Introduction

            Racism is an ugly part of American history that is still being resolved presently.  Oftentimes, white Americans have not liked the idea of non-whites achieving similar social or economic standing, and preferred that there be a class system in society based on race and heritage.  Of course, while an intrusion of one race into another by means of mixing neighborhoods or work groups was deplorable, interracial marriage was outright forbidden.  Many states passed laws forbidding the marriage of whites with non-whites, criminalizing the relationships that some men and women sought out.  For example, until 1948 interracial marriage (that is, marriage between a white and a non-white) was prohibited.  After the law’s repeal, some interracial marriages did occur, but not a lot, and not without consequences (Burma, 587).  Those who participated in interracial marriage opened their personal lives to public scrutiny and found acceptance anywhere to be difficult.  Members of different races entering into relationships made people uncomfortable, they saw this phenomenon as the downfall of society.  However, these interracial relationships, as hard as they were, still occurred everywhere.  Young white girls went on dates with Filipino men, US GIs brought home foreign brides from Japan and Korea, and all the while American culture struggled to accept these different marriages.  Even so, many Americans, born in the US and abroad, continued to spur the constraints of society and partake in these marriages.  This raises the question: were interracial marriages really such a big deal? Or were they just over sensationalized by the sociologists and anthropologists that studied them?  The social scientists, who worked extensively to cover this topic, focused almost exclusively on the relationships between whites and non-whites, since the European population of the US was not much concerned with how minorities lived among each other.  This shows that the majority saw interracial relationships as a social problem, and viewed them as such because they brought about the supposed downfall of the white race.  In particular, many were concerned with the relationships between Filipino men and young white women, who met often in the infamous Taxi Dance Halls. 

            The marriages that came from the Taxi Dance Halls rarely lasted longer than two years. (Cressey, 167).  These unions sprang from the dalliances of the young Filipino immigrants who visited the venue and the women who worked there, selling their dances to the men.  These women were usually young white girls who, had recently left their families and formerly segregated lifestyle.  Why did these marriages occur?  Was it only passing teenage rebellion, or a curiosity for these foreign men?  While all of these may have been the excuses given by disgruntled white parents upset that their daughters were falling for non-white men, the answer may be that these marriages happened because the opportunity was there.  The fact that different races were put together in the Taxi Dance Halls was enough to allow for the mixing of races, whether or not it was socially or legally acceptable.  These Taxi Dance Halls, and the relationships they produced, were “problematic” enough to spur public outcry and sociological studies to come to the root of the issue: that interracial marriages between white women and Filipino men was a step in the downfall of women who eventually succumbed to prostitution.

Attitudes Towards Race

While there were many reasons white Americans were racist towards Filipinos and other immigrants in the first half of the 20^th century, one of the biggest complaints was the mixture of white women with non-white men.  Anthropologists saw this as a rampant social problem.  Researchers on the subject noticed: “A considerable amount of social tension has been created in some communities where such interracial relationships have occurred” (Kirk, 47).  This is in reference to Filipino men and their white wives as they attempted to move into predominately white communities in the 40s.  The more that these relationships came about, the bigger a problem it seemed.  But if the “problem” seemed to be growing, why did the relationships continue to flourish?  Many laws were passed forbidding certain ethnic groups from marrying whites, and social convention certainly looked down on mixing races.  By the 1940s, Taxi Dance Halls and the relationships they produced had been ongoing for a few decades.  Sociologists by this time conducted a lot of research to identify the impetus of the problem.  They pointed to the economic situations, which were not ideal, of the Filipinos as the reason for their relationships with American women.  “At present, circumstances force these young men into a situation which is thoroughly undesirable in every respect, a situation which they themselves would scarcely elect under conditions of freer choice. Underpaid and without permanent employment, they have been exposed to little more than the most seamy side of American life” (Kirk, 48).  The Filipinos, because they were not white, were not given high paying jobs in most situations.  Therefore, they were unable to return home to marry with Filipino women, who were scarce in the U.S.  Because of the lack of Filipino women, they fell in love with the Taxi Hall dancers who flirted with them and made them feel at home, for a price.  The white Americans seemed to hate that Filipinos vied for the American lifestyle and American women, but could not concede to allowing them to have one instead of the other.  That is of course if the reason the Filipino men really wanted American women was because Filipino women were unavailable to them.       Although there were other women (Mexican, African-American, etc) that were available to Filipino men, interracial relationships were only a problem when they took place with White women and Filipino men .  “Although the Marriage License Bureau study did not separately record interracial marriages not including whites, it may be estimated that, if these were included, the total rate of intermarriage of racial groups would be somewhere near 65 per 1o,ooo, or nearly two-thirds of 1 per cent of all marriages” (Burma, 587).  Interracial marriage was occurring between all races, and not only between whites and non-whites.  However, the fact that those unions not including whites were not recorded shows how the government viewed the “problem” of interracial marriage.  It seems that there were two races: white, and everything else.  These numbers show that Filipinos were not simply” preying” on white women, but that all races were mixing with one another to some extent.  However, it was only when these marriages included a white American that  sociologists addressed the problem.

