THE MYTH OF THE WHITE RACE!
When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no “white” people there. Nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years
By the 18th century, “white” had become well established as a racial term at a time when slavery of African-Americans was widespread.David R. Roediger has argued that the construction of the “white race” in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves.The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to “any alien, being a free white person”. In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people.
By 1923, courts had vindicated a “common-knowledge” standard, concluding that “scientific evidence” was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a “performance-based” standard, relating to religious practices, culture, education, intermarriage and a community’s role in the United States
WHITE IS A SOCIAL POLITICAL CLASS SYSTEM, WHITE WAS BUILT ON BEING AS BRITISH AND CHRISTIAN AS POSSIBLE. WHITE MEANS HAVING SPECIAL RIGHTS.
WHITE IS A TOOL BY WHICH LABORERS WERE DIVIDED
WHITE SUPERIORITY TO NON WHITES
WHITE CONNECTED EUROPEAN LABORERS(COMMONERS) TO THE BRITISH ELITE(SIMILAR TO HOW RURAL EUROPEAN FEEL CONNECTED TO DONALD TRUMP)
WHITE WAS CENTER OF PATRIARCHAL POWER
The 2000 U.S. census states that racial categories “generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria.
“It defines “white people” as “people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.The Federal Bureau of Investigation uses the same definition
Jacqueline Battalora argues that the first laws banning all marriage between European and Africans, enacted in Virginia and Maryland, were a response by the planter elite to the problems they were facing due to the socio-economic dynamics of the plantation system in the Southern colonies. The bans in Virginia and Maryland were established at a time when slavery was not yet fully institutionalized. At the time, most forced laborers on the plantations were indentured servants, and they were mostly European. Some historians have suggested that the at-the-time unprecedented laws banning “interracial” marriage were originally invented by planters as a divide-and-rule tactic after the uprising of European and African indentured servants in cases such as Bacon’s Rebellion. According to this theory, the ban on interracial marriage was issued to split up the ethnically mixed, increasingly “mixed-race” labor force into “whites,” who were given their freedom, and “blacks,” who were later treated as slaves rather than as indentured servants. By outlawing “interracial” marriage, it became possible to keep these two new groups separated and prevent a new rebellion.
The official racial status of Mexican Americans has varied throughout American history. From 1850 to 1920, the U.S. Census form did not distinguish between whites and Mexican Americans. In 1930, the U.S. Census form asked for “color or race,” and census enumerators were instructed to write W for white and Mex for Mexican.In 1940 and 1950, the census reverted its decision and made Mexicans be classified as white again and thus the instructions were to “Report white (W) for Mexicans unless they were definitely of full Indigenous Indian or other non-white races (such as African or Asian).”
During periods in U.S. history when racial intermarriage wasn’t legally acknowledged, and when Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were uniformly allotted white status, they were legally allowed to intermarry with what today are termed non-Hispanic whites, unlike African and Asians. They were allowed to acquire U.S. citizenship upon arrival; served in all-white units during World War II; could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio; ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times; and went to segregated white schools in Central Texas and Los Angeles. Additionally, Asians were barred from marrying Mexican Americans because Mexicans were legally white
In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as legally white during Jim Crow-era segregation.
In the late 19th and 20th century, many saw Native Americans as people without a future, who should be assimilated into a larger American culture. Tribal membership was frequently defined according to so-called blood quantum standards (proven through a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood), so that people of mostly white ancestry and more distant Native ancestry were denied any formal ties with their ancestral tribe. This led to the classification of increasing numbers of people of distant indigenous ancestry as white. This trend has been reversed in census figures of recent decades, which show increasing self-identification among mixed-race people as ethnically/culturally Native American.However, according to the 2000 census, you must know the tribe and maintain contact with that tribal community: “American Indian and Alaska Native. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment.”
The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalized American citizenship to whites.However, United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 confirmed citizenship by birth in the US regardless of race. As a result, in the early 20th century many new arrivals with origins in the Far East petitioned the courts to be legally classified as white, resulting in the existence of many United States Supreme Court rulings on their “whiteness”. In 1922, the court case Takao Ozawa v. United States deemed that Japanese are part of the Mongoloid race, and thus non-white.
