Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967), an Indian American spiritual teacher and writer, was denied US citizenship in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923). The Supreme Court ruled, 9 to 0, that while Thind was arguably Caucasian, he was not white.
The laws of the time allowed the foreign-born to become citizens only if they were “free white persons”, “aliens of African nativity” or “persons of African descent.”
Thind, like many Indian Americans in the early 1900s, was a Sikh who came to California from Punjab in north-western India. Most came as farmers, but he came as a student. He arrived in the US in 1913 to study at the University of California, Berkeley, getting a PhD. In 1918 he served in the US Army during the First World War, rising to the rank of Acting Sergeant. He was honourably discharged. The Army said his character was “excellent”.
In 1920 he became a US citizen, like many Indian Americans before him. But then the government’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) challenged his right to become a citizen. It said he was not white.
It went all the way to the Supreme Court: United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.
Thind argued that according to science he was Caucasian, Aryan even, and therefore white. People in the US, even the Supreme Court, used “Caucasian” and “white” interchangeably.
The Court said it did not matter if he was Caucasian: the law only uses the word “white”. And since the law was written according to the understanding of the common man, not scientists, “white” was whatever most people thought it was. And it certainly did not mean people from India, not even high-caste Hindus:
[Their] racial difference … is of such character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation.
Furthermore, since Congress in 1917 shut off immigration from the Asiatic Barred Zone, to which India belonged, it is unlikely it would want any such Asiatics becoming citizens.
Thind lost his citizenship. So did other Indians. Because of the Alien Land Law in California, they could no longer own land in their own name. Many lost their farms. American women could not marry them without losing their citizenship, while Indian women could not be brought to the US. Half of Indian Americans left the country. Many of the rest sank into poverty.
People born in India were not allowed to become US citizens till 1946, when Congress passed the Luce-Celler Act. Thind, though, became a citizen in 1936! He did that by going to New York where authorities either disagreed with the ruling or did not know about it (there were few Indians in New York then).
Thind married a white woman and had two children. He gave lectures and wrote books about his spiritual teachings. To help Americans understand them he used the works of Emerson, Thoreau and Walt Whitman, who were familiar with Indian spirituality by way of translations made by Christian missionaries in British-ruled India.
See also:
- Read the Supreme Court decisiom online
- Caucasian
- The term “America”
- perpetual foreigner stereotype
- The map of white people
- Nina Davuluri – the first Indian American to become Miss America
- Wade Michael Page – the Sikh Temple shooter
This post has been up for 30 minutes and no one has ever commented on it. I feel a little sad about that.
Haha! Hello B!
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Thanks for this. I read about this guy before. He had his citizenship stripped twice before finally earning it for a 3rd time, although it was technically illegal.
The Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 split China in two, but actually, China and persons of Chinese descent were already excluded since 1882. Koreans and Japanese got excluded in 1924. If 1880s – 1940s was the Nadir of American Race Relations, it must have been really bad 1910s-1920s.
We always hear about the “White Australia Policy” but we never mention the official “White America Policy” in effect until the 1960s.
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@ Legion 😀
I mentioned Mr Singh Thind a couple of times (I remember at least one conversation with Uncle Milton about who was really “caucasian” in the US).
I believe Linda and Pay it Forward discussed it, too.
I wondered whether it might one day be the subject of a post from Abagond if issues around it started to be discussed a bit more on the blog…and here were are! LOL!
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Thank you for highlighting anti-Indian racism in our Immigration policy. Something that continues to this day and has had a direct impact on me.
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“Bulanik,
I mentioned Mr Singh Thind a couple of times (I remember at least one conversation with Uncle Milton about who was really “caucasian” in the US).
I believe Linda and Pay it Forward discussed it, too.”
Linda says,
Yes, I did bring in an article about Mr. Singh Thinds court case… in response to the clueless race realist i’diots (like Da Jokah) who thinks the term “Caucasian” means “white”, so therefore, they can try to piggyback on north African, middle eastern/Asian history and Indian history.
Only people from the Caucasus Mountains are “Caucasian” — and they suffer for it in “pro-white” countries like Russia.