Filipino Workers

The Taxi Dance Hall

            While young white women usually shared the same racist sentiments as their parents, their views changed when they entered the Taxi Dance Halls and were paid to mingle with men of non-European origins.  These taxi hall dancers made their livings by dancing with any man willing to pay.  They were expected to dress nicely, if not extravagantly, and treat their customers as friends.  Paul Cressey, a sociologist who did extensive research on the Taxi Dance Halls in the 1930s, wrote how the first- time dancers expressed a dislike of dancing with any man who was not white.  They were raised to be disgusted with race mixing, and did not want to make their paychecks by flirting with Filipinos and other immigrants.  "But after a time, she ceases to be a novitiate, and must make a deliberate effort to maintain her status.  If she fails and is no longer able to secure sufficient patronage exclusively from the white group, she comes eventually to accept the romantic attentions of Filipinos and other Orientals” (Cressey, 90).  The dancers not only disliked the race mixing, but resisted it for as long as they could.  As new dancers, they were popular and could afford to remain exclusively with white men.  However, as new dancers joined the hall and they became well known, they were no longer special to the white customers.  They had to be friendly with the minorities as well.  Eventually, the girls who remained at the dance halls began to develop relationships with their patrons, and the idea of mixing races no longer bothered them.  Those who were bothered normally returned home, for they could not make a living if they were unwilling to dance with all of the patrons.  Cressey writes of a dancer named Wanda, who, becoming dissatisfied with the life of the dance hall, ran away with a Filipino patron after knowing him for a month and marrying (89).  In an atmosphere where race mixing is accepted and even encouraged by the dance hall owners and the more experienced dancers, white women embraced the idea of developing relationships with men from minority groups.  However, this acceptance only seemed to last as long as the girls remained in this atmosphere.  Another dancer, named May, told of how she felt the same aversion to dancing with foreigners, but after a while considered marrying a Filipino man.  Later, she decided against it and returned to her parents (Cressey, 85).  “They (her friends) were telling about a chop-suey proprietor who had married a white woman.  For some reason, that made me mad, and I started in telling what I thought of anyone who would marry a “Chink.”…I had just realized that only the year before I had seriously considered marrying a Filipino” (Cressey, 86).  Returning to her previous life reignited the racist thoughts she had before she depended on Filipino and Chinese immigrants to make a living.  This shift shows how quickly she changed her opinion of minority men when she no longer lived among them.  Once she was out of the Taxi Dance Hall, she was “fixed” of her socially unacceptable and taboo ideas towards race.  Returning to her parents helped her return to a proper life among her white family.

            Cressey addressed the problem that the Taxi Dance Halls, and ultimately the interracial relationships forged in them, in his study:The Taxi-dance Hall; a Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life.  Here, he discussed what he called “The life cycle of the Taxi Hall Dancer.”  The cycle begins with a young white girl who is disenchanted with her home life.  She runs away and, in order to support herself, takes the job of selling dances.  Because she is new, she is popular and all of the white men want to dance with her.  As she becomes more well known, she must start selling dances to minorities.  This is where she first falls.  As she moves down the social ladder, she eventually becomes too washed out and well known at the taxi dance hall.  She is no longer able to support herself as a dancer, and relies on prostitution to make a living.  Often, this led to drug or alcohol abuse, pregnancy, and a degraded social status (Cressey, 87).  Cressey’s view of the Taxi Dance Hall as a means to eventual prostitution looks unfavorably on interracial relationships as well.  He signifies the “fall” of the dancer with the race of man she sells her dances to.  As she moves down the social ladder from white men to Filipino and Chinese men, she has descended further into social taboo, and come closer to prostitution and a point of no returning to her former life.

Men wait outside of a dance hall

Dancers prepare for work

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

Conclusion

                      The nature of interracial relationships caused complaints in society in the early to mid 20^th century and were seen as a social problem.  Many white Americans did not like the idea of non-whites elevating themselves economically or socially based on their marriages into white society.  Furthermore, the nonwhites had to deal with their own family issues, as interracial marriage was not looked upon favorable by their cultures either.  Truly, those who entered into unions with people of different colors were alone with their spouses against the world as they faced racial slurs and prejudices from all sides.  Their children were not seen as one race or the other, and looked down upon by everyone for their mixture.  Laws forbidding and criminalizing marriages between whites and nonwhites sprang up to fix the social “problem” that arose from the mixing of races due to living in close quarters, yet the marriages persisted.  It seems as though no amount of social demonization of whites marrying the “other” could stop these unions.  Not because of curious teenagers rebelling against their parent’s wishes, not because nonwhites sought to forward their social standings by marrying young white girls, but because when people of any color are put in close proximity with one another, they will talk, dance, begin  relationships, marry, and mate.  These marriages happened because people were there for them to happen.  Although interracial marriages happened, and in some cases successfully, race mixing, in the eyes of the sociologists who studied them, was doomed from the start, and brought about the ruin of young white women.

Works Cited

            Burma, John H. "Research Note on the Measurement of Interracial Marriage." American Journal of Sociology 57.6 (1952): n. pag. Print.

            Cressey, Paul Goalby. The Taxi-dance Hall; a Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life,. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1932. N. pag. Print.

            Kirk, Grayson. "The Filipinos." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 223 (1942): n. pag. Print.

            Panunzio, Constantine. "Intermarriage in Los Angeles, 1924-33." American Journal of Sociology 47.5 (1942): n. pag. Print.