In the early decades of the 20th century, scores of young Filipino men began migrating to the United States to work. In their spare time, they dressed in their best suits and nattiest shoes, then hit the clubs. But when these dance-hall romances blossomed into marriages with white women, the law stepped in to stop them. Central to the plaintiffs’ legal arguments was a dazzling trick question of pure pseudoscience: Was the Filipino a Mongolian… or a Malay?

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The book version of this podcast is called Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales from the Philippine Colonial Period, 1565-1946. ⁠⁠Purchase here⁠⁠. (An ebook version is ⁠⁠also available in Amazon⁠⁠.)

References:

Strandjord, Corinne (2009). “Filipino Resistance to Anti-Miscegenation Laws in Washington State.” Great Depression in Washington State.

https://depts.washington.edu/depress/filipino_anti_miscegenation.shtml

Volpp, Leti (1999-2000). “American Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California.” UC Davis Law Review, 33, 795-835.

Baldoz, Richard (2004). “Valorizing Racial Boundaries: Hegemony and Conflict in the Racialization of Filipino Migrant Labour in the United States.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(6), 969-986.

Aguilar, Filomeno V. (2011). “Filibustero, Rizal, and the Manilamen of the Nineteenth Century.” Philippine Studies, 59(4), 429–469.

Johnson, Stefanie (2005). “Blocking Racial Intermarriage Laws in 1935 and 1937.” The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/antimiscegenation.htm

Wilkerson, Isabel (2020). ‎Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Random House

Desmond-Harris, Jenée and Caswell, Estelle (13 January 2015). “The myth of race, debunked in 3 minutes.” Vox. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/13/7536655/race-myth-debunked

“Filipino Contract Laborers in Hawaii.” 1926. Monthly Labor Review 24(4), 4-9.