I don’t know why they continue to use this term in America to mean “white” — it’s old, incorrect and backwards.
but then, that is American racism in a nutshell because even though the “one drop rule” is no longer on the books, it lives on in the hearts of American society.
Here is an interesting story about a man who thought he was black ie African American– and found out through DNA gene testing that he wasn’t… he was most likely Indian and Native American.
His family probably changed their identity in the past in order to fit in and keep their land.
“After a lifetime as a black man, Wayne Joseph discovered he probably isn’t black at all.
Wayne was born in Louisiana and he is creole. All of his life he thought he was black.
Until He had an DNA test done on him. The test came back 57% indo European, 39% Native American, 4% east Asian, and 0% black African.
The DNA test said 57% indo European, and indo European is central Asian (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan).
Joseph asked his mother, Betty, if he was adopted. “He is not adopted,” she said. “Mother doesn’t forget when she has a baby. And I had three babies. And he was one of them.”
On both sides, the Joseph family is of Creole stock, which does not necessarily mean African ancestry. Yet, before DNA tests, in the segregated parishes of Louisiana they’d always defined themselves as black, or “colored” in the old-fashioned parlance, despite their light complexions.
“I’ve been called a n—-r before by white kids,” Joseph said. “I’ve experienced being rousted by the police, with some friends. I’ve had the so-called — if there are typical, you know — black experiences. I’ve had those.”
Joseph’s DNA discovery raises a serious challenge to the way American culture seems to insist on a racial identity for everyone.
“We are very dichotomous in the United States,” said Mark Shriver, the DNA test co-inventor. “You’re either black or white.”
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“i’diots (like Da Jokah) who thinks the term “Caucasian” means “white””
Poor linda. She’s too dumb to invent a new lie.
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Da Jokah,
You could NEVER call me d’umb and have anyone who is breathing and can read– believe you because that word ONLY applies to you.
You are the essence of the word “i’diot, d’umb and an a’s”– any epithet that denotes that the speaker is an “ignorant non-entity”– that is who you are!
You are also a racist blowhard who I don’t like and I will always make it my mission to call you out as the POS that you are — there is Nothing worth while that comes out of your mouth–waste of space!
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This was a thought provoking and insightful post.
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@Linda
Interesting enough he points to southern belle thread as proof, when that is only the second thread that pertains information of you correcting him on the term “Caucasian.”
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Da Jokah, we realize that you don’t think that all Caucasians are White. The problems is that you don’t realize that most Whites are not Caucasian. You still hang on to the now defunct notion that “Caucasian” is a broad term including most Whites, even though logic would tell you that the term would only apply to a relatively narrow grouping descending from the Caucus Mountain region.
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@King
In many of his exchanges on the matter I have found that he seems to imply that “Caucasian” equals white ( though he has stated most aren’t at one point I believe). It was this statement he made that stuck out to me in regards to why I get the impression he sees Caucasian as white.
“If true that would hardly make her mixed race as Parsi are Caucasian.”
The reason being is because my understanding is that Caucasian simply refers to people of the caucus mountain. Meaning the actual race could vary (based on what one considers race). So would a black man from the caucus area be considered marrying of the same race if he married an English woman also of the caucus mountain? They both would be Caucasian by his above logic and therefore of the same race and the offspring not mixed.
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I do recall reading a brief passage regarding Mr Thind’s lawsuit in argument of his being “Caucasian” and therefore “white”. This is the first I’m seeing any likeness of him though.
For some reason I’d imagined him to be dark brown in complexion and with rounded facial features similar to many of my Indo-Caribbean neighbors, rather than the golden-skinned, aquiline-nosed man that he was.
Even though his skin was not very dark, it was not pale enough for him to ‘pass’. A pale complexion was probably more important a century ago than it is now as I’ve seen individuals with skin that is perceptibly golden (e.g. Kim Kardasian; Rashida Jones), or even quite brown in tone, who are sometimes regarded as being a white person by white people.
