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Textbook American Mestizos The Philippines and The Malleability of Race 1898 1961 1St Edition Nicholas Trajano Molnar Ebook All Chapter PDF
Textbook American Mestizos The Philippines and The Malleability of Race 1898 1961 1St Edition Nicholas Trajano Molnar Ebook All Chapter PDF
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American Mestizos,
the Philippines, and the
Malleability of Race
1898–1961
American Mestizos,
the Philippines, and the
Malleability of Race
1898–1961
ISBN: 978-0-8262-2122-3
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2017930380
Typeface: Jenson
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction
American Mestizos and the Malleability of Race
3
Chapter 1
Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines
White and Black Bachelor Colonization and
Initial Reactions to the Emergence of the American Mestizos
11
Chapter 2
Picaninnies, Plump American Babies, and Abandoned Half-Castes
Early Racializations of the American Mestizos in the
United States and the Philippines
25
Chapter 3
Leonard Wood and the American Guardian Association
Resolving the American Mestizo “Problem” in the Philippines
51
Chapter 4
Reactions to the Concept of the American
Mestizo in the United States
79
v
vi ✴ Contents
Chapter 5
American, American Mestizo, or Filipino?
Enrique Hagedorn, A. M. Snook, and American Mestizo
Identities in the Philippine Commonwealth
109
Chapter 6
Race and Resistance
Luis Morgan, William Tate, and American
Mestizo Identities during World War II
123
Chapter 7
The American Mestizo in the Republic of the Philippines
139
Conclusion
Non-Coalesced Groups and the “Disappearance”
of the American Mestizo
155
Notes
161
Bibliography
185
Index
193
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Ginny Yans, John Whiteclay Chambers II, Allan Isaac,
Matt Matsuda, Kathy Lopez, Gary Kass, and the two anonymous peer review-
ers for their guidance in the preparation of this manuscript. Without their help,
advice, and criticism at critical points, completing American Mestizos would not
have been possible.
The Mark C. Stevens Fellowship from the Bentley Historical Library and the
Jacob M. Price Visiting Research Fellowship from the William L. Clements Li-
brary allowed me to conduct crucial research at the University of Michigan. The
Filipino Heritage Fellowship from the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Insti-
tute at the University of Wisconsin provided me with intensive Filipino/Taga-
log language training in preparation to conduct research and communicate with
people abroad. Sponsorship from the Ateneo Center for Asian Studies at Ate-
neo de Manila University and the Michael J. Hogan Foreign Language Fellow-
ship from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations allowed me
access to important archives with unique documents in the Philippines. At the
National Archives, Rebecca Sharp and William Creech reviewed and provided
new leads into the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service’s files,
which allowed me to incorporate important personal narratives into the manu-
script. David Holbrook provided help delving into the holdings at the Dwight
D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archivists David D’Onofrio at the United
States Naval Academy and Valerie Addonizio at Johns Hopkins gave insight into
tracking missing files with their knowledge of how their profession operates. Spe-
cial thanks to all the archivists and librarians who assisted me in my research
throughout the previous decade.
