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by Rodel Rodis
April 4, 2011
The Republican Party – otherwise known as the GOP (“Grand Old Party”) – has made significant inroads in the Filipino American community to the consternation of the Democratic Party activists who have supported the community on issues from immigration reform to the fight for Filipino WW II veterans equity.
But many of the 4 million Filipinos in the US, especially among those physicians who have prospered because of opportunities provided by the Democrats, have joined the GOP because of its anti-tax and anti-welfare message. They apparently identify more with what they now have and want to protect rather than what they used to not have.
While economic issues may attract Filipinos to the GOP, social issues like the GOP’s attitude towards interracial marriage may prove a turn-off.
According to a new poll conducted by the North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling (PPP) and released on April 8, 2011, 46 per cent of Mississippi Republicans believe interracial marriage should be banned. Only 40 percent said it should be permitted. The poll showed Sarah Palin as the clear presidential favorite among GOP voters who oppose interracial marriage.
The GOP position on this issue may cause even wealthy Filipinos, many of whose children are in interracial marriages, to reconsider their Republican affiliation as Filipinos have embraced interracial marriage more than any other minority community in the US.
FILIPINO-AMERICAN PRODUCTS
Consider that the most prominent Filipino celebrities in the US are products of interracial marriages: Cheryl Burke of Dancing with the Stars is the daughter of Sherry Bautista and Steve Burke; S.F. Giants star pitcher Tim Lincecum is the son of Rebecca Asis and Chris Lincecum; True Grit Oscar best supporting actress nominee Hailee Steinfeld is the daughter of Cheri Domasin and Peter Steinfeld; and two-time Olympic diving gold medal winner (1948 London Olympics) Victoria Manalo Draves is the daughter of Gertrude Taylor and Teofilo Manalo.
Consider further that Black-Eyed Peas’ star Allan Pineda Lindo (Apl de Ap), the son of an African American airman and a Filipino mother, Christine Pineda, celebrates his Filipino roots in songs (The Apl Song and Bebot) and regular appearances at Filipino community events. Masters’ golf sensation Jason Day told an interviewer: “I’m half Filipino on my mum’s side – she’s from a small town near Manila, I’m not sure exactly where. I grew up eating some Filipino food.”
During the congressional lobbying for passage of the Filipino Veterans’ Equity Bill, prominent Filipino American Hollywood stars traveled all the way to Washington DC to testify in support of Filipino WW II veterans including Lou Diamond Phillips, Tia Carrera and Rob Schneider, all products of interracial marriages.
Next generation stars like Vanessa Hudgens, Nicole Scherzinger (nee Nicole Mariano), Darren Criss (Glee) and Bruno Mars take pride in their Filipino roots.
According to Philippine government statistics, 6,387 Filipinos were married abroad in 2004. Of this number, 72.9 percent (4,653) were interracial marriages.
It has been 44 years since the US Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 ruled that state laws banning interracial marriages were unconstitutional overturning the laws in 17 states, including Mississippi, which still prohibited marriages between whites and non-whites. It was a long way from 1776 when seven out of the original 13 colonies that founded the United States had laws outlawing interracial marriages.
HISTORY OF FIL-AM INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES
From 1906 to 1925, more than 150, 000 Filipinos were brought to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland to work in the agricultural fields. The gender ratio was 14 males to 1 female with many of the Filipinas coming as spouses making the ratio of single Filipinos to single Filipinas even greater.
The absence of eligible Pinays caused Pinoys to date eligible women of other races. When they dated white women, all hell broke loose. In 1930, 400 white men in Watsonville, California attacked a Filipino dance hall where Filipino men were dancing with white women, causing many Filipinos to be savagely beaten and one shot to death.
Laws banning intermarriages of whites to blacks, mulattos and Mongolians, called Anti-Miscegenation laws, were enacted in California since 1850. By the 1920s, it was not clear whether Filipinos were included in this ban.
When a Filipino applied for a marriage license to marry his white fiancée in Los Angeles in 1925, the clerk refused to issue one claiming that Filipinos were included in the ban. This interpretation was challenged but a judge upheld the clerk’s position by finding that “the Filipino is a Malay and the Malay is a Mongolian. Hence, it is my view that under the code of California as it now exists, intermarriage between a Filipino and a Caucasian would be void.”
About 5 years later, another Filipino, Salvador Roldan, applied for a marriage license to marry Marjorie Rogers and once again, the Los Angeles County clerk denied his application so he challenged it in court and argued that Filipinos were Malays and not Mongolians. Once again, the Court denied his application so he appealed it.
In 1933, the California appellate court reversed the lower court decision on the grounds that the state legislature did not have Filipinos in mind when it prohibited Mongolians from marrying white persons. If it wanted to prohibit the marriage of Filipino and white persons, the court noted, then it would have to pass a law that explicitly did so. In that same year, the California legislature explicitly made its intention clear when it amended its anti-miscegenation law to include “members of the Malay race”.
In 1948, the California Supreme Court, in the case of Perez v, Sharp, in a 4-3 split decision, declared California’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional and in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
In his majority decision, California Chief Justice Roger Traynor rejected the state’s arguments that “ the prohibition of intermarriage between Caucasians and members of the specified races prevents the Caucasian race from being contaminated by races whose members are by nature physically and mentally inferior to Caucasians”; that statistics proved the “physical inferiority of certain races” and that “Negroes, and impliedly the other races specified in section 60, are inferior mentally to Caucasians.”
The O in GOP may stand for “Old” but it should be for “Obsolete” like its ideas on interracial marriages.
(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 415.334.7800).