With regards to the racial terms “Caucasian” and “Caucasoid” (“Caucasian-like”), both have fallen out of favor, but to my knowledge both were indicative of a narrow range of skull shapes / bone structures and features of the face. Skin color as well as hair color & texture were NOT determing factors in who was or was not Caucasoid. Under these conditions many Somalis, Ethiopians and some percentage of Black Americans are Caucasoids. An indeterminate number of “Middle Easterners” and South Asians are also Caucasoids; the standing as such depends very simply on the structures of an individual’s face / head.
Mr Thind, according to the above featured pic, would certainly qualify as Caucasoid. However in the America of both then and now, he is not white. His religion and religious garb (and possibly his lengthy beard) mark him as being non-white. Even with his darkish complexion though, there remains the possibility that today he might get away with claiming whiteness (especially in a city such as NYC) if he were to ditch his accent, all (non-Christian) religious garb, shave his beard, and wear Westernized clothing.
[Side note: I recall as a child reading in old physical anthropology books that white and Caucasian were considered interchangeable terms, the actual skin tone of the Caucasoid person notwithstanding. If one was to go by this, an Caucasoid-featured South Asian man with an ebony skin tone is still a “white” man, just the same as a fair-skinned man of visible African heritage, and according to the One Drop rule, is still considered a “black” man in the US. To my knowledge, though, the US has never espoused the notion that one can be both near-black in complexion and white all in the same instance.]
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“Drawing from Petrus Camper’s theory of facial angle, Blumenbach and Cuvier classified races, through their skull collections based on their cranial features and anthropometric measurements. Caucasoid traits were recognised as: thin nasal aperture (“nose narrow”), a small mouth, facial angle of 100°–90°, and orthognathism, exemplified by what Blumenbach saw in most ancient Greek crania and statues. Later anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th century such as Pritchard, Pickering, Broca, Topinard, Morton,Peschel, Seligman, Bean, Ripley, Haddon and Dixon came to recognise other Caucasoid morphological features, such as prominent supraorbital ridges and a sharp nasal sill. Many anthropologists in the 20th century, used the term “Caucasoid” in their literature, such as Boyd, Gates, Coon, Cole, Brues and Krantz replacing the earlier term “Caucasian” as it had fallen out of usage.
“The physical traits of Caucasoid crania are still recognised as distinct (in contrast to Mongoloid and Negroid races) within modern forensic anthropology. A Caucasoid skull is identified, with an accuracy of up to 95%, by the following features
“Little or no prognathism exhibited—an orthognathic profile, with minimal protrusion of the lower face.
Retreating zygomatic bones (cheekbones), making the face look more “pointed”.
“Narrow nasal aperture, with a tear-shaped nasal cavity.
Other physical characteristics of Caucasoids include hair texture that varies from straight to curly, with wavy (cymotrichous) hair most typical on average according to Coon (1962), in contrast to the Negroid and Mongoloid races. Individual hairs are also rarely as sparsely distributed and coarse as found in Mongoloids.
“Skin color amongst Caucasoids ranges greatly from pale, reddish-white, olive, through to dark brown tones.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
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This has been an education for me learning about what the words “white and “caucasian” really mean.
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Caucasian is an outmoded term i have learned today. Not that i ever used it. But it’s good to learn this. Thanks for this Abagond and commenters.
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Went to the Caucasian thread post and saw that J.F. Blumenbach in the Universityof Gottingen on April 11,1745. Duly noted. Interesting.
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@Linda,
Thank you for the sideline story about Wayne Joseph. Gives you food for thought about the need in the USA to be monoracially classified.
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This story paints the picture of one man’s personal sovereignty, dignity and persistence vs the twisted thinking of U.S. xenophobia.
His life story would make a great movie. Thank you Abagond for reminding me about this amazing man.
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What is really strange that “Asiatic barred zone” included even Philippines which was a US possession at that time!
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The Chinese Exclusion Act barred entry to Chinese “from any port or place”. It was based on race only and not on nationality or national origin.
Indeed, Filipinos were US Nationals, yet “barred” from coming to the United States after 1917. An exception was made if they joined the military. This was not changed until 1946.