I would also like to thank my colleagues across various fields and institu-
tions who have fostered my intellectual and professional growth by asking
vii
viii ✴ Acknowledgments
T he histories of the Philippines and the United States have been directly
intertwined since 1898, most dramatically when the two peoples first came into
sustained direct contact in the aftermath of the brief Spanish-American War and
the more protracted Philippine-American War. The islands would not simply be
an adjunct to the burgeoning American military and economic empire in the
twentieth century, but a place where the colonizer and colonized would construct
new identities. Social interaction between “bachelor colonials,” American males
dressed in military and civilian garb, and Filipinas resulted in a population of
children of mixed parentage. Observers in the Philippines, influenced by cen-
turies of contact with Spain and more recent contact with the United States,
referred to this progeny as the “American mestizos.” The concept of an American
mestizo was alien to the new colonizers, for they were familiar with an evolving
but more rigid color line in the United States that placed whites on one side and
“colored” peoples on the other.1
American Mestizos, the Philippines, and the Malleability of Race is an examina-
tion of the American mestizos who lived in the Philippines from the Spanish-
American War to the aftermath of World War II, a period in which the islands
went from American colony to an independent nation closely allied with the
US. In one very important sense, this study adds a previously undocumented
byproduct of American political and military hegemony to the burgeoning histo-
riography of the Philippines and United States.2 Although the population of the
American mestizos was substantial compared to the American civilian commu-
nity in the Philippines, it was minuscule compared to the overall Filipino pop-
ulation, with the result being that no scholarly studies exist that fully analyze
and historicize this group. While official censuses conducted in 1903, 1918, and
1939 contain extensive data on the majority of the inhabitants in the Philippines,
3
4 ✴ Introduction
a population that does not keep diaries, write autobiographies or memoirs, and
does not even identify themselves as “American mestizos”? This study analyzes
self-ascribed racializations of the American mestizos which the evidence suggests
may have occurred on some level. This study seeks to reconstruct the lived expe-
riences of the American mestizos, using anecdotal accounts from Americans and
Filipinos and personal letters from individuals who identified themselves as such,
engaging the available primary sources and seeking to give voices to a population
whose records are scattered in obscure references in archives across the world.
By recovering and analyzing these documents, we can peek into the lives of the
American mestizos, exploring possible shifts in self-ascribed identities from the
Spanish-American War until the immediate post World War II era.
The concept of the American mestizo and the fluid Philippine racial frame-
work challenged notions of race common in the American racial landscape in the
early twentieth century. Contact with the Philippines led to an assimilation of
Filipino racial ideas among American expatriates, who in turn created their own
colonialized concepts of race and nationality that they exposed to others within
their social circles in the United States. In the Philippines, a binary of whites
and non-whites did not exist, for the islands’ history was not impacted by Afri-
can slavery. The American racial landscape could not be transplanted to its col-
onies without being altered in some way. Despite efforts to mold the Philippines
socially and culturally, American concepts of race were adapted to the Filipino
racial hierarchy immediately after sustained contact, resulting in the creation of
hybridized racial concepts never before seen in that context. Although “the na-
tion’s historic treatment of African Americans has been the touchstone for its
treatment of all racialized Others,” in this case white Americans subscribed to a
hybridized concept of race which mirrored the Philippine racial hierarchy.9 These
hybridized ideas were transported to the United States by expatriate Americans
returning from the Philippines. Under certain historical conditions, American
expatriates showed the ability not to just project their ideas upon other places and
peoples, but to be projected upon.
This work seeks to make a contribution on a theoretical level to the study
of race in the United States and its former colonies. A question that concerns
many contemporary scholars who study racial formation is how to determine
what causes a racial group to coalesce. These scholars have identified numerous
historical processes and actors that lead to group formation, including “govern-
mental and organizational routines of social counting and accounting,” “outside
racial pressures” from a politically or culturally dominant group, and ethnic and
political entrepreneurs who stimulate a sense of self-ascribed identity through
“invented traditions” that are embraced within the community. Contemporary
6 ✴ Introduction
literature seeks to explain by what means racial identity is created and main-
tained.10 This study analyzes racial formation from another angle, exploring why
a distinct group identity never coalesced among the American mestizos despite
the presence of similar economic, historical, and social forces that have clearly led
to racial formation in other groups.
In keeping with the work of sociologist Rogers Brubaker and others, this work
concerns itself with “the variability in groupness over time,” applying this theo-
ry to transnational racial identities. This study treats imposed and self-ascribed
identity “as a ‘process,’ not a ‘thing.’” The Philippine racial and national frame-
work, as historian Paul Kramer illustrates, was malleable, undergoing a series of
dramatic changes during the American colonial period.11 This study contributes
and expands upon our understandings of this era, exploring in-depth how the
Philippine racial structure impacted American concepts of “white,” “black,” and
“brown,” eventually leading to the creation of the hybridized and flexible racial
concept of the “American mestizo.” Through the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury, imposed racializations of the American mestizos by actors in both regions
shifted due to changing political, economic, and cultural factors. Self-ascribed
identities would be invented, too. This study seeks to explore these inventions
and the complex, ever-changing historical factors that must be taken into account
when studying these moments of creation. There was not one racialization of the
American mestizo, but many, all of which emerged from different experiences,
histories, and worldviews. These imposed racializations and self-ascribed identi-
ties coexisted; in some cases they even clashed with one another.