In Jim Crow era Mississippi, however, Chinese American children were allowed to attend white-only schools and universities, rather than attend black-only schools, and some of their parents became members of the infamous Mississippi “White Citizens’ Council” who enforced policies of racial segregation.
Although in an opposite turn in other parts of the United States, in 1927, The Supreme Court finds that states possess the right to define a Chinese student as non-white for the purpose of segregating public schools in the case of Lum v. Rice. As the Jim crow era lasted between 1876 and 1965 this effectively placed Lum v. Rice within that same time period.
The Census Bureau includes the “original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East” among white people.Under pressure from advocacy groups, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would consider establishing a new, MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world, separate from the “white” category. If approved by the Census Bureau, the category would also require approval by Congress.
The courts ruled Middle Easterners as not white in the following cases: In re Halladjian (1909), Ex parte Shahid (1913), Ex Parte Dow (1914), In re Dow (1914), and In re Ahmed Hassan (1942). The courts ruled Arabs, Syrians, Middle Easterners, or Armenians to be white in the following cases: In re Najour (1909), In re Mudarri (1910), In re Ellis (1910), Dow v. United States (1915), United States v. Cartozian, and Ex Parte Mohriez (1944).
From 1909 to 1944, members of Arab American communities in the United States sought naturalized citizenship through an official recognition as white.During this period, the courts were inconsistent in defining Arabs as white granting some eligibility for citizenship, while denying others.Therefore, in the first half of the twentieth century, many Arabs were naturalized as “white American” citizens, while others were deported as “non-white aliens.”
One of the earliest cases includes the case of police officer George Shishim. Born in Zahle, Lebanon, Shishim immigrated to the United States in 1894 becoming a police officer in Venice, CA. According to Gualtieri (2009), Shishim’s “legal battle to prove his whiteness began after he arrested the son of a prominent lawyer for disturbing the peace.“The man arrested argued that because Shishim was not white, and thus ineligible for citizenship, that his arrest was invalid. Shishim’s attorney’s, with support from the Syrian-Lebanese and Arab communities, argued Arabs shared Caucasian ancestry and are thus white. Judge Frank Hutton, who presided over the case, cited legal precedent ruling that the term “white person” included Syrians.[53] Despite this ruling, neither U.S. immigration authorities nor courts across the country consistently defined Arabs as whites, and many Arabs continued to be deported through the 1940s.
Among the most important cases was Dow v. United States (1915) in which Syrian George Dow was determined to be of the “Caucasian” race and thus eligible for citizenship. In 1914, Judge Smith denied George Dow citizenship twice ruling that Syrians were not white and thus ineligible for citizenship. Dow appealed these decisions and in Dow v. United States (1915), the United States Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s decisions, defined Syrians as white, and affirmed Dow’s right to naturalization.However, this decision did not apply to North Africans or non-Levantine Arabs, and some courts claimed that only Syrians (and not other Arab persons) were white. The situation was resolved in 1943, when all Arabs and North Africans were deemed white by the federal government. Ex Parte Mohriez (1944) and the 1977 OMB Directive 15 include Middle Eastern and North African in the definition of white.
Another 1909 immigration and naturalization case found that Armenians were white and thus eligible for citizenship. A U.S. Circuit Court judge in Boston, ruling on a citizenship application by four Armenians, overruled government objections and found that West Asians were so mixed with Europeans that it was impossible to tell whether they were white or should be excluded as part of the “yellow race”. In making the ruling, the judge also noted that the government had already made no objection to Jews. The judge ruled that “if aboriginal people of Asia are excluded it is hard to find a loophole for the admission of Hebrews.”
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the racial classification of Jews in the United States was not settled, with many nativists describing them as “Mongoloid” and “Asiatic.” The United States Bureau of Immigration had classified Jews as “Slavonic” during the 19th century, but the Dillingham Commission contended that linguistic and physical criteria, including the “Jew’s nose”, classified Jews further down the Caucasian pecking order, as Semites. A 1909 Census Bureau ruling to classify Syrians as “Mongolians”, thus non-white and ineligible for citizenship, caused American Jewish leaders to fear that Jews would soon be denaturalized as well.
In 2013, more than 90% of U.S. Jews described themselves as white.However, the racial status of Jews has continued to engender debate, with some commentators arguing that all Jews are non-white.
