The legal and social strictures that define White Americans, and distinguish them from persons who are not considered white by the government and society, have varied throughout the history of the United States. Race is defined as a social and political category within society based on hierarchy.
Background According to historian David Roediger, by the 18th century, "white" had become well established as a racial term at a time when the enslavement of African Americans was widespread. 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 US.
The 2000 US 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".Questions and Answers for Census 2000 Data on Race from US Census Bureau, 14 March 2001. Retrieved 15 October 2006. It defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa".The White Population: 2000, Census 2000 Brief C2KBR/01-4, US Census Bureau, August 2001. The Federal Bureau of Investigation uses the same definition.Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook , US Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. P. 97 (2004) The definition actually does vary and is also published as "a light skinned race", which avoids inclusion of any sort of nationality or ethnicity.
The 1990 US census' Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) listed "Caucasian" or "Aryan" among other terms as subgroups of "white" in their ancestry code listing, but 2005 and proceeding years of PUMS codes do not. In US census documents, the designation white or Caucasian may overlap with the term Hispanic, which was introduced in the 1980 census as a category of ethnicity, separate and independent of race. In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the US census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value.
Key acts relating to 'whiteness' The legal definition of "whiteness" in the United States has historically been shaped by immigration and naturalization laws as well as key Supreme Court decisions. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to "free White persons," laying a foundation for racial eligibility tied to whiteness.
The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, was a pivotal piece of U.S. immigration legislation that codified racial and national exclusions into federal law. It established national origins quotas that heavily favored Northern and Western European countries over eastern and southern ones, while virtually excluding immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
These two acts are fundamental in marking changes in definitions of whiteness, whereas in 1790 white immigration was based solely off skin colour we can see how over time it has evolved to produce different sub groups within this broader theme of whiteness.
Racial prerequisite cases During the period when only "white" people could become naturalized U.S. citizens, many court decisions were required to define which ethnic groups were included in this term. These are known as the "racial prerequisite cases", and they also informed subsequent legislation. +Overview of racial prerequisite cases Case Year Holding Rationales In re Ah Yup 1878 Chinese are not White Scientific evidence, common knowledge, congressional intent In re Camille 1880 Persons half White and half Native American are not White Legal precedent In re Kanaka Nian 1889 Hawaiians are not White Scientific evidence In re Hong Yen Chang 1890 Chinese are not White Legal precedent In re Po 1894 Burmese are not White Legal precedent In re Saito 1894 Japanese are not White Congressional intent, common knowledge, scientific evidence, legal precedent In re Gee Hop 1895 Chinese are not White Legal precedent, congressional intent In re Rodriguez 1897 Mexicans are White Legal precedent In re Burton 1900 Native Americans are not White No explanation In re Yamashita 1902 Japanese are not White Legal precedent In re Buntaro Kumagai 1908 Japanese are not White Congressional intent, legal precedent In re Knight 1909 Persons half White, one-quarter Japanese, and one-quarter Chinese are not White Legal precedent In re Balsara 1909 Asian Indians are probably not White Congressional intent In re Najour 1909 Syrians are White Historical background In re Halladjian 1909 Armenians are White Scientific evidence, legal precedent United States v. Dolla 1910 Asian Indians are White Ocular inspection of skin In re Mudarri 1910 Syrians are White Scientific evidence, legal precedent Bessho v. United States 1910 Japanese are not White Congressional intent In re Ellis 1910 Syrians are White Common knowledge, congressional intent United States v. Balsara 1910 Asian Indians are White Scientific evidence, congressional intent In re Alverto 1912 Persons three-quarters Filipino and one-quarter White are not White Legal precedent, congressional intent In re Young 1912 Persons half-German and half-Japanese are not White Common knowledge, legal precedent Ex parte Shahid 1913 Syrians are not White Common knowledge In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar 1913 Asian Indians are White Legal precedent Ex parte Dow1914 Syrians are not White Common knowledge In re Dow 1914 Syrians are not White Common knowledge, congressional intent Dow v. United States 1915 Syrians are White Scientific evidence, congressional