American Mestizos explores these complicated and underexplored topics in
a narrative mode, designed to engage both specialists and non-specialists alike.
A chronological and regional focus is used throughout the chapters to create a
more readable narrative while still allowing thoughtful analysis. The study be-
gins by exploring the development of the “mestizo” category in the Philippine
racial structure prior to the arrival of the Americans, the product of centuries
of Spanish state intervention and Chinese immigration. Using the most recent
scholarship on the Chinese mestizos, Chapter 1 explores how the long history of
state enforced racial categories by the Spanish state ultimately led to the creation
of a subsuming Filipino national identity in opposition to the colonizers.12 The
American mestizos’ physical emergence after the Spanish-American War and
Philippine-American War will be documented in this chapter. Imposed racial-
izations of the American mestizos from different strata of American and Filipino
societies will be explored in Chapter 2. State intervention—such as providing
families of American mestizo children with their own homesteads in the south-
ernmost islands of the Philippines—would be taken in order to alleviate a per-
ceived social problem in the colonial state.
Introduction ✴ 7
had occurred due to the lack of physical contact between the colonized and the
colonizer—and advocated by prominent Americans, including Presidents Wil-
liam Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Major General Leonard
Wood, and dozens of other influential politicians.
Americans in other regions of the United States, particularly the West Coast,
proved to have varied attitudes toward colonial migrants due to their contact with
thousands of Filipino laborers whom they perceived as a threat to their women
and economic livelihoods. Experiences with Filipino bachelor immigrants in Cal-
ifornia, Oregon, and Washington informed how American residents there would
theorize and receive the American mestizo. Clashing imposed racializations of
this group—one arguing the American mestizos were civilized white Anglo-
Saxon proxies and should not be discriminated against, the other arguing that
they were the products of illicit liaisons and belonged with non-whites on the
other side of the shifting racial binary—encountered each other in the continen-
tal United States, doppelgangers of one another.
Chapters 5 and 6 will explore imposed racializations of the American mesti-
zos in the Philippines from the 1930s and 1940s, and seek to ascertain the self-
ascribed identities of the maturing American mestizo population. The Filipino
Repatriation Act, passed in 1935, brought a handful of children with Filipino
fathers and American-born mothers to the islands. Through research in the Unit-
ed States Immigration and Naturalization Service files, scholarly studies, and
anecdotal data on this group, I will explore whether the American mestizos saw
themselves as racially distinct from the overall Filipino population. Academic
questions, however, would take a back seat to the calamity that was to befall the
Philippines during the Japanese invasion of the islands in late 1941. In the pyre
of the Second World War, Filipinos, Americans, and American mestizos fought
together against a common foe aimed at military and cultural domination of the
Philippines. The self-ascribed identities of the American mestizos during this
tragic conflict will be further explored.
The final chapter examines the redefinition of the American mestizos after
World War II to include both the offspring of black and white Americans, an
imposed racialization that took hold in the Philippines even among the expa-
triate community which had previously rejected this. With the vanquishing of
the Japanese, the Philippines became a major launching point for American mil-
itary forces during the Cold War that engulfed Asia. A group of racially mixed
children with American serviceman fathers and Filipina mothers were born in
the newly independent Philippines. Expatriate Americans racialized the “G.I.
children,” as contemporaries called them, as the second generation of Ameri-
can mestizos. However, it was clear that a self-ascribed racial identity had never
Introduction ✴ 9
The mixture is that of the brown people with the Chinese, Spaniards, and,
in recent years, to a trifling extent with Americans.
