Transcript 175 2.25

Naturalization and
the courts
February 25, 2016
History of Whiteness in
United States
1790-1840
• “Free White
Persons”
• Republican
Ideal
1840-1920
1920-Present
• Mass
immigration
from Europe
• Fracturing of
whiteness
into a
hierarchy of
plural and
scientifically
determined
races
• Immigration
restriction &
Great
Migration of
African
Americans
leads to
consolidation
of Whiteness
• WWII
The House I live in
(1945)
https://youtu.be/vhPwtnGviyg
Consolidation of
Whiteness
• Critique of racial science
• Movement of African Americans to the North and
West due to the Great Migration
• Geopolitical context of WWII
Legal Challenges to
Naturalization Law
“In defending both the border of national belonging and the
border of certifiable racial whiteness, the courts gave legal,
codified form to a complex of popular street-level prejudices
on the one hand and learned, scientific judgments on the
other. These rulings drew upon a number of different sources
in wildly inconsistent fashion, but the power of the courts’
decisions-like the power of race generally—resided in their
withholding or extending favor seemingly by a fixed logic of
natural, biological fact. …
(Jacobson, p. 226)
Courts consolidated and defended the idea “Caucasian” in
their naturalization decisions just as popular and
congressional debate over immigration was producing a
contrary notion of Anglo-Saxon supremacy and Celtic,
Hebrew, Slavic, and Mediterranean degeneracy. …these cases
shored up the whiteness of Europe’s probationary white races
by inflating the difference between the insiders and the
outsiders of 1790… The bids for citizenship on the part of
Chinese, Indian, Armenian, Syrian, or Filipino petitioners, in
other words, were part of what kept the probationary white
races from Europe white.
Jacobson 225
In re Ah Yup (1878)
• Reified the Caucasian race” not simply as a schematic
convention but as a meaningful legal and scientific
concept that clarified the phrase “free white persons.”
• Established Caucasian peoplehood as a self-evident
and natural fact.
Takao Ozawa Vs.
United States (1922)
Argument—Japanese are free people, they are not black
and often have lighter skin than many whites. He spoke
English and had white associates.
U.S. counterargument—not European, not what
founders meant by white. Whites are clearly of different
hues, but they are all part of the Caucasian race.
You may be white, but you are not Caucasian
U.S. vs. Bhagat Singh
Thind (1923)
• Granted citizenship in 1920, but the United States sued
to reverse this decision.
• Argument—although Hindu is considered Caucasian
by some scientific standards, anyone can look at you
and see that you are not white.