tell us about those feelings and the impact that they had on everyday life?
- [05:34]
A
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think when you look at the early literature on the Philippines, oftentimes they're depicted as very nationalistic or patriotic, and we see that literature as just being propaganda. But I. I kind of saw it in a different way. I saw that many of these colonial administrators actually felt the things that they're writing about. So just to go back to how I came across this when I was writing the dissertation. I remember reading reports and newspaper clippings from the Library of Congress, and I'M a sociologist. I'm not really a historian. And so I was trained in interviews and focus groups and ethnographies. Archival research, not so much. And so I went to D.C. and I was sleeping on a friend's couch for about a week. So I had to get all the archival data as much as possible, as fast as possible. And I came back to Singapore. I had to teach. I went back to the field to collect more data. So when I finally got to that archival stuff, archival data, I really couldn't make sense of it. And then I remember coming across an article where it was, particularly on Mindanao, where Filipinos were depicted as savages, right? This was. It was actually a piece called From Savages to Citizens. Oh, sorry. From Savages to Citizens. And it was about the market exchange and how Major John P. Finley was trying to implement these projects in Mindanao that it's kind of like a flea market where he knew that Muslims and Christians were not very trusting of one another. So he thought that if he brought capitalism to Mindanao and have them learn the value of money or impartial and objective rules that apply to all, or the spirit of fair economic competition, that somehow they could overcome their religious or ethnic differences. And I thought this was kind of naive. It seemed highly flawed to me. But as I started to go through the literature, I started to realize that. And it wasn't just the literature. It was also in the letters that they wrote to families, in their diary entries. I realized that these types of projects that they were implementing in the Philippines, regardless of how flawed they may have seemed to them, seemed real. And to them, it seemed like it was part of this larger project of civilizing Filipinos, bringing modernity and development to the country. And so I couldn't really. I was trying to understand this, and I was talking to my committee member and mentor, Professor Ray Ileto, and he told me about a panel that he sat on at a conference with Jackson Lears. And Lears presented this paper called Regeneration Through Empire, or the idea that these colonial administrators were serving the Philippines to purge themselves of their sins, to become better people through service and dedication, not for fame or for fortune, and not just for America, but for the values that they believed America stood for. And they did this with kind of blind religious fervor. And it was at that point that I found this explanation really useful. It started to make sense to me that, you know, the people, these administrators that were implementing all of these projects in the Philippines, they. They did it coming from a deeply religious background background in a deeply Religious time. So when they were implementing these projects and writing about these projects, it wasn't just propaganda. It was something that they truly believed in. It's almost as if they kind of drank the Kool Aid and it blinded them to the bias and the racism that they were actually bringing to the Philippines and implanting in the Philippines. But they didn't see it because they truly did believe in what they were doing. And they were, I guess, trying to regenerate themselves spiritually in the process.
- [10:42]
B
Yeah. Which is really interesting to think about. Maybe today we're more cynical and we assume that one would never drink the Kool Aid. But actually, as you said, kind of doing this kind of archival deep dive helps make a sense of these things that might otherwise seem contradictory. But the thing I think I'd like to discuss further is what you briefly mentioned there, just at the end, that were embedding all sorts of things in the Philippines, including, of course, ideas about race and racial superiority. So can you tell us about kind of how this gets embedded?