—Census of the Philippine Islands: 1903, Volume 2
I n 1898, with the conclusion of the Spanish-American War and the signing
of the Treaty of Paris, the United States acquired its first colonies in the Pacific,
paying the sum of 20 million dollars for the Philippine islands. Men from the
United States, dressed in military and civilian garb, came in large numbers to
govern and administer the new colony for the next five decades. The influx of
American men on the colonial Philippine mission in the early twentieth century
led to fears at home that their interactions with Filipinas would result in mixed-
race American-Filipino children. This chapter explores the physical emergence
of this population in the aftermath of conflict and how these individuals were
initially interpreted by inhabitants of the islands and the Americans who arrived
there. Historical background on the period and, in particular, the Filipino racial
schema, will provide the reader with the necessary context to understand how
concepts of race created in the Philippines were borrowed, altered in accordance
with American views of race, and reapplied.
11
12 ✴ Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines
American schoolteacher who resided in the islands, the natives were “ just like the
niggers,. . . a colored race with the baser natures and the natural tendencies to
evil.”1 If the American “one-drop rule” were applied to the emerging population
of mixed race children, Filipino blood would overwhelm American blood, cre-
ating a population of degenerate backward savages. But the “one-drop rule” had
no analogous cultural or legal status in the Philippines where the actual mixing
was taking place. Formulated under an entirely different set of historical circum-
stances, the islands’ racial understandings and hierarchy evolved from exposure
to centuries of Spanish colonization, waxing and waning waves of Chinese im-
migration, and the more recent Filipino nationalism, not a history of slavery and
the “color line.” Philippine racial identifications would initially be applied to the
children of mixed race, with racial identifications of American origin having little
applicability.
By the 1900s, the myriad of racial and ethnic designations used in the Philip-
pines had evolved to include a separate classification for multi-racial individuals,
that of the “mestizo.” This racial grouping in the Philippines, born from unique
interactions between indigenous Filipinos and a variety of Asian and European
groups, produced complex and fluid racial categories and relations far removed
from the American binary paradigm of whites and non-whites. Before 1900, defi-
nitions of who was a mestizo fluctuated dramatically depending on the locale and
class of the individual. The fluidity of this category was immediately apparent to
census takers as they compiled the first American census of the Philippines. “To
the Spaniards, a person by descent from a Filipino mother and a Chinese father
was known as a mestizo,” it was noted in the first volume of the 1903 Census of the
Philippine Islands. However, there were many variations to this category, for if
the individual had “a Spanish father and a Filipino mother he was called Espanol
Filipino” and “if the father were any other foreigner the person was regarded as a
Filipino or Indio.”2 Racial admixture on some level did not automatically result in
classification of individuals as mestizos in the Philippines, and this malleability
would continue throughout the American colonial experience.
During the hundreds of years of Spanish rule of the Philippines, two types of
mestizo came to be widely recognized: the Spanish mestizo and the Chinese mes-
tizo, the offspring of colonial and immigrant males partnering with the resident
indigenous Filipinas. With the coming of a new colonizer after the brief Spanish-
American War and the much longer and brutal Philippine-American War, a new
type of mestizo would emerge almost immediately. “Since American occupation
the practice has arisen of calling all persons of foreign fathers by Filipino mothers
mestizos,” noted Major General J. P. Sanger, director of the 1903 census.3 Thus,
the American mestizo, a product of American colonization and the Filipino ra-
cial hierarchy, was born.
Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines ✴ 13
The American mestizo entered a scene where certain rules and understandings
of racial interactions and mixing had already taken form. The emergence of the
mestizo as a distinct category began with the Spanish colonial regime in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries. With the overall population of the Philippines
ranging from four to five million people during this period, the Spanish state of-
ficially recognized four racial groups: the Spanish colonizers/Spanish mestizos,
the Chinese immigrants, the indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines (referred
to then as Indios), and the Chinese mestizos. The Chinese mestizos, estimated
to be around 250,000 individuals, were recognized as culturally distinct from
Chinese immigrants and from the indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines. The
small minority of Spanish mestizos, estimated to be under 10,000 individuals,
identified politically and culturally with Spain.4 A certain degree of fluidity was
allowed, for those of mixed race who were not assigned to or did not personally
identify with any particular mestizo group often became absorbed into either the
Indio, Chinese, or Spanish category—not a generic mestizo category—if there
were no social, political, or economic barriers to their assimilation. Thus, there
were many possibilities of imposed and self-ascribed identities for a mestizo of
any type before the arrival of the Americans. The local arrangements regarding
race and racial assimilation were just as complex, if not more so, than they were
in the United States. Americans would encounter the complexity of the evolving
Filipino racial schema, and attempt to interpret it through their own lenses, upon
their arrival to the islands in 1898.5
“We come not as invaders or conquerors,” President William McKinley told
the Filipinos after the Spanish abandoned their colonial possession, “but as
friends,” declaring that “the mission of the United States is one of benevolent
assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.”