South Asian Americans constitute a broad group of ethnic groups and racial classification of each of these groups has varied over the years.
The classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions. Originally, neither the U.S. courts nor the census bureau categorized Indians as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the United States. Various court judgements instead deemed Indians to be “white” or “not white” for the purposes of law.
Unlike Indian Americans, Sri Lankan Americans and Nepalese Americans have always been classified as “Asian”. Before 1975, both groups were classified as “other Asian”. In 1975, they were given their own separate categories within the broader Asian American category.
In 1909, Bhicaji Balsara became the first Indian to gain U.S. citizenship, as a Zoroastrian Parsi he was ruled to be “the purest of Aryan type” and “as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”. Almost thirty years later, the same Circuit Court to accept Balsara ruled that Rustom Dadabhoy Wadia, another Parsi also from Bombay was not white and thefore not eligible to receive U.S. citizenship.
In 1923, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that people of Indian descent were not ‘white’ men, and thus not eligible to citizenship. The court conceded that, while Thind was a high caste Hindu born in the northern Punjab region and classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Aryan race, he was not ‘white’ since the word Aryan “has to do with linguistic and not at all with physical characteristics” and since “the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences” between Indians and white Americans.[71] Associate Justice George Sutherland wrote that Indians “cannot be properly assigned to any of the enumerated grand racial divisions.:
The U.S. Census Bureau has over the years changed its own classification of Indians. In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were classified as “Hindu” by “Race”, and in 1950 and 1960, they were categorized as Other Race, and in 1970, they were deemed white. Since 1980, Indians and other South Asians have been classified according to self-reporting,with many selecting “Asian Indian” to differentiate themselves from peoples of “American Indian” or Native American background.
The earliest Finnish immigrants into the U.S. were colonialists who were Swedes in the legal sense and perhaps spoke Swedish. They settled in the Swedish colony, and were supposed to have assimilated into the British culture quickly.
More recent Finns were on several occasions “racially” discriminated against and not seen as white, but “Asian”. The reasons for this were the arguments and theories about the Finns originally being of Mongolian instead of native European origin due to the Finnish language belonging to the Uralic and not the Indo-European language family.
On January 4, 1908, a trial was held in Minnesota about whether John Svan and several other Finnish immigrants would become naturalized United States citizens or not, as the process only was for “whites” and “blacks” in general, and district prosecutor John Sweet was of the opinion that Finnish immigrants were Mongols. The judge, William A. Cant, later concluded that the Finnish people may have been Mongolian from the beginning, but that the climate they lived in for a long time, and historical Finnish immigration and assimilation of Germanic tribes (Teutons)—which he considered modern “pure Finns” indistinguishable from—had made the Finnish population one of the whitest people in Europe. If the Finns had Mongol ancestry, it was distant and diluted. John Svan and the others were made naturalized U.S. citizens, and from that day on, the law forbade treating Finnish immigrants and Americans of Finnish descent as not white.
In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a lot resentment from the local American population towards the Finnish settlers because they were seen as having very different customs, and were slow in learning English. Another reason was that many of them had come from the “red” side of Finland, and thus held socialist political views
Beginning in the 1840s, negative assessments of the “Irish character” became more and more racialized. Irish people were considered brutish and (like blacks) were often compared to simians. The “Celtic physiognomy” was described as being marked by an “upturned nose [and] the black tint of the skin.
In certain parts of the South during the Jim Crow era, Italians "occupied a racial middle ground within the otherwise unforgiving, binary caste system of white-over-black.” Though Italians were viewed as white for purposes of naturalization and voting, their social standing was that they represented a “problem at best.” Their racial status was impacted by their appearance and that they did not “act” white, engaging in manual labor ordinarily reserved for blacks. The trial of nineteen Italian immigrants for the murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy in 1890, which ended in the lynching of eleven of them by a white vigilante group, sparked debate in the press over Italians supposed racial characteristics. Italians continued to occupy a “middle ground in the racial order” through the 1920s.
However, “color challenges were never sustained or systematic” when it came to Italians, who were “largely accepted as white by the widest variety of people and institutions” throughout the U.S. Even in the South, such as Louisiana, any attempts to disenfranchise them “failed miserably”
White has more to do with politics than biology,science or ethnicity - Khepri Neteru
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