- [11:12]
A
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when it came to these American administrators, they justified their presence in the Philippines as being there, like I was saying, to. To save the Filipino, even if in reality they were there to regenerate themselves spiritually or to live out their moral duty. I teach the social theory class, so forgive me for going so deep into sociological theory. But Max Weber, in the Protestant Work Ethic, talks about the concept of the calling, this moral imperative, this higher calling, where Protestants were trying to refrain from this worldly success in exchange for something bigger and everlasting. The Protestants saw this as doing God's work. But the American colonial administrators saw this as bringing civilization and development to the world. Of course, in the process of doing so, they entrenched a sense of modernity and self that inadvertently placed whiteness on top as a means to development and achievement, and brownness on the bottom as the opposite. As I was revising my chapters, I was putting together a book workshop. And so I was writing to all of these race scholars in the United States. And one of them was Michael Omi, and he's famous for writing the racial formation theory, the idea that race is a social. Social construct. And he picked up on the fact that I was writing about David Prescott Barrows, which. The Sociology building, actually the building that houses both the sociology and the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley, was named after David Prescott Barrows, because after David Prescott Barrows, who I talk about Chapter 2, after he served as the superintendent of schools in Manila and eventually the superintendent of Schools for all of the Philippines. He went back to the University of California to be a professor, and then he eventually became the president of the University of California. And then in 2020, in response to the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter protests and the Black Student Union decided that they wanted to take down his name from the building because they uncovered a lot of his anti black and anti brown statements, and everything they said was accurate. But when I read the statements that he wrote, I saw it a little bit differently. I didn't think that he was espousing these racist views in the spirit of antagonism or to intentionally subvert Filipino development and independence. Ironically, he actually believed that he was there to advance Filipino development and independence, even though he was bringing to the Philippines this terrible racial hierarchy. And it wasn't just Barrows, right? I talk about Barrows and Ali Hoorout. Just generally, a lot of these administrators really did believe that they were, quote, unquote, saving the Filipino. As you mentioned, we could read these words in a very cynical way and argue that they were just hiding these baser motives of extracting wealth or depriving people of their freedom or to create new markets, et cetera. But I saw a little bit more. I saw a little bit beyond that. I saw people who genuinely felt that they were doing good, even if they were entrenching a racial hierarchy that placed whites on the top and browns on the bottom. And eventually this foundation that these American colonial administrators brought was only further hardened by the soldiers and massive ways of American teachers that I write about in chapter two. So essentially, this is the racialized hierarchy. Whiteness became a pathway to independence and salvation, whereas brownness was seen as a sign of backwardness, weakness, and something to fix or get rid of. They brought to the Philippines this racialized hierarchy that embedded and strengthened ideas of racial superiority.
- [15:57]
B
Those aren't the most positive emotions really, certainly very kind of defined ones that, as you said, set up clear expectations for kind of who does and doesn't get to do things. And those aren't the sort of ideas necessarily that go away easily. So if we move from the US colonial period towards independence, obviously any sort of move towards independence, especially in the Philippines, has a lot of like, yay, independence. Right. A lot of positive momentum, sort of new things, things going on in terms of emotions. But what about these negative emotions? Surely they're bound up in ideas of identity and independence as well.
- [16:36]
A
Absolutely. You know, ultimately the question of independence rested in the hands of Americans, but not just any American. Basically, white Americans in Order to prove your self worthiness or your right to self determination, you had to become as developed or basically as white as possible. And this, you know, I talk about in chapters one and chapters two, but eventually it kind of led to the shame and anger that Filipinos felt and expressed in chapters in chapter 3. Once the Philippines became independent, all that pent up aggression and resentment came rushing out. This was seen in chapter three where I explore the anti American sentiment that sometimes to me felt overzealous and disproportionate. This also wasn't a positive thing and it had negative consequences. So for instance, when it came to the Balikatan exercises, this was when the US sent troops to the Philippines to train immediately after September 11th. It was actually the largest deployment of US soldiers outside of Afghanistan at that time. And it was the largest number of U.S. troops in the Philippines since the United States took over the Philippines in 1898 or since the Philippine American War of 1898. So obviously activists were concerned about the return of the Americans and the potential for human rights violations, the offense, national sovereignty, et cetera. But they were, because of the anger and resentment, they were much more concerned about the return of America rather than the local population's attitudes towards American soldiers. So these American soldiers were coming to Mindanao and the locals in Mindanao actually had more of a warm and receptive attitude towards these soldiers because the return of the Americans to the region brought stability and order, that brought American dollars. They to a certain extent brought a little bit of development. And this was after years of neglect and violence. But oftentimes these Manila based activists went so far as to accuse local communities as being duped or, or brainwashed or manipulated into accepting American support. They depicted these local populations as, oftentimes these local populations were non Christian or indigenous, as being uneducated and unable to think for themselves. Ironically, not unlike how the Americans treated the Christian Filipinos in the north during their quest for independence.
- [19:36]
B
All right, so we're already talking then about Muslim Christian divide. We're talking about Mindanao, where recently, you know, in recent decades, that's very much been a focus, as you said originally, in terms of terrorism. So how direct a link can we make between these ideas of national identity at independence and Muslim Christian conflict in the south?
