Causes/Consequences of Marriages

With the phenomena of interracial marriage between Filipino men and white women, sociologists began to explore what caused it and how it would progress.  If it was seen as a problem among the public, it would stand to reason that marriages would not have happened in the first place.  The illegalization of interracial marriage of whites with non-whites seems to say that the issue was a big enough problem to be addressed by the government.  According to studies done between 1922 and 1933, men from minority groups only looked beyond their own ethnicities when there was a lack of women of their skin color and origin.  “…whenever a people in proximity to other peoples has an unbalanced sex ratio, they will tend to intermarry; whereas, if they have a relatively well- balanced distribution of the sexes, they will tend to marry within their own people” (Panunzio, 690).  Some ideas of what prompted interracial marriage between white women and immigrant men, particularly in California, was the allure of financial security.  As young women moved west to “make it” in Hollywood, they were away from their parents and the social constraints of their families.  The young men who would give them gifts and visit them in the Taxi Dance Halls provided stability and financial aid, while also becoming a source of comfort for the women who were far from home.  “These young women, separated from their families and therefore beyond the enforcement reach of the mores, were attracted to the Filipino boys, perhaps because they were lonely and in need of companionship and because the Filipinos, themselves mere boys away from home and craving for fellowship, gave them a ready, simple, direct ” (Panunzi, 696).  Whatever the reason, even as interracial marriages were becoming frowned upon in the public, they were still growing.  “…the intermarriage rate per 1,000 marriages in Los Angeles County is now about triple what it was in the early years of the period studied” (Burma, 158).  Perhaps the infamous taxi hall dancer, when she knew her popularity among the patrons was waning, would turn to the first Filipino who would marry her and settle down as a proper wife, with at least some sense of financial security that did not involve returning to her parents.  As the taxi hall dancers grew in numbers, so did the women who would marry immigrants. 

            The women who did marry non-white men still had to deal with the racism of others, and knew they would too.  While many of the marriages did not last long, some still managed to continue with family life.  This suggests that maybe their motives ran deeper than financial security, and that they actually loved their immigrant husbands.  Cressey wrote sympathetically on this issue.  “While these marriages are more often hasty affairs, they occasionally may be made with considerable deliberation and even with some effort on the part of the young man to acquaint the girl with the difficulties of the racial situation into which she is entering” (Cressey, 168).    These racial situations were felt on both sides, the white and the Filipino, as each culture had issues with race mixing.  Once the couples were married, Cressey observed that they were mostly bound to fall apart (170).  It seems that while being forced together at dance halls drove these interracial relationships, being forced culturally drew them apart.  Cressey seemed to write of these relationships as doomed to begin with, and was not very hopeful of their endurance.  Not only were interracial marriages social problems, but they were seen as nearly impossible to carry out.

A Filipino man and his new wife