McKinley declared that Filipinos who cooperated with their new overseers “will
receive the reward of support and protection,” but those who did not would “be
brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be.”6 In
1899, when violence broke out between American troops and Filipino national-
ists who demanded independence, McKinley’s declaration was backed with the
“firmness” of the US Army’s rifles and artillery.
Rhetoric for the war and occupying the islands only intensified after the initial
skirmish. “The Philippines are ours forever, ‘territory belonging to the United
States,’” Senator Alfred Beveridge declared to his colleagues in the chambers of
the US Senate in 1900 after the conflict had already escalated to new heights.
“We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient,” the young senator from
Indiana would go on to proclaim. “We will not renounce our part in the mission
of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world.” 7 The Philippine-
American War would officially rage on for three years, and unofficially—with
14 ✴ Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines
low intensity and sporadic conflict—for as long as fifteen, with the United States
scrambling to deploy 125,000 troops across the Pacific Ocean to combat the Fil-
ipinos, dwarfing the number of soldiers used by its military during the Spanish-
American War.8 The imperialistic “mission” in the Pacific would become one of
the deadliest foreign conflicts in the history of the United States. The Americans
suffered over 7000 dead and wounded in the first two years of the war when the
bloodiest fighting took place, while the Filipinos suffered at least 250,000 casual-
ties, the majority being civilians who died of disease and deprivation as a result of
US Army relocation and internment policies, which bore striking similarities to
American military policy towards indigenous populations on the North Ameri-
can continent in the last half of the nineteenth century.9
American occupation immediately followed the quelling of major Philippine
nationalist resistance in the early twentieth century and would continue for the
next half century. Working with friendly Filipino politicians on both the local
and national levels, Americans became directly involved in the Philippine econ-
omy, accelerating the expansion of cash crop production and the extraction of
natural resources while providing, in the words of sociologist Julian Go, a “polit-
ical education” meant “to set up a tutelary regime that would serve to teach . . .
Filipinos the ways of American-style self government.”10 The expansion of this
direct American involvement in Filipino political and economic life began a pro-
cess I refer to here as “bachelor colonization.” Simply put, the influx of Americans
in the islands in the early twentieth century was overwhelmingly male. The first
wave of bachelor colonization included Admiral Dewey’s sailors, who landed in
Manila beginning in May 1898. The large influx of the male US Army soldiers
and support units who arrived during the Philippine-American War and stayed
in its aftermath quickly followed. Merchant mariners, educators, businessmen,
and colonial administrators, of which 85 percent were male, came to the islands
after the war to oversee the various sectors of Philippine life which they sought
to exploit, nourish, and transform. Over the course of the American colonial ex-
perience, there would never be a balance between American males and American
females in the Philippines.11
While the vast majority of American ground forces departed the islands after
the official end of the Philippine-American War in 1902, hundreds of men made
the decision to live the remainder of their lives as civilians in the Philippines.12
Bachelor colonization led to numerous sexual interactions with Filipinas, result-
ing in American-Filipino children soon thereafter.13 While new for the American
colonizers, for the Filipinos the formation of an American “mestizo” popula-
tion was nothing novel to the islands, as there were already mixtures of Chi-
nese, Filipino, and Spanish residing there, the products of centuries of cultural
Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines ✴ 15
and sexual intermingling. Many Americans were well aware of the widespread
miscegenation—as contemporary observers would call it—that had taken place
in the Philippines prior to their arrival. Anti-imperialist G. S. Clarke, writing to