Hawaii was different. In 1898, persons of Asian descent in Hawaii automatically became US citizens, whether or not they were born there. Probably it was because they were designated citizens of the Republic of Hawaii just a few years earlier, and they were all grandfathered in to become US citizens.
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Really bad luck for Filipinos who were deprived of their independence(declared June 12, 1898), subject to genocidal war, forcibly made into “American Nationals” yet barred from entry into the very country of which they were presumed nationals!
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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IF you delve more deeply into the situation of the Philippines, the screwier it gets.
When the USA annexed Hawaii in 1898, it made all the Republic of Hawaii citizens US citizens automatically. Filipinos were made US Nationals, a sort of second class citizenship.
But, according to the 14th Amendment, as the Philippines was US territory (similar to Arizona and New Mexico and Oklahoma at the time). Therefore, all Filipinos born between 1898 and 1946 should theoretically be US citizens, no different from the people born in Arizona or Oklahoma. But they were not. They were even barred from entering the Mainland USA after 1917. There was talk in Congress about making them into a state, but one reason that it was shot down was for racial reasons — We already know what the USA was like in the 1920s -1940s in their racial stance towards Asians. Could they let 15-20 million “browns” become full US citizens? At that time that was even more than the entire black population of the USA. Also, they were mostly Catholic with a significant Muslim minority. Sure that Congress was scared sh*tless at the prospect.
It is no coincidence that Filipinos in the USA could not become citizens until 1946. that was the year that the Philippines became independent. Once independent, they were then foreigners, and their migration (or “immigration”) to the USA could be restricted. Besides, the US stripped Filipinos who fought as US nationals in the US military of all their Federal benefits. Half of the 200,000 Filipinos died in WWII giving their lives to a country that subsequently completed ignored them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_Act_of_1946
To date, the Philippines is the only US territory that was granted independence.
Talk about incorporating the Philippines into the USA as states has never completely gone away. There has always been a grassroots movement in that direction. I am sure the US would also covet a small piece of it to add another stronghold presence on China’s doorstep.
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@jefe
[But, according to the 14th Amendment, as the Philippines was US territory (similar to Arizona and New Mexico and Oklahoma at the time). Therefore, all Filipinos born between 1898 and 1946 should theoretically be US citizens, no different from the people born in Arizona or Oklahoma. But they were not.]
As far as I know the Supreme court invented a novel concept of “unincorporated” territories which differed from “incoroporated” territories as Arizona that not all of the provisions of the US Constitution and Bill of rights were authomatically extended to them but only so much as the US Congress deemed necessary.
Puerto Rico also possessed(and still possesses) the status of “unincorporated teritory” but Puertoricans were granted US citizenship in 1917, apparently the immediated reason for it was to enable the US miltary to forcibly send Puertorican recruits to die for America in WWI battlefields. Later Puerto Rico was made into a pseudo-Commonwealth(in fact an autonomous territory with a constitution donated by the Congress) and retains this status until today.
The “commonwealth” of Philippines 1935-1946 was the same as of Puerto Rico – a non self-governing territory with a constitution donated(and revocable) by the Congress. Thus Filipino people did not possess a iota of sovereignty even in the Commonwealth era.
Puerto Rico could probably obtain independence, apparently there were several plebiscites with an option “independence” but puertoricans chose to retain their “commonwelth” status.
[Talk about incorporating the Philippines into the USA as states has never completely gone away. There has always been a grassroots movement in that direction. I am sure the US would also covet a small piece of it to add another stronghold presence on China’s doorstep.]
You mean such movement exists right now? But how could it be legally accomplished when Philippines are a sovereign country? Do they expect the Phillipines Congress to make request to be admited like state? Anyway now Phillipines would be a better candidate for statehood than before WWII, since everyone now speaks English there:)
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Puerto Ricans are Americans, no?
How does that correspond to a reason to become an American state. Is that why Hawaii became a state? Is that why Puerto Rico is not?
Anyhow, a large number of Filipinos could already speak English in 1946, if not the majority of them. What does that have to do with anything? Those Filipinos seeking US statehood do not necessarily want to give up the Filipino National language as the language of instruction or use of their regional dialects.
