Definitions of whiteness in the United States#Spanish Americans

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.{{Cite book| publisher = Verso| isbn = 978-0-86091-334-4| last = Roediger| first = David R.| title = The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class| date = 1991 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MDDFAAAAIAAJ | access-date=December 27, 2024}}

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.{{cite journal | first=John | last=Tehranian | title=Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America| journal=The Yale Law Journal | volume=109 | issue=4 | date=2000| pages=817–848 | doi=10.2307/797505 | jstor=797505 | url=https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/9240| access-date=December 27, 2024}}

{{Bar chart

| float = right

| title =White American ancestries in 2000 (United States census){{cite book|last1 =Adams|first1=J. Q.|first2=Pearlie|last2=Strother-Adams|year=2001|title=Dealing with Diversity|publisher=Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company|location =Chicago, IL|id=0-7872-8145-X}}

| label_type = Ancestry

| data_type = Percentage

| data_max = 15.5

| label1 = German

| data1 = 15.2

| label2 = Irish

| data2 = 10.8

| label3 = English

| data3 = 8.7

| label4 = Italian

| data4 = 5.6

| label5 = Polish

| data5 = 3.2

| label6 = French

| data6 = 3.0

| label7 = Scottish

| data7 = 1.7

| label8 = Dutch

| data8 = 1.6

| label9 = Norwegian

| data9 = 1.6

| label10 = Scots-Irish

| data10 = 1.5

| label11 = Swedish

| data11 = 1.4

}}

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".[https://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/raceqandas.html Questions and Answers for Census 2000 Data on Race] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100304131211/http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/raceqandas.html|date=March 4, 2010}} 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".[https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-4.pdf The White Population: 2000], Census 2000 Brief C2KBR/01-4, US Census Bureau, August 2001. The Federal Bureau of Investigation uses the same definition.[https://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150503055659/https://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf|date=2015-05-03}}, 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.{{cite web|date=May 1, 2024|title=vocabulary.com|url=https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/White%20people}}

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,{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/cicdoc/cen90app/ancestry.htm|title=Clark Library | U-M Library|website=Lib.umich.edu|access-date=5 June 2023|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050313073045/http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/cicdoc/cen90app/ancestry.htm|archive-date=13 March 2005}} but 2005 and proceeding years of PUMS codes do not.{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/PUMS/C2SS/CodeList/2005/Ancestry.htm|title=Access Data: Public Use Microdata (PUMS): 2005 PUMS Code Lists: Ancestry Codes |access-date=2008-08-22|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080916154200/http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/PUMS/C2SS/CodeList/2005/Ancestry.htm|archive-date=2008-09-16 }} 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf|title=Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin 2000|publisher=United States Census Bureau|access-date=29 August 2017}} In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the US census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value.

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.{{cite web|title=Naturalization Act of 1790 |url=https://www.loc.gov/law/help/st.}}

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.{{cite web|title=The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act) |url=https://history.state.gov}}

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.

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.

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 underscores how social structures often produce compounded forms of privilege or marginalization.[3] For example, middle-class white women may experience both gender-based discrimination and racial privilege simultaneously.{{Cite journal |last=Crenshaw |first=Kimberle |date=July 1991 |title=Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 |journal=Stanford Law Review |volume=43 |issue=6 |pages=1241–1299 |doi=10.2307/1229039 |jstor=1229039 |issn=0038-9765|url-access=subscription }}

{{Main|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.{{Cite journal |last1=McKinney |first1=William M. |last2=Kemper |first2=Peter |date=March 1905 |title=Federal Statutes Annotated, Containing All the Laws of the United States of a General and Permanent Nature in Force on the First Day of January, 1908 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/1100734 |journal=The Virginia Law Register |volume=10 |issue=11 |pages=1053 |doi=10.2307/1100734 |jstor=1100734 |issn=1547-1357|url-access=subscription }} Early legal standards did so by defining the race of a child based on a mother's race{{contradictory inline|date=October 2017}} 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 {{em|one-drop rule}}. 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.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/4532/1/V58N03_155.pdf|title=African Ancestry of the White American Population|website=Kb.osu.edu|access-date=29 August 2017}}