Alfred Thayer Mahan, proponent of the devastatingly effective “New Navy” used
to destroy the Spanish Caribbean Squadron and its Pacific Squadron in Manila
Bay, wrote, for example, “it is most natural that Americans should feel chary of
accepting responsibilities over the destinies of 8,000,000 people of somewhat
mixed nationalities.”14
American interpretations of data taken from the first census seemed to confirm
these suspicions. According to the American classification system used to calcu-
late the residents of the newly acquired islands, there were 7 million “Browns,”
42,000 “Yellows,” 14,000 “Whites,” 1000 “Blacks,” and 15,000 “Mixed” people
in the Philippines in the early twentieth century.15 “There is little doubt that the
proportion of mixture of races was much greater,” census compilers elaborated
in the section of the volumes which explained how the colors of the population
were tabulated. “Much of this mixture dates back to past generations, and it is
presumable that the present inhabitants have no knowledge of their ancestors.”16
Historian Peggy Pascoe illustrates that “the concept of ‘miscegenation’ was woven
into the fabric of American law and society” during this period, with many white
Americans believing it was “unnatural” and “immoral.”17 Incorporating a nation
of various “colors” and mixed-race peoples within the empire would be a tough
sell for those concerned with maintaining the proper hue of the United States.
Any American who entered the Philippines as part of the colonial effort would
recognize that the racial structure in place was completely alien to anything they
could have imagined. American soldiers and colonial administrators with no pri-
or contact would learn that the racial and social hierarchy in the islands was a
result of a complex interplay between Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino concepts
of race and nationality. For centuries following Chinese bachelor immigration,
there had been a substantial number of Chinese mestizos present in the Philip-
pines. The Chinese mestizos had set many precedents for the myriad of possibil-
ities for mestizo integration into the Filipino racial structure; they were the most
dynamic of the mestizo groups in the Philippines, the one that demonstrated the
varied possibilities for racialization of the American mestizos in the aftermath of
the Philippine-American War. The Chinese and their Chinese mestizo progeny
had been integral to the life and economy of the Philippines for generations; by
the early twentieth century, many Chinese mestizos were absorbed into Filipino
society as either Chinese or Filipinos. There were other, more fluid options avail-
able as well. First-generation Chinese mestizos, of which there were many at the
turn of the century, made “ethnic choices;” historian Richard Chu demonstrates,
16 ✴ Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines
by following the lives of individual Chinese mestizos, that these identities are
“better understood as multiple, constantly shifting, and ambiguous.”18 Thus,
there were many possibilities for the American mestizo if the Chinese model of
assimilation were to be emulated.19 It was yet to be seen what path the American
mestizo group would take, or if they would follow these precedents at all.
While there are clear similarities, there were significant differences between
American bachelor colonization and Chinese bachelor immigration that made
it impossible for the American mestizos to strictly follow the precedents set by
the Chinese mestizo population. The American community in the Philippines,
unlike that of the Chinese, was far from homogeneous. Most immigrants from
China hailed from the coastal province of Fukien, geographically the closest Chi-
nese region to the Philippines.20 Kinship-based chain migration was responsible
for the majority of Chinese immigrants who came to the islands after 1900. The
“Chinese” language spoken in the Philippines and used in the day-to-day lives of
the Chinese immigrant community was not Mandarin, the official written and
spoken language of Qing Dynasty China, but the Hokkien dialect.21
In comparison, while speaking amongst themselves a mutually understand-
able English language, the American bachelor colonials were geographically and
racially diverse, made up of peoples from across every class and region in the
United States. Colonization, not chain migration, brought them to the islands.
