Since 1790, the United States started to granted limited naturalization to immigrants of free white persons through the Naturalization Act of 1790 and established racial qualification to national citizenships. Immigrants regardless of who they were need to prove that they were of white race. This lead to the moment when defining who was white was through either scientific method or common knowledge. Into the early 19th and late 20th century, there were numerous of terms to include whiteness and non-racial qualification for immigration to the United States. As immigrants try to show how they were white, there were court cases, Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922) and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), which For instance, Judge Sutherland said in the opinion of the court that Takao Ozawa was “well qualified by character and education” because Ozawa was graduated from an American university, educated his children in American schools, attended American churches, and preserved the use of English at home. Therefore, Ozawa was considered fit and perfect. However, because of rule based on the scientific method and the idea of Caucasian that ruled out how Ozawa was not white, the issue of skin is therefore not accurate. For instance, the naturalization ruled out that Whites and Blacks were granted the right for naturalization, but no others. Even though Ozawa already said previously that Japanese resemble those of their European counterparts, it’s still not strong enough to argue that Japanese people were considered White and Caucasian. However, in the case of Thind, the Supreme Court considered science to be a wrong notion. Even though Justice Sutherland said that there were in fact a resemblance in language, indicating that in some distant past, there were belong to the same common
Since they lacked certain physical and/or cultural characteristics needed to belong in the American nation, they were not considered worthy enough to receive the same rights and privileges they deserve. Therefore, Takaki hopes that with his book, people would acknowledge how America developed a society centered to benefit only white people with the creation of laws hindering these racial groups from receiving the same and equal rights they deserve.
The case of The People Vs. Hall in 1854, was about George Hall a white miner, who murdered Ling Sing a chinese miner, over a dispute that they had. It was disputed in the California Supreme Court in 1854, with the majority of opinion delivered by Chief Justice Hugh Murray with the concurrence of Justice Solomon Heydenfeldt. In the hearing, George hall appealed to the verdict, arguing that the 394th section of the Act Concerning Civil Cases provides that no Indian or Negro shall be allowed to testify as a witness in any action or åproceeding in which a white person is a party. The issue with this appeal was that the 394th section of the Act Concerning Civil Cases, did not included chinese or any other different ethnic background that was not listed in that section. For Chinese did not immigrated to America, until 1852, in which they were coming for work after the economic fall out of the Opium War of 1840.
...y Burnett, “The Noncitizen National and the Law of American Empire” , “in Major Problems in American Immigration History, ed. Mae M Ngai and Jon Gjerde (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013),278
The Naturalization Act of 1790 was the first piece of United States federal legislation regarding immigration and it provided a national and uniformed rule for the process of naturalization. Under provisions of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, it granted citizenship to “all free white persons” after two years residence and provided that the children of citizens born outside the borders of the United States would be “considered as natural born citizens” (Naturalization Acts, United States, 1790-1795). This was an important piece of legislation that encouraged immigration necessary for the continued growth and prosperity of the republic. The individuals that it was intended to attract and protect were European whites, specifically men who would bring skills and participate in the emerging manufacturing and mining labor
...judicial belief that it was proper to separate white and black people for the benefit of white people.
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer born in Tokyo in 1948. Upon graduating from Saint Paul’s University in Tokyo with a degree in Sociology and Politics and moved to Los Angeles in 1970 and attended the Art Centre College of Design. He moved to New York in 1974 after receiving his Bachelors degree and now lives in Tokyo and in New York. He divides his work into photographic series, each representing a certain theme. He is most famous for his seascapes, movie theaters, natural history dioramas and portraits, and waxworks series. He explores the idea of photography and time, and uses photography as a way to record science and history alongside the idea of indescribable human nature. His aim when creating portraits is to make them as lifelike as possible so the viewer reconsiders what it is to be alive.
-Despite the already severe legal and social restrictions on Asian immigration, some European Americans felt that immigration should be forbidden altogether with a specific Asian Exclusion Act. In arguments which seem familiar to modern followers of the immigration debate, Asians were accused of taking white jobs and causing social
... it legal for non-white immigrant to become naturalized citizens. Many of those Japanese born immigrants who were held in concentration camps could now apply for citizenship status.