Yes, there is still an ongoing grassroots movement for Philippine statehood. It is not mainstream, but it has never gone away completely.
This is a typical one:
http://expansionistparty.tripod.com/Phil.html
There are others as well as Facebook pages on the subject.
Only now there are over 100 million Filipinos. Well, statehood would make abortion legal there. 😛
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@jefe
Yes Puerto Ricans are Americans(in the sense of full US citizens) since 1917, but continue to live in an “unincorporated territory” which creates interesting legal collisions, e.g. if the USA Congress would like to cede Puerto Rico to another nation or forcibly de-annex it and declare independent it could do so this despite of the will of the Puerto Rican US citizen population! It is not likely to occur but it is a legal possibility.
Concerning the English language knowledge of Filipinos it was more a joke from my side:) Of course the US consititution does not establishes an official language, so that in principle the knowlege of English or the absense of it could not be a formal legal obstacle for the statehood.
O yes, I see these are Filipinos themselves seeking admission to the States, not some die-hard imperialists in the USA:) Of course, statehood would make legal not only abortion but probably divorce as well:) I have heard that now Filipinos cannot legally divorce even in the US, they shall first give up their citizenship(at least one of the couple).
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^ It was the law since 1790. Not fully repealed until the 1960s!
Another factoid stripped from our history books!
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I am confused. What would be the proper (real) racial designation for white people of European descent?
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^ Assuming racial designations aren’t total bullcrap in the first place?
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To Abagond:
Thind, though, became a citizen in 1936! He did that by going to New York where authorities either disagreed with the ruling or did not know about it (there were few Indians in New York then).
Act of Amended racial restrictions and No residency
June 24, 1935 allowed any alien, previously requirement
ineligible for citizenship because of
race, to naturalize if they had served
honorably in WWI
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&context=aalj
Under the above Federal law, as an honorably discharged WWI vet, Singh Thind should have been able to achieve citizenship in any state of the US.
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Mr Thind, with his sharp features and light-brown complection, looks like A LOT of Indians I have lived around all my life. They look like Indians. So do darker-complected, softer-featured Indians (often both kinds are found in the same families)…
But, even Mr Thind’s complexion WAS paler, his eyes greener and his nasal aperture thin as could be, it would be a far stretch indeed for any officer of the British Raj to have considered him “white”. It was simply outside of that administration’s legal framework. Any kind of social mobility was under colonial control, and shut off to change.
As for the US, the legal definition of “White” was developed by this ruling about Mr Thind and also that of Takao Ozawa (and others).
Mr Ozawa was a Japanese man who applied for American citizenship and naturalized as a white person. When it came to trial, the judge, George Sutherland, the same judge that ruled would rule over Mr Thind’s case a few months later — found that only Europeans are white.
In Ian Haney-Lopez’s book “White by Law”, caucasoid crania and hair texture were not the only determinants of who was and wasn’t white in US law.
Mr Ozawa petitioned the courts to be recognized as white on the basis of skin colour, citing not only the observations of the anthropologists of the era, but also his own observations that the skin of the typical Japanese of Kyoto was whiter than “the average Italian, Spaniard or Portuguese”.
The Court didn’t buy it: skin colour does not correlate with racial identity.
According to George Sutherland’s ruling:
…Manifestly the test afforded by the mere color of the skin of each individual is impracticable, as that differs greatly among persons of the same race, even among Anglo-Saxons, ranging by imperceptible gradations from the fair blond to the swarthy brunette, the latter being darker than many of the lighter hued persons of the brown or yellow races. Hence to adopt the color test alone would result in a confused overlapping of races and a gradual merging of one into the other, without any practical line of separation. *
When Thind came along, he also argued the racial theories of the time: “caucasian” (or the white race) began in India and had gradually spread into Europe. That included him. What’s more, the English language, was classified as an “indo-european”, etc., etc. So, according to science, he was “caucasian” and therefore white.
