chapter two: race and citizenship from the 1840s to the 1920s by tanya maria golash-boza
TRANSCRIPT
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