States have even gone as far banning undocumented people from residing in their state and do not recognize them as ‘persons’ under their constitution (Huber, 2010). Racist nativism has targeted specific groups and constructed a racialized ideal of who fits into the “American” national identity (Huber, 2010). A prime example of this is the Comprehensive Immigration Act 2006, which prohibits any person the right to enlightenment, or claim to have the government or any official communication, perform, or provide services or material, in a language other than English (Americans at Heart, 112). The rational behind the passing of this Act, is the government is trying to preserve the English national language. Laws such as this are clear illustrations of how racist nativism is a defense mechanism to sustain white dominance. Whites are historically and legally deemed the native “founding fathers” of the U.S., and undocumented students and people are deemed as a threat to the nationalistic identity. The true identity of an American, according to the Constitution is white. Racist nativism only reinforces the racist nativist ideology that America’s “beneficiaries” are only for
Much of America’s history has been saturated with situations dealing with race and the people associated with them. It is impossible to talk about the founding of America without looking at the invention of race. This is because race was intricately embedded in the foundation of America through the two part process of racialization. Through this a dichotomous race structure was developed and implemented. This was carried out mainly by the U.S. government, which used policies, social arrangements, and institutional patterns (class notes 10-6-10) to further embed race into American society. The government helped to increase white’s superiority. When the government could not do it all publicly they brought in the private sector. The public and private sector then joined forces to maintain the superiority of whites.
This book serves as the best source of answers to those interested in questions about the origin of ethnicity and race in America. Impossible subjects is divided into seven chapters, and the first two talk about the action and practices that led to restriction, exclusion and deportation. It majorly traces back experiences of four immigrant groups which included the Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and Mexican. Ngai talks of the exclusion practices which prevented Asian entry into America and full expression of their citizenship in America. Although the American sought means of educating the Asians, they still faced the exclusion policies (Mae Ngai 18). All Asians were viewed as aliens and even those who were citizens of the USA by birth were seen as foreign due to the dominant American culture (Mae Ngai 8). Unlike the Asians, Mexicans were racially eligible to citizenship in the USA because of their language and religion. However, she argues that Mexicans still faced discrimination in the fact that entry requirements such as visa fee, tax and hygiene inspection were made so difficult for them, which prompted many Mexicans to enter into the USA illegally. Tens and thousands of Mexicans later entered into America legally and illegally to seek for employment but were seen as seasonal labor and were never encouraged to pursue American
Prior to the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the United States implemented a naturalization law known as the Naturalization Act of 1790, in which citizenship would only be granted to “any alien, being a free white person.” And so the prerequisite cases was born, in which any immigrants who wanted to be granted citizenship would have to prove in the court of law that they were indeed “white”. The court would either use scientific evidence or common knowledge to determine if someone was white or not. But not both, due to the In Re Najour case of 1909, in which In Re Najour a dark skin syrian, was granted citizenship after proving that he was indeed “white” in which he won due to scientific evidence. But would of never been granted
Issues of slavery in the and white supremacy in the United States brought about the desire for “racial purity.” The belief was that the highest ethnic achievement was the claiming of Anglo-Saxon origin. Feelings of nativism and nationalism gave way to the rise and fall of scientific whiteness and contributed heavily to the motivation as to why people studied their family trees.
The People vs. Hall was a case of murder in 1854. A white man, George W. Hall, was blamed for a murder. A Chinese man was the witness of this murder. The Californian court, however, basing their decision on the belief that the Chinese are an inferior race, did not allow the Chinese man to testify against the murderer. The court stated that their decision was based on the Act of April 15th, 1850, which stated that "No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a white man." The outcome of this act let Hall walk away a free man.
...ch made it so intelligent immigrants were allowed into the country. In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed. This act made it so the number of aliens of any nationality admitted to the U.S. in a year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of foreign-born residents of that nationality living in the U.S. in 1910. Even though this heavily cut down the number of immigrants entering the country, the majority of the immigrants were "new immigrants." This led to the National Origins Act in 1924. This act was harsher than the act of 1921 because it decreased the percentage of immigrants from 3% to 2%, and pushed the year from 1910 to 1890, thus making the majority of immigrants "old immigrants."