* http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/ncc375/rp/ozawa.html
http://books.google.ie/books/about/White_by_Law.html?id=gxYqorjC4gUC&redir_esc=y
What one calls oneself, and is allowed to call oneself, is inextricably tied to the legal rights one is allowed.
Going by what Mr Thind and many other Asians subsequently lost and endured, as well as the laws that came about to bar and disenfranchise Asians like them, US law was a weapon central to the aggressive enforcement of inequality in the nation.
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That’s an understatement.
What is disturbing to me also is how so many white Americans are so confused about the concept of “whiteness” in the USA. It is so engrained in the culture and history that they become blind to its meaning. Who is and is not “white” is a central theme throughout US history.
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Jefe, it certainly is an understatement.
I could have said more. But, some things are simply more acceptable coming from American commenters, I’m afraid.
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Abagond said in his main post:
The map of that Zone covers most of Asia beginning from Turkey.
Something has me slightly uncertain / confused about all of this, because I am not sure how the stand taken against Mr Thind relates to ALL other Asians that wished to enter the US as “Whites”. I want to understand the US’s racial architecture more.
Many non-European immigrants tried to become Americans:
Mr Thind was Caucasian but not white (South Asian), and failed.
Takao Ozawa was white-skinned but not Caucasian (East Asian), and failed.
George Dow, though, the Syrian, attempted legal naturalisation by proposing that as a “Semitic” person, this made him White, and succeeded.
But how come, where others had failed…?
Was it because of religion, because he was a Christian?
First guess is that Jesus has something to do with it:
Christianity, though originating in Aisa, was greatly developed and long-held in Europe, and Euro-Americans, as gate-keeper Whites, are predominantly Christian.
I doubt whether a US court, that was founded on Christian precepts, could turn away a Christian Semite for any GOOD reason.
Does this (in some way) explain the ambivalent “White” status of Arab Americans (Christians Arabs), and why all Muslims, even white European Muslims, later became non-White in the US racial scheme?
http://jilliancyork.com/2010/03/05/check-it-right-you-aint-white/
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@ Abagond
Have you written many posts about Arab Americans, the history and struggle in the US?
I am wondering how they have been cast in the American context — were they “exotics”, “Orientals”, “swarthy and dangerous”?
Did they change their names under the pressure to assimilate?
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@ Bulanik
Arab Americans would make a wonderful post since they fall in that grey region between white and non-white. Those who are Christian and Americanized are considered White. Those who are Muslim are counted as White in government statistics yet are racialized by the FBI and do not enjoy full, robust civil rights.
And then there are Palestinians, who, as Arab foreigners under Israeli rule, are not even fully human. In The Economist this week, for example, dead Palestinians appear as bodies strewn across streets, while dead Jews appear in funerals, are mourned and are the cause of righteous anger. Time magazine, meanwhile, shows a woman on top of a coffin in apparent grief. The coffin is covered with the Israeli flag with the Star of David – even though 95% of the dead in the current fighting are Gazans.
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@ Kiwi
As whiteness and being considered “one of us”, I disagree that religion matters less now than before.
I think this came out in the thread “The Map of White People”.
It reminded me that even if you were white as could be, Islam “racialized” you.
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@ Abagond
What you say about the depiction of the Palestinian dead is 100% true.
The Arab is seen as less than fully human.
Remember how many (non-US) commenters rejected your argument on “The Map of White People” thread, that “Muslim” was a “racial” designation?
I’m trying to fix on an example of whiteness (in the American sense) to see if it would it play out if the white person is a Muslim, then I remembered some of the coverage of the Boston bombing last year.
The act was carried out by the 2 brothers: white men, 100% Caucasian males. For some reason, although the men are male and Caucasian, there were NOT seen as white by all:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/howard-portnoy/2013/04/19/sorry-david-sirota-looks-boston-bombing-suspects-not-white-americans
The Tsarnaev brothers are Muslims — this was enough to subsume their whiteness.
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@ Abagond
I was also considering reactions to Rula Jabreal (the racial and negative type) and what those layers of hostility were based on.