{{Main|East Asian Americans}}

Beginning in the mid-19th century, the United States experienced significant immigration from East Asia and the Indian subcontinent.{{cite web|date=May 1, 2024|title=Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900|url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/immigration-to-united-states-1851-1900/|website=Library of Congress}}{{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Erika |title=The making of Asian America: a history |date=2016 |publisher=Simon & Schuster paperbacks |isbn=978-1-4767-3940-3 |edition=First Simon & Schuster trade paperback |location=New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_03_c-godeeper.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040208121836/http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_03_c-godeeper.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 8, 2004|title=Race – The Power of an Illusion . Go Deeper|website=pbs.org|access-date=29 August 2017}} 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. {{ISBN|0-88133-312-3}}{{cite web|url=http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/asianamerican/vivian-wong.html|title=Somewhere Between White and Black: The Chinese in Mississippi - Asian American History - OAH Magazine of History|website=Oah.org|access-date=29 August 2017|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051024083730/http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/asianamerican/vivian-wong.html|archive-date=24 October 2005}}{{cite web|url=http://usads.ms11.net/bjm.html|title=Mississippi Chinese - Delta history - Bobby Joe Moon|website=usads.ms11.net|access-date=29 August 2017}} 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. {{ISBN|9780615185712}}

Despite an opposite trend in other parts of the United States, in 1927, the Supreme Court decision Lum v. Rice codified the right of states to define a Chinese student as non-white for the purpose of segregating public schools.{{cite journal|last=Payne|first=Charles|title=Multicultural education and racism in American schools|journal=Theory into Practice|year=1984|volume=23|issue=2|pages=124–131|doi=10.1080/00405848409543102}}{{cite web|url=http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-25-spring-2004/feature/brown-v-board-timeline-school-integration-us|title=Brown v. Board: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S.|publisher=Teaching Tolerance|date=2004|access-date=2013-11-18}} As the Jim Crow era lasted between 1876 and 1965, this effectively placed Lum v. Rice within that same time period.

In a precursor to Brown v. Board, the 1947 federal legal case Mendez v. Westminster fought to take down segregated schools for Mexican-American and white students. In doing so, this prompted California Governor Earl Warren to repeal a state law calling for segregation of Native American and Asian-American students in that state. Segregation of the American education system during the Jim Crow era also impacted East Asians;{{cite web|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=607|title=The Méndez Case: Brown v. Board of Education for Mexican Americans|publisher=digital history|access-date=2013-11-18}} however, the Mendez decision ended this impact on Asian Americans.{{cite web|url=https://inclusion.uci.edu/events/significance-mendez-v-westminster-asian-american-community/|title=The Significance of Mendez v. Westminster for the Asian American Community|website=Office of Inclusive Excellence|language=en-US|access-date=2019-12-10}}

Journalist Iris Kuo notes that in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and two employee lawsuits against Google, the anti-affirmative action faction white people aligned with like-minded Asian Americans because they were part of an overrepresented minority. She points to scholarly controversy over whether Asian Americans are "whitening", either through acceptance as having the same social status as white people, considering trends of aligning interests, increasing acceptance, cultural assimilation, high group socioeconomic status, and the idea of a model minority.{{cite magazine|magazine=The Atlantic|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/the-whitening-of-asian-americans/563336/|title=The 'Whitening' of Asian Americans|date=August 31, 2018|author=Iris Kuo}}

{{Main|European Americans}}

The U.S. census considers people having ancestry from any of the original peoples of Europe to be white. Since the 17th century, European Americans have been the largest panethnic group.

{{Main|Finnish Americans}}

The earliest Finnish immigrants to the US were colonists who were Swedes in the legal sense and perhaps spoke Swedish. They settled in the Swedish colony of New Sweden. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, John Morton, who signed the Declaration of Independence, was Finnish. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, descended from one of the 17th-century Finnish colonists in New Sweden.{{cite web|url=http://www.oocities.org/vienna/8921/colonial.html|title=Estonians in North America, 1627-1896}}John Powell, "Encyclopedia of North American immigration", p. 98 More recent Finns were on several occasions "racially" discriminated againstArmas Kustaa Ensio Holmio, "History of the Finns in Michigan", p. 17 | She had barely reached the front porch when the friend's mother realized that her daughter's playmate was a Finn. Helmi was turned away immediately, and the daughter of the house was forbidden to associate with "that Mongolian". John Wargelin, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and a former president of Suomi College, also tells how, when he was a child in Crystal Falls some years earlier, he and his friends were ridiculed and stoned on their way to school. "Because of our strange language," he says, "we were considered an alien race who had no right to settle in this country." 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.Eric Dregni, "Vikings in the attic: In search of Nordic America", p. 176