Poor soldiers and businessmen did not call for their families to migrate to the
Philippines, and for the few that would even consider it, geographic distance re-
mained a deterrent. The presence of blacks, believed by their white compatriots
to be racially and culturally inferior, was the most significant difference between
the American and Chinese populations who arrived in the Philippines. Ameri-
can bachelor colonization brought two separate racial conceptions to the islands;
this demographic reality resulted in the imposition of the American racial binary
upon would-be mestizos. While it is impossible to track all African Americans
who arrived in the islands, we know from military records that the largest wave of
blacks came to the Philippines as part of the American effort to subdue Filipino
nationalist resistance, with nearly 7000 serving in various units of the US ground
forces between 1899 and 1902.22
In the words of historian Edward Coffman, blacks “who went to the Philip-
pines found that white Americans had already firmly established the color line.”23
Many white soldiers and civilians referred to both the Filipinos and blacks as
“niggers.” The islands were seen by some American politicians as a dumping
ground for blacks and the solution to the “Negro Problem” in the southern Unit-
ed States. Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama proposed that the Army garrison
the islands with black troops whom he hoped would stay in the tropics after they
were discharged, never to return to North America. Although this plan never
Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines ✴ 17
became a reality due to opposition by the Army and the African American com-
munity, many blacks stayed behind in the Philippines after their military service
was completed, settling in regions adjacent to former bases and outposts.
Over a thousand former black soldiers, somewhere in the vicinity of 15 to 20
percent of all those who served in the Philippines during the war, opted to stay in
the islands, citing better economic and social opportunities due to the lack of in-
stitutionalized racial prejudice.24 Blacks in the Philippines often began new lives,
raising families or living with women identified as Filipinas. Poor Filipinas who
lived with American men benefited economically from these interracial relation-
ships, as soldiers’ and administrators’ stable jobs and wages provided steady, reli-
able income in a local economy ruined by the Philippine-American War. George
Priouleau, chaplain of a segregated African American infantry unit in the Phil-
ippines, reported to a local black newspaper in the United States the numerous
marriages he was asked to perform between African American servicemen and
native women. At the turn of the century, Priouleau informed his American read-
ers, “My second marriage ceremony was that of a corporal . . . and a native woman,
and before this will reach you, I will perform my third.”25 An American school-
teacher in Tacloban personally saw the development of one of these relationships,
remarking that “one of the best of our high school girls married a negro sergeant.”
The Filipina decided that life at Camp Bumpers, an American military installa-
tion, would be better than life in the postwar countryside, and left her home to
live with the black soldier. The young couple caught flak from both blacks and
Filipinos for the marriage, with a black dressmaker at the base telling the sergeant
“we’s gwine ostracize her,” and a Filipino objecting to the wedding “because such
weddings tend to darken the race which is dark enough already.”26
White observers were not blind to the emerging relationships between blacks
and Filipinas. American schoolteacher Mary Scott Cole, who had taken resi-
dence in the Philippines after coming to the islands abroad the transport Thomas,
noted in a letter to her relatives the arrival of an African American dinner guest
in 1902. Using language typical of white Americans at the time, she remarked,
“Just as we had finished dinner, a big black American nigger drove up. . . . We gave
him his dinner and it tickled him pretty much.” More appalling to Cole than her
guest’s skin color was what she learned about him over their shared meal. “He has
been over here about 4 yrs. and has a Filipino wife and child. I did not know this
until after he had his dinner or I don’t believe I would have given it to him. I don’t
suppose he is any better than the rest of these niggers.”27
Whites noted that black civilians in the Philippines, who most often came to
the islands aboard merchant ships, had become involved with Filipinas as well.
One white schoolteacher remembered “an old negro teamster” who hung around
the bars of Manila, asking passers-by for a dime “to buy a beverage stronger than
18 ✴ Drawing the “Color Line” in the Philippines
either tea or coffee.” “When his first child was born to him out of wedlock,” the
observer remarked after talking to the teamster, “he looked at it and said, ‘Dat
chile ain’t no mestizeer.’” According to the schoolteacher, “all of the mestizo chil-
dren that the old darky had ever seen were light in color, and notwithstanding
his own ebony skin, he had been looking forward to a mestizo, or a light child.”28
White Americans sometimes criticized blacks who raised families with Filipi-
nas after the war. Frank Cheney, a schoolteacher hailing from Kentucky, penned
many poems during his time in the islands, covering a whole gamut of topics from
Chinese shop-owners, cooks, and gamblers to corrupt government officials. One
of the topics he covered with his lighthearted and satiric verse was the life of black
servicemen who were discharged in the Philippines. Following Cheney’s poem
line by line reveals much about what the early twentieth century Philippines was
like for African Americans, their white observers, and Filipinos, all of whom,
after the Philippine-American War, lived in close proximity with one another.