I then looked up “contrast Bhagat Sign Thind with dark-skinned Arab Muslim” and eligibility to White legal status, and the case of Ahmed Hassan was returned. Ahmed Hassan was a Yemeni applicant who turned down because:
But, not so for Christian Armenians, because:
Armenians are a Christian people living in an area close to the European border, who have intermingled and intermarried with Europeans over a period of centuries. Evidence was also presented in that case of a considerable amount of intermarriage of Armenian immigrants to the United States with other racial strains in our population. These facts serve to distinguish the case of the Armenians from that of the Arabians..
http://www.leagle.com/decision/194289148FSupp843_1673
**************************
I suppose Christians are okay because Christ is imagined as White.
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@ Kiwi
Perhaps it depends on the religion? Islam is lowest on the totem pole.
Also, I don’t believe Arabs, and others (such as Iranians) are fully white, even Christians.
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@ Kiwi
Looks play a huge part.
And yes, I’ve known white-looking Muslims who thought and hoped they were fully accepted as white, but were NOT.
I’ve heard “real” whites refer to them as “sand n166ers” under their breath. Whiteness brings benefit, but only to a degree.
I think it’s more complex and greyer…
I’ve seen fairly white-looking Middle Easterners being eyed closly at airports … and treated pretty despicably. They are “Othered” not only there.
Wear a hijab or a turban, and it doesn’t matter how white one is — there is discrimination (and even hate crime) waiting.
I don’t have extensive experience in the US, so I can’t say much about that. I’ve known a few Iranian Americans, and saw that the younger generation at least, are highly ambivalent about being considered “White”, and their experience is not a clear-cut case of Being White and having White Privilege.
Even though “White” was what they are ON PAPER, that is not how they are treated, certainly not since 2001.
Now that I think about it, I’ve seen little info out there, not only Arab and Iranian Americans, but other Middle Easterners. It’s like they are invisiable — and not all of them want to be “White” on paper whilst also being discriminated against and hated on as a racialized people at the same time.
There’s something a dualistic and paradoxical about being supposedly white, but not-really-one-of-us, which is the status that many Middle Easterners seem to have.
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@ Kiwi
Yes! Encountered those, too.
Iranians who harp on about truly “Aryan” they are, you know…white, and blond, blue-eyed Turks (usually from the Black Sea area) who constantly remind anyone browner than them that they are proudly White People and proudly Europeans!(Even when they have a profile and unibrow that would surpass that of the Shah of Iran! lol)
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@ Bulanik
From what I have read about US Supreme Court cases in the early 1900s, there was no consistent idea of what “white” meant. It was one of those “I will know it when I see it” things.
I read that George Dow used the White Jesus argument and won, but the Wikipedia page on Dow v US (1915) says nothing about it.
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@ abagond
I was looking at how your post about how to write about Asians the other day, and I wondered about specific stereotypes about South Asians.
Describing-words like “magnetic” and “exotic” seem to stick to these kinds of Asians. What they seem to share with other Asians is somehow being seen as all being “the same”, whilst being the biggest of the world’s populatin.
And forever being mixed-up with, or mistaken for, Arabs.
What was it like for South Asians in the US?
Chandra Dharma Sena Gooneratne, the so-called tan “Tan Stranger”, would defy Jim Crow by wearing a turban. The linked article says that it was so that:
“Any Asiatic…can evade the whole issue of color in America by winding a few yards of linen around his head. A turban makes anyone an Indian…”
http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/tides/article/20140708-3618
It seems true. I particularly like how a few African Americans confounded the colour line of the times by wearing turbans.
Like tv musician, Korla Pandit, who became known as the Godfather of Exotica. Supposedly born in India to a Brahmin, rather than St. Louis to a black family:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQHaglomIU0)
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@Bulanik,
I read the article you linked above, but not its source page until I got to the last sentence
Thinking, WTF!
Then I saw it billed itself as anti-liberal.
Indeed, the obsession white America has with who is and who is not white.
So, I cannot fully agree with Kiwi above. Those people (e.g., muslim “whites”) he says are simply “white” are really just passing as “white” in specific contexts. At any point they can become racialized as non-white, especially if they fail at any time to maintain their whiteness act.