- [19:58]
A
You know, to, to answer that question, I kind of have to go back to that kind of chaotic, post independent, post World War II rebuilding era where the national boundaries of the Philippines were still being shaped and the national boundaries of the countries in the region were still being shaped. When the Dutch and the British and the Americans all kind of left. At that time, the Philippine government, well, there were reports the Philippine government was using Muslim Filipinos to destabilize the territorial claims of neighboring countries. So essentially they were training Muslim Filipinos to serve as this guerrilla force to go into other countries and to kind of wreak havoc. But when Muslim Filipinos refused to engage in this guerrilla warfare, they were executed. This was known as the jabita massacre of 1968. And it led to widespread fear and anger among segments of the Muslim Filipino community that they were not going to be treated with the same dignity and respect as Christian Filipinos of the North. So as a result, we start to see the emergence of several separatist groups. First the Moral National Liberation Front and then the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. By the time the Americans came to the Philippines to train during the Palikatan exercises in 2002, we saw another group emerge. This was the Abu Sayyaf. Now, all of these groups fought for different things, but were manifestations the failure of the post colonial state to integrate and to assuage Muslim Filipino fears of second class citizenship. And then on top of that, as I was mentioning, there was a little bit of, dare I say, arrogance of Christian Filipinos based in Manila who were treating people in the south as being easily manipulated and a little bit of backwards, maybe prone to violence, being not as sophisticated, not as sophisticated or critically minded as those in the north, which only aggravated Muslim Christian North, South, Manila, Mindanao relations. So this is why the Muslim Christian conflict in southern Philippines continues to rage on, although there's been ebbs and flows in the violence and the history dates back all the way to the 1500s with the arrival of the Spanish. But American attempts to integrate the Muslim south into a predominantly Christian north and Filipino approaches to the south have basically failed to quell ongoing demands for more recognition and independence.
- [23:01]
B
It's very interesting to indeed see those sorts of links and the duration over time, as you mentioned. But of course that's only one of the kind of arguments you're making in the book, is sort of seeing that these two periods are connected. And we've of course been talking without, you know, throughout a lot of aspects of the book, without sort of saying what's on page 67. Like, that's not necessarily the most interesting way to discuss these things. But I do want to focus for a moment on what you do in a particular chapter in the book, because I think this was perhaps obviously interesting in terms of the content and also interesting sort of on a More meta, theoretical, methodological level. So can we discuss what you're doing in chapter four?
- [23:43]
A
Yeah, definitely. Chapter four is a little bit different from the other the first three chapters because it takes readers deep into a community in Mindanao torn apart by conflict. We're no longer dealing with historical figures or political leaders or the educated elite in Manila or in major cities in Mindanao. We're dealing with real people living in a real village, actually dealing with violence. And this chapter was based on almost a year of ethnographic fieldwork. It's different from the other chapters because we get to see what violence looks like on the ground and what the consequences are of such violence. I framed it as PTSD in settler communities because when I was collecting the data for this chapter, I was actually part of a larger team that was run by a local NGO that was funded by a Danish ngo. And essentially they were trying to understand ptsd. But when the local NGO was running their psychosocial surveys to figure out who is suffering from ptsd, they found out that a large number of those surveyed was not registering as experiencing ptsd. And we tried to explore this phenomenon by kind of investing other ways in which people experience ptsd, such as communal violence. Because PTSD was really developed in a northern context where to a certain extent, the violence that happens affects you personally, individually. And so we kind of hypothesized that perhaps people in this community weren't experiencing in the same way because they live in more of a communal type of environment. I mean, I don't want to centralize or orientalize, but this was one of the explanations that we came up with. And we also tried to figure out, well, what are some of the social mechanisms? What are some of the ways in which we could draw upon community resources to help address the PTSD like, symptoms, or more accurately, what we saw as community trauma. So that was one of the theoretical issues that I tried to grapple with in the chapter. The other concept that I try to unpack and challenge is the concept of settler colonialism. Now, I find this concept very useful in the United States and Australia and Israel, but the way that it manifests in the Philippines is a little bit different. I think in those other contexts, we have white settlers coming into brown or black countries, like South Africa, for instance, and trying to. These white settlers are seen as parasites that are taking over the area. I don't think that that's the same type of relationship that we saw in this particular community. It was more
- [27:06]
B
Christian.