Cheney began his poem, “Brown of the Volunteers,” with a commentary on the
racial diversity he saw in the islands, writing:
The schoolteacher goes on to describe the origins of Private Brown, who was
representative of many of the African American soldiers sent to the Philip-
pines to quell what the United States War Department called the “Philippine
Insurrection:”
Brown, like a number of his fellow servicemen, remained in the islands after
his tour of duty was completed:
48. 999⁄9.
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57. The year before was 1870; the year following was 1870, too.
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67. Translate the fourth and fifth “suis,” follow. “Suis” comes from
suivre, as well as from être.
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76. Noon.
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79.
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80.
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84. Nescio. Ik weet niet. Je ne sais pas. No sà. Non so. Ich weiss
nicht. Ninis cume. I dinna ken. I DON’T KNOW!
Professor Robinson in his Algebra attempts it, but not
satisfactorily, so long as letters may be made to represent any
number, or any other number, at discretion. Let us call it in this
particular phase—(unfortunately it has others),—the Matrimonial
Equation: “For, these two are one.”
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86. He lost four dollars and the actual cost of the boots.
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87.
5 herring @ 2d. = 10d.
1 “ @½ =½
6 “ @ ¼ = 1½
— ——
12 “ 12d.
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88. Endless.
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90. Onion.
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91. Advice.
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96. “If the grate be empty, put coal on. If the grate be full, stop
putting coal on.” So said one, but another replied “How can I put coal
on, when there is such a high fender?”
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102. The Image that Michal put in David’s bed. I Samuel, ch. xix.
Douay version, xix ch. I Kings.
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104. The man who thanked Heaven was the lady’s father.
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105. “That man” was the rhymer’s son.
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106. Hirsute.
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110. Novice.
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112. Crabbe. “ “ “
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113. Bryant. “ “ “
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114. Gray. “ “ “
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115. Beecher. “ “ “
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116. Homer.
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117. Hood.
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118. Southey.
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119. Coleridge.
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120. Goldsmith.
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121. Humboldt.
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122. Mulock.
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123. Lowell.
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124. Virgil.
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125. Akenside.
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126. Wordsworth.
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127. Steele.
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128. Shakespeare.
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129. Cowper.
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130. WILLis.
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132. Landon.
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133. Landor.
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135. Walpole.
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136. Palmerston.
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137. Russell.
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138. Lytton.
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139. Carlyle.
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140. Seward.
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141. W(h)ittier.
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142. Chatter(t)on.
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145. A draft.
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column; h the tongue; i the eye-balls, &c., jjj the stirrup, anvil and
hammer (bones of the ear,) k locks (of hair).
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152. Truant.
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153. Scarecrow.
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154. Intimate.
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155. Codicil.
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157. Sixteen (those who were blind of both eyes, were also blind
of one eye, &c.)
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163. Unquestionably.
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165. Columbus.
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166. Met-a-physician.
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167. Sackcloth.
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174. Yesterday.
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181. Postage.
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183. Strawberry.
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184. A Mushroom.
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185. Fault.
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186. A ditch.
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188. Short.
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189. A pillow.
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190. Advice.
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193. Hemlock.
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198. B natural.
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199. B sharp.
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201. Nameless.
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202. He “cut it too little”; that is, he did not cut it enough.
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203. TOBACCO.
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204. Because of the sandwiches (sand which is) there.
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205. How did the sandwiches get there? Ans. There Ham dwelt,
and there his descendants were bred and mustered (bread and
mustard.)
206. Was there any butter on the sandwiches? Ans. No; Ham
took only his wife; he took none of his family BUT her.
207. His was made of Gophir wood, and they are made to go for
wood.
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212. The third gave it her ring, which Puss couldn’t eat.
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