intent, legal precedent In re Lampitoe 1916 Persons three-quarters Filipino and one-quarter White are not White Legal precedent In re Mallari 1916 Filipinos are not White No explanation In re Rallos 1917 Filipinos are not White Legal precedent In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh 1917 Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge, congressional intent In re Mohan Singh 1919 Asian Indians are White Scientific evidence, legal precedent In re Bhagat Singh Thind 1920 Asian Indians are White Legal precedent Petition of Easurk Emsen Charr 1921 Koreans are not White Common knowledge, legal precedent Ozawa v. United States 1922 Japanese are not White Legal precedent, congressional intent, common knowledge, scientific evidence United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind 1923 Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge, congressional intent Sato v. Hall 1923 Japanese are not White Legal precedent United States v. Akhay Kumar Mozumdar 1923 Asian Indians are not White Legal precedent United States v. Cartozian 1925 Armenians are White Scientific evidence, common knowledge, legal precedent United States v. Ali 1925 Punjabis (whether Hindu or Arabian) are not White Common knowledge In re Fisher 1927 Persons three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter White are not White Legal precedent United States v. Javier 1927 Filipinos are not White Legal precedent In re Feroz Din 1928 Afghanis are not White Common knowledge United States v. Gokhale 1928 Asian Indians are not White Legal precedent De La Ysla v. United States 1935 Filipinos are not White Legal precedent In re Cruz 1938 Persons three-quarters Native American and one-quarter African are not African Legal precedent Wadia v. United States 1939 Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge De Cano v. State 1941 Filipinos are not White Legal precedent Kharaiti Ram Samras v. United States 1942 Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge, legal precedent In re Ahmed Hassan 1942 Arabians are not White Common knowledge, legal precedent Ex parte Mohriez 1944 Arabians are White Common knowledge, legal precedent
Intersectionality While race remains a key axis of social differentiation, the interaction of whiteness with other categories such as gender, class, and sexuality has received increasing attention. Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality posits that social structures often produce compounded forms of privilege or marginalization. For example, middle-class white women may experience both gender-based discrimination and racial privilege simultaneously.
Specific groups
African Americans
In 17th-century colonial Virginia and Maryland, lawmakers codified racial boundaries by declaring that children born to Black mothers, even if fathered by white men, would inherit the status of the mother—ensuring perpetual enslaved status and denying them legal whiteness. Early legal standards did so by defining the race of a child based on a mother's race while banning interracial marriage, while later laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent, later known as the . Some 19th-century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as mulatto, with one black grandparent as quadroon and with one black great grandparent as octoroon. The latter categories remained within an overall black or African American category. Many members of these categories passed temporarily or permanently as white.Winthrop Jordan, Black Over White, ch. IV, "The Fruits of Passion." Since several thousand blacks have been crossing the color line each year, the phenomenon known as "passing for white", millions of White Americans have recent African ancestors. A statistical analysis done in 1958 estimated that 21% of the white population had African ancestors. The study concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were actually white and not black.
East Asian Americans
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the United States experienced significant immigration from East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Later, as a reaction against Chinese and other East Asian immigrants as competitors of white labor, the Workingmen's Party was created in California. Xenophobic fears manifested with the Yellow Peril ideology, positing that Asians could outnumber the white population in some areas and become dominant.
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 United States 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 U.S. Supreme Court rulings on their "whiteness". In 1921, a petition for naturalization by Easurk Emsen Charr was denied as the court ruled that Koreans are not white. In 1922, the court case Ozawa v. United States deemed that Japanese are part of the Mongoloid race, and thus non-white.
In Jim Crow 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.James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge MA, 1971); Warren (1997), 200-18, 209-11. Others were excluded from white-only schools and had to attend separate Chinese-only schools, be home schooled or be sent to China for education.John Jung, "Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers" (Ying & Yang Press, 2008), 109-119.