Chapter Two: Race and Citizenship from the 1840s to the 1920s

By Tanya Maria Golash-Boza

Pertinent Ideas from Chapter One

People continue to make racial categories and give them meaning so the idea of race remains in circulation

Describing race as a social, historical, and legal construction helps us view this categorizing process at work

White is a privileged category in the U.S. racialized system. We can see this at work historically in immigration policy, birth-right citizenship, and naturalization

We can explore how historically the boundaries of whiteness have been contested.

Reasons to Examine the Immigration History of 1840–1924

Immigration policy and the laws determining who can become citizens drew on scientific racism.

Scientific racism continues to influence some present day thinkers.

Different groupings’ histories exemplify the trajectory of racialization through their entry into “whiteness.”

Scientific Racism Method for Measuring Intelligence: Craniometry

This included comparative studies to measure human skulls from so-called racial groups and then assumptions that intelligence was associated with bigger skulls.

Scientists used flawed methods to determine that whites were superior to any other group

Scientific Racism Method for Measuring Intelligence: Intelligence Testing

Intelligent testing Emerged for purposes of ranking Southern and

Eastern European groups below Northern and Western groups

Began by misappropriating an innocent test that was for bettering children’s education (Binet’s test)

Used to determine a person’s or a group’s finite level of intelligence—the idea that they could not get any smarter

Intelligence as a Nonmeasurable Entity

Many different kinds of intelligences exist.

Intelligence cannot develop without education, resources, and nurturing.

One score does not measure intelligence accurately.

Intelligent tests can be culturally biased.

Alfred Binet, inventorof the first practicalintelligence test.

p. 40: Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images

Scientific Racism Method for Measuring Intelligence: Eugenics

Eugenics was based on the assumption that characteristics such as intelligence, ambition, poverty, and law-breaking were inherited.

Therefore people were divided into fit and unfit and actual sterilization programs were put into place to stop those determined to be “unfit” from having children.

Nordics were at the top of the rankings as fit—this theory espoused by Madison Grant in the United States was utilized by Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Ideas about Inherent Inferiority of Groupings of People Continues Today

The Bell Curve in 1995—by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray

Race: The Reality of Human Difference (2004) by Frank Miele and Vincent Sarich

Jason Richwine’s 2009 Ph.D. Dissertation, “IQ and Immigration Policy”

Scientific Racism’s Influence on Immigration Policy

In the early 1900s, intelligence testing was done on Southern and Eastern immigrants to show their “deficient” intelligence.

Madison Grant in writing The Passing of the Great Race and being part of a congressional committee on immigration spread his eugenic ideas.

This lead to immigration quotas on the entrance of Southern and Eastern Europeans as immigrants due to their alleged “inferior” intelligence and behaviors. They were not as “white” as Nordic immigrants.

Earlier Exclusions in Immigration Policies on the Basis of Race and Class

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and renewals of this policy until 1952◦Certificates of Residence mandated for Chinese

and in 1928 legal identity documents required for other immigrants

• Development of the Border PatrolImmigration Act of 1917 expanded

barriers for people from India, Burma, Malay States, Arabia, and Afghanistan

Chinese family, ca. 1911.p. 44: National Archives at Seattle, RS 27464, Chin Quan Chan; Seattle District, Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Applications to Reenter, c. 1892-1900: Chin Quan ChanFamily, Chinese Exclusion Act Case File, circa 1911

Immigration Exclusions Continue: Johnson-Reed Act of 1924

Johnson-Reed Act of 1924—Goal was to decrease the immigration of any European group that was not categorized as “Nordic” through quota system. Mexican immigration did not have quotas. Introduced passports and visas as mandatory.

Johnson-Reed Act of 1924

Based quotas on the U.S. population, but sent a message about who did not belong to the nation by not including four groups as part of the population numbers:1. Immigrants from the Western

Hemisphere2. Asians 3. Descendants of slaves4. Native Peoples in the U.S.

Birthright Citizenship: Racialized History

In 1790 only whites born in the United States benefited from birth-right citizenship (birth in the U.S. automatically transferred citizenship rights)

The 14th Amendment to Constitution expanded it to blacks and whites in 1866

United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) added the right of citizenship to children born to non-citizens

Birthright Citizenship: Racialized History

Between 1907 and 1931 women who married non-citizens and who could not naturalize or become citizens through a bureaucratic process lost their citizenship

1924 Native Americans gained birthright citizenship

Nationality Act of 1940 anyone born in the U.S. was granted citizenship

Naturalization: Racialized History

Individuals from multiple groups petitioned the court for citizenship from 1878 to 1952: Native American, Chinese, Hawaiian, Burmese, Japanese, Indian, Syrian, Armenian, Filipino, Arabian, Mexican, and mixed racial background

They petitioned on the basis that they should be considered white.

Naturalization: Racialized History

Two cases exemplify the way whiteness is a social and legal construct:

Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922)

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923)

Naturalization: Racialized History

Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922)—Disposition of the case determined that white skin did not make Ozawa, born in Japan, white because race science and common knowledge of the time determined that Ozawa was not white.

Naturalization: Racialized History

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923)This case contradicted the way race science was used in Ozawa. Despite race science categorizations, Thind was not considered white by the courts because this idea did not match up with common ideas of who was white at the time.

Group Categorization Change: Irish, Italians, and Jews become White

Today we acknowledge Irish, Italians, and Jews as white, but when large groupings of these ethnicities arrived they were not considered or thought of themselves as white

Over time, through aligning themselves with white identities and not intervening but joining in on the oppression of blacks, they embraced white identities.

Bhagat Singh Thind.

p. 49: Courtesy of David Thind and the SouthAsian American Digital Archive (SAADA)

Struggle for Citizenship: African Americans and Native Americans from 1840–1940

After Emancipation and following the 1868 14th Amendment, a window of high levels of participation in government office characterized the African American community in the southern United States.

Following this short window, a series of laws and terror organizations were established to disenfranchise African Americans.

Figure 2-1.Immigration to the United States,1820–1940Source: Office of ImmigrationStatistics, Department of Homeland Security.

Figure 2-1: Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security

Struggle for Citizenship: African Americans and Native Americans from 1840–1940

African Americans faced LynchingsTerror by secret organizations like the Ku Klux Klan

Poll taxes before being permitted to voteRepresentations as not being smart, but as good at manual labor

Struggle for Citizenship: African Americans and Native Americans from 1840–1940

Native Americans faced:Land taken Removal to reservationsReservation land allotted and the loss of

two-thirds of reservation land baseForced boarding schools for childrenAssimilation policies

Cross burning at aKlan members’ meeting,circa 1900.

p. 56: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Lynching scene in Texas,1905: A black man,accused of havingattacked a white woman,is hanged immediatelyafter the charge is made.

p. 57: UIG via Getty Images

Summary

Whiteness permeates the history of immigration, citizenship, and naturalization

White racial categorization has changed across time in social and legal settings

Communities identified as “non-white” have historically struggled with legalized inequality and inequity