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[…] People born in India were not allowed to become US citizens till 1946. […]
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Kiwi,
I think that the whole point of what is “white” and not “white” has been a major obsession in the USA since it was founded and that definition is constantly being shifted and reinterpreted.
As the post stated
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Abagond, looks like you missed a couple here as well.
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Hands down, Thind was a handsome man (in addition to being smart and extraordinary persistent), regardless of his race classification and all the above debates. Unfortunately, they do not make this kind of people anymore… ( I am just one twenty-something y.o.white as white can be girl fascinated by this story)
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I am a 2nd generation American of Indian descent and I can say that in no shape or form have I or anyone I know wanted to be “white.” Americans of Indian descent are the richest ethnic group in America. We have a rich history and what I believe are the best of both worlds. This white envy that goes on in these comments are quite surprising to me. America has a long and racist past, we all know that. However, what people don’t know, and should is the role East-Indians played in America. The first East-Indians were brought to America only a decade after Europeans landed on Plymouth-Rock as indentured servants to the British. In Jamestown, it was said that there were more East-Indians than Africans at a certain point. Eventually, these East-Indians would assimilate with the larger African population. Many Americans of African descent are finding out they have South Asian DNA due to 23 & Me. By 2045, the United States will be majority non-white. People of color are proud and tired of this notion that white is better. I never thought white was better at anything. I look at people from Southern and Mid-west states and think of them as vastly inferior. Americans are diverse. Although, Thind was not considered a citizen by a racist Supreme Court and racist laws, he was absolutely American when we look back at history. He fought bravely for his country and brought something valuable to America (another sense of spirituality). This idea that America is only black and white has been a myth for far too long. I hope more research and articles come out about the history of America and how many ethnicities have played roles in the making of this country.
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@DC Razor
I assume that your family is part of the generation that arrived in the USA post-1965 after they revamped the Immigration rules to open immigration and pathway to US citizenship for persons of Asian origin. That was not the case before then. So, we cannot say that people necessarily aspired to be “white” just to be “white” but to earn entitlements to things that white people enjoy that was denied to people from Asia (eg, US citizenship).
Since you are aware of some of the history of South Asians in the USA dating back to colonial times, surely you must realize why some may be tempted to be classified as “white”.
We should be happy that US citizens and residents no longer need to be classified as “white” to enjoy the benefits of US citizenship.
My grandfather’s older brother (my great uncle) was born in China in 1876. His father (yes, my great-grandfather), who had been in the USA before that during the railroad era brought my great uncle to the USA for the first time as a young boy (early 1880s) and took him back to China later (when my own grandfather was born). My great-grandfather later returned to USA, only to be murdered by a white mob who was trying to drive Chinese out of town.
Abagond mentioned a little of the riots and massacres that followed the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
My great uncle, after an initial marriage in China (to a wife he would never see again), came to the USA in the late 1890s without family and settled in New York City, where he lived until 1966. So, after living in the USA for some 70 years, he died a foreigner (albeit, the choice to change that happened a couple months before his death).
My grandfather did come later (first in the 1920s, then settling in the 1930s – ie, during the Exclusion era) and he also died a foreigner in 1965, before the 1965 Immigration laws took effect. Being classified as “white” would enable a lot of benefits, such as US citizenship and the right to own property (and for many of the men who never could bring over their wives – the right to get married).
The benefits of being classified as “white” also held benefits during the Jim Crow segregation era, eg, the right to go to a “white” school, a “white” hospital, a “white” church, shop or enjoy services from a “white” business, even the right to vote, propelled Asians to seek “white” status, at least to enjoy some societal benefits that a white person could enjoy.
This never actually made the person “white”. They would serve in segregated military units, usually could not move into “white” neighborhoods or, god forbid, marry a white person. This also did not make them “white” for immigration purposes.
I wrote a little bit about why Asians sometimes had to seek “white” status to be able to enjoy some benefits from US society (albeit being denied others). It does not mean that they wanted to white necessarily.
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