- [27:07]
A
Filipinos, I guess, could be seen as settlers coming into Muslim Filipino territories. But the thing is, Christian Filipinos can convert to Islam, and Muslims can convert. Convert to Christianity. And then I start to see how interracial marriage made boundaries a lot less clear. And this also engaged another issue beyond settler colonialism, which is even the issue of race in a Global north context. When you look at sociology textbooks, for instance, and it defines what race is, it's basically defined on the basis of phenotype, typical physical characteristics. But in a context like the Philippines, where everyone kind of looks the same, how do you make sense of this racial hierarchy? So with this chapter, I was kind of pushing and challenging the concepts of settler colonialism and race to kind of engage these debates, to discuss them in the context of the Philippines without being completely subsumed by them. I want to talk about settler colonialism and race, but not in the same way where one group has racial privilege over the other, because it's a lot more complex than that. In the Philippines, where we're dealing with a very fragile coexistence in this community that is sometimes preyed upon by those from the outside, be it the central government or separatist groups or even activists and academics such as myself, we're all treading upon this incredibly fragile relationship that we need to approach carefully and respectfully. And I didn't want to just kind of carte blanche, apply a foreign theory onto this community, which is, I guess, why I took more of a ethnographic approach to the chapter. You know, sometimes readers find this chapter a little bit more relatable and readable, because instead of. I mean, the theoretical concepts are there, but really we're dealing with people's stories. And I like to think that it's because of that. This chapter really does kind of form the heart of the book.
- [29:44]
B
Well, and it makes these points, as you said, about kind of, let's not just take a textbook dictionary definition and wholesale apply it to real people, and let's instead talk to real people and see what their experience is. And, of course, you do that in the book, as you've described, discussing these questions of ptsd, of kind of how communities respond to violence, what identity means. You also talk about it in the book in terms of what peace means. I mean, we're talking about decades here. We're talking about even further back, identities embedded and kind of expectations and racial superiorities. So what does peace mean? What does peace feel like and is experienced in the everyday?
- [30:25]
A
Yeah, you know, peace is a difficult emotion to describe because it is often described as the absence of emotions right from A philosophical perspective. From a Aristotelian perspective, Aristotle kind of saw it as bring emotions into balance through moderation. Or from a more political philosophical perspective, a Hobbesian view perhaps would see it as order at the hands of everyone sacrificing a little bit of their rights to a larger political structure or a leviathan in this case. I think peace can be seen as reconciliation, equal treatment, equal representation, basically strong and positive relations not marred by conflict. This is how we could define peace. Yet as I think chapter five describes, even if there's a pause in the war, there were still intense feelings of second class citizenship. So in chapter five, I talk about the boom and the bust periods where when the war pauses, then suddenly all this money starts flooding in, either through NGOs trying to rebuild or investments trying to take advantage of cheap land or the lull and the violence. But the violence keeps coming back because people still feel discriminated against and people still feel like there's injustice and unfairness and a sense of being treat differently on the basis of one's religion or one's race.
- [32:18]
B
Yeah, so interesting to see kind of the markers in terms of violence may or may not track in terms of kind of what people are feeling inside and how to sort of think about reconciling those things as well as reconciling between communities. This investigation then, as you've been discussing, combines a ton of different methods, perspectives, sort of ways of thinking about all of this, and of course covers rather a lot of time as well. So is there anything we haven't mentioned yet that really surprises you in figuring all of this out that we want to add to our discussion?
- [32:51]
A
Well, I think that the process of writing the book was. It was a very long journey. And as you mentioned, I cover a lot of history, I cover a lot of methods. And I think on a personal, on a personal note, what surprised me or what I really enjoyed about this process was just learning more about Mindanao. How historically, culturally, linguistically, cuisine wise, how rich and wonderfully surprising the place is. You know, with my mother's side being from Manila or being based in Manila when I visit them or when I go to the Philippines. I get used to thinking of the Philippines as like any other Asian country where you have these intensely urban centers and then kind of a very agricultural, bucolic, kind of relaxing countryside. You know, I don't want it to be so black and white. But when you get to Mindanao, it's a little bit different. The history is different. The connection to Indonesia and Malaysia is a little Bit more present, but also just the local indigenous cultures are so colorful and vibrant. The Philippines in general is kind of a kaleidoscope of cultures, but Mindanao, there's just something so unique and beautiful about the music and the food and the physical culture. But on a theoretical and professional level, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but I was personally really bothered by how ignorant Americans can be of Philippine history. I think Filipinos are more aware of their history with the United States. But Americans, on the other hand, are so quick to dismiss the Philippines. And Philippine history is being part of Asian history, Right? And if you know, Asian history is already dominated by China or East Asia or India and South Asia, but Southeast Asia, the Philippines just kind of gets swept under the rug and completely detached from American history. Even though my book, as we've been chatting, my book, the first chapter, the second chapter was exclusively about American colonial administrators. Chapter three was about American troops in the Philippines. For some reason, editors just kind of dismissed the book. And I spoke to many, many editors who just dismissed it as not fitting their series or not talking about American history. Now, obviously there are other issues I can talk about here, gatekeeping in academic publishing and the American Eurocentric bias and privilege. But I'll just say I should not have been surprised. But I was, especially because I started off a little bit idealistic in thinking that I spent so many years. I mean, I'm talking about two decades of researching and writing and collecting data and rewriting these chapters with really important scholars. And I just imagined that publishing the book was going to be easy because I read other books and no offense, but some of them were not that great and they were published in great presses. And I'm like thinking, that will be me one day. And it was such a surprisingly difficult process. And I think that there are certain biases and issues there that I had to grapple with. So I think that those are the two biggest surprises for me.
