Internalization of inferiority and colonial system justification: The case of Puerto Rico

Abstract

Since the U.S. military invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, the Caribbean island has been an “unincorporated territory” of the United States. Today, the island faces the worst economic, political, and humanitarian crisis in its modern history. Despite major disadvantages associated with the present situation, many Puerto Ricans continue to support U.S. hegemonic rule by either maintaining the territorial status quo or calling for a full annexation of Puerto Rico as a U.S. state. To better understand these attitudes, we synthesized insights from decolonial theory and system justification perspectives and administered surveys to 344 adults in San Juan, P.R. from 2017 to 2019. Results revealed that, as hypothesized, internalization of inferiority (outgroup favoritism) and epistemic motivation (need for cognitive closure) were associated with Puerto Ricans’ justification of the colonial system. Furthermore, colonial system justification was a significant mediator of the effects of internalization of inferiority and epistemic motivation on support for the territorial status quo and U.S. statehood—as well as rejection of national independence. Implications of these findings and the relevance of the overarching theoretical framework for the study of cultural and political psychology in other colonial and “post‐colonial” contexts are discussed.

“What surprised me is that they try to humiliate me”: Conceptualizing the role of colonial power dynamics and logics in Puerto Rican postmigration experiences.

“…By colonial logics, Grosfoguel (2003) refers to the dialectics colonizers deploy to sustain colonial power dynamics. One colonial logic indebted to White supremacy racializes Puerto Ricans, their culture, language, society, and institutions as corrupt, problematic, inferior, stagnant, and therefore dependent on the United States for survival, correction, and advancement (Capielo Rosario et al, 2022; Grosfoguel, 2003; Rivera Pichardo et al, 2021). For the purpose of this study, we call this logic the racialization logic .…”

Psychology as a site for decolonial analysis

“…Many of the articles consider the psychology of colonial violence among communities that were the targets of European imperialism. These include contributions from psychologists who work with Indigenous Peoples in North American settings to document and confront the explicit forms of colonial violence associated with the historical trauma of the residential school experience (Burrage et al., 2022) or the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (Ficklin et al., 2022), quantitative analysis of survey research to document implications of colonial mentality in Puerto Rican settings (Rivera‐Pichardo et al., 2022), ethnographic analyses of Black hair salons in the UK as spaces of decolonial resistance (Lukate, 2022), and participatory action research to document differently racialized experiences of recently arrived refugees in the United States city of Cincinnati (Dutt et al., 2022). Other articles consider the colonial violence of modern individualist ways of being that might otherwise appear unproblematic.…”

“…One manifestation of mental colonization is the racialized inferiority complex of colonial mentality : “internalized oppression, characterized by a perception of ethnic or cultural inferiority … that involves an automatic and uncritical rejection of [colonized ways of being] and uncritical preference for [colonizer ways of being]” (David & Okazaki, 2006, p. 241; see also. Fanon, 1967/1952; Memmi, 1965; Rivera‐Pichardo et al., 2022; Utsey et al., 2014). The counterpart of colonial mentality is the “racial hubris” (Bulhan, 2015, p. 244) or delusions of collective grandeur implicit in modern individualism and made explicit in ideologies of White supremacy.…”

Decoloniality as a social issue for psychological study

“…A particularly noteworthy manifestation of mental colonization is the ongoing displacement of local knowledge and ways of being embedded in the local language in favor of colonizer languages (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1986). More generally, mental colonization extends beyond language to a sort of inferiority complex, auto‐oppression, or collective self‐hatred associated with colonial mentality (Biko, 1978; Bulhan, 1985; David & Okazaki, 2006; Fanon, 1967/1952; Utsey et al., 2014; see Rivera Pichardo et al., 2022).…”

“…In contrast to the disciplinary decadence or “fetishization of method” (Gordon, 2014, p.81) that often characterizes mainstream psychology (see, e.g., Wilson, 2005), the contributions are methodologically pluralist. They include quasi‐experimental comparison and quantitative analyses of survey data (Dutt et al., 2022; Osei‐Tutu et al., 2022; Rivera Pichardo et al., 2022), as well as thematic analyses of video transcripts (Burrage et al., 2022), Foucauldian discourse analysis (Albhaisi, 2022), ethnographic‐styled participant observation (Lukate, 2022; Normann, 2022), and other techniques of qualitative research (e.g., Ficklin et al., 2022). As Atallah and Dutta (2021) note in their contribution to the second installment of the special issue, “Far too often, disciplinary criteria and standards of academic excellence work to silence critical questionings by colonized people” (p. 3).…”