A Not So Little 13-Letter Word

I’m referring, of course, to the word “miscegenation.” It’s one that comes up fairly often in my research on Anna May Wong. For the uninitiated, Merriam-Webster defines miscegenation as “a mixture of races,” especially when referring to “marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.”

Anna May Wong was born and lived in California, where mestizo culture once flourished under Spanish rule. Although Spanish society was ruled by a racial caste system, it afforded space for mixed unions and their offspring. When California was inducted into the Union in 1850, anti-miscegenation laws were passed almost immediately, criminalizing interracial relationships. In the eyes of many Americans, it was the obligation of the government to regulate who one could and could not love. That may seem like a shocking intrusion into the lives of private citizens to us in the 21st century, but it’s really not that much of a stretch if you think about how recently gay marriage was legalized in 2015. The entry for miscegenation in the Cambridge Dictionary notes, pointedly, that “Anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage predate the Declaration of Independence by more than a century.”

As a result, AMW’s public and professional life was circumscribed by anti-miscegenation laws and the social mores they upheld. Miscegenation was like a magic wand that allowed Hollywood to overlook AMW for lead roles again and again, and the studios wielded it with abandon.