- [36:57]
B
Very interesting indeed. I think they in many ways speak to a bunch of the things we've been discussing. So thank you for sharing those surprises with us. Zooming out then to look at kind of the book and the research overall. Is there anything else you're really hoping readers or listeners take from all of this? I mean, to understand some of the issues you've mentioned around kind of how we think about settler colonialism, how we think about US History, but also how we think about Muslim Christian tensions in the Philippines, how we think about Filipino politics, what are the sort of big picture takeaways you're hoping people get from this.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah, thank you for that question. You know, I. When I. When I was in the final stages of publishing this book, I got a lot of pushback on the title. And there is a lot of issues with, oh, is emotional Filipinos going to be offensive or is lazy native going to be offensive? I hope that people don't misread the title and think that I'm trying to argue that the Philippines or Filipinos are extremely emotional. Because what I hope people take away from the book is that any country encountering these types of issues would also react in emotional ways. I hope that this book encourages scholars to look at emotions as a lens to examine conflict and political issues, not just in social movements, where I think there is already a lot of really good work on that topic, emotions and social movements, but also in everyday political and social relations. One of the people that I workshop the most book with was Professor Eduardo Bonilla Silva, who was president of the American Sociological association. And when he was president, he was kind of pushing scholars to look at racialized emotions. And I hope that this book kind of contributes to that type of analysis, that it just provides at least one example of how we can study race and emotions together.
- [39:08]
B
Well, that's. That's definitely a useful thing to clarify the end of our discussion. What then might you be working on now that this project is done? The book is out in the world? Is there anything currently on your desk, related or not, you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [39:27]
A
Yeah, you know, it's. It's been a long journey with this book. And I mean, I just want to start off by thanking you so much for allowing me to talk about this book. And, yeah, it's been such a big part of me for such a long time, but obviously the work continues. And some of the work that I'm doing now is somewhat related to it. I have a few projects at the moment. Some are more research focused, some are more pedagogical, but my projects have mainly been on citizenship, civic engagement. I'm doing some work on interdisciplinary and civic education. You know, as a scholar and as an educator, I've seen my role in the university change over the years from primarily helping students find their place in this world, learn valuable practical skills like how to write and communicate effectively. But in the last five years or so, I feel that my role has changed, and I feel like I'm constantly trying to defend social science research and higher education. I feel like I'm trying to inculcate the values of inclusion empathy and mutual respect in the classroom. It's a crazy time that we're living in, and oftentimes those at the margins are the first to be attacked and sacrificed when times get tough. So I've been looking at second class citizenship, queer citizenship, but also the role of higher education and civic education in preserving our democratic institutions. My book Emotional Filipinos was about race and religion and emotions, but now I've branched out to look at gender and sexuality as well. Not to end on a somber note, but I think we're heading into some troubled and chaotic times and I hope to continue to showcase the value of social scientific research and higher education to the larger public. I think social science research needs to incorporate more emotions and sentiments into our analyses to help us make sense of powerful forces shaping our society like populism or backlash politics. So, you know, I just want to thank you again for taking the time to speak with me about my book. I really, really appreciate it.
- [41:57]
B
Well, I'm very glad that you said yes to this. And of course, anyone who wants to know more about the book can go read it. It's titled Emotional Filipinos the American Myth of the quote unquote Lazy Native and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines, published by the University of Georgia press in in 2026. George, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooks network.com connect with us on Instagram and Blue sky with the handle eBooksNetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.