Minnesota, home to a strong mining industry at the turn of the 20th century, was the stage of several politically-motivated conflicts between laborers and anti-union leaders. In 1907, a group of between 10,000 and 16,000 immigrants – the majority of whom were Finnish – staged a large strike against Oliver Iron Mining Company. In response, the company began screening its immigrant-based workforce by their country of origin. Finns regularly comprised the most numerous and vocal groups of protestors, feeding into beliefs that the Finnish ethnic group was less capable of assimilating well into the American workforce. Oliver refused to hire more Finns.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}}

One year after the major strike, the company's superintendent stated: "Their people [the Finns] are good laborers but trouble breeders.... They are a race that tries to take advantage of the companies at every opportunity and are not to be trusted."Huhta, Aleksi, 2014. Debating Visibility: Race and Visibility in the Finnish-American Press in 1908. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 4(4), pp.168–175. {{doi|10.2478/njmr-2014-0028}}

Acrimony toward Finnish social radicals in Minnesota's political milieu reached a head in the case of John Svan and 15 associates. On January 4, 1908, a trial was held regarding whether John Svan, a socialist, 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 maintained that Finnish immigrants were Mongols. Sweet linked the "socialistic ideology" of Finnish radicals with other collectivist East Asian philosophies to underscore his position that Finns were of an Asiatic frame of mind that was out of harmony with American thought. The judge, William Alexander 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 US citizens, and from that day on, the law forbade treating Finnish immigrants and Americans of Finnish descent as not white.{{cite web|url=http://www.historymuseumeot.com/mfahs/htm/part8_0026.htm|title=Recognized HTML document|website=Historymuseumeot.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}Armas Kustaa Ensio Holmio, "History of the Finns in Michigan", p. 23

In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a lot resentment from the local American population toward 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.{{cite web|url=http://ethnicity.lib.mtu.edu/groups_Finns.html|title=An Interior Ellis Island|date=8 March 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070308124318/http://ethnicity.lib.mtu.edu/groups_Finns.html|archive-date=2007-03-08}}

{{Main|German Americans}}

Large numbers of Germans migrated to North America between the 1680s and 1760s. Many settled in the Province of Pennsylvania. In the 18th century, numerous English Americans in Pennsylvania harbored resentment toward the increasing number of German settlers. Benjamin Franklin, in Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., complained about the increasing influx of German Americans, stating that they had a negative influence on American society. According to Franklin, the only exception to this were Germans of Saxon descent, "who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased".{{cite web|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes, by Frank Luthor Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35508/35508-h/35508-h.htm|access-date=2022-08-01|website=www.gutenberg.org}}

Unlike most European immigrant groups, whose acceptance as white came gradually over the course of the late 19th century (that is, in U.S. colloquial definitions,{{clarify|date=March 2021}} since virtually all Europeans were white by legal U.S. definition except the Finns), Germans were quickly accepted as white.See David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991) p. 32 for their earlier status. See op. cit. p. 142 for Stephen A. Douglas's acceptance, in his debates against Abraham Lincoln, that Germans are a "branch of the Caucasian race." See op. cit. p. 155 for anti-abolitionist tracts of 1864 accusing abolitionist German Americans of having "broken their ties with the white race" by opposing slavery. See Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961) p. 75 for the legislated disfranchisement of Pennsylvanians of African ancestry by the first state legislature controlled by German Americans.

{{Main|Irish Americans}}

Beginning in the 1840s, negative assessments of the "Irish character" became more and more racialized. Irish people were considered brutish and (like black people) were often compared to simians. The "Celtic physiognomy" was described as being marked by an "upturned nose [and] the black tint of the skin".{{cite book|title=Whiteness of a different color European immigrants and the alchemy of race|last1=Jacobson|first1=Matthew Frye|date=1999|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674951914|edition= 1st Harvard University Press paperback|location=Cambridge, Mass.}}{{rp|48}}

Labor historian Eric Arnesen wrote in 2001 that "the notion that the non-white Irish became white has become axiomatic among many academics"; however, he argued that this was historically inaccurate, and that the Irish in the United States were considered white throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.{{cite news|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27672732|title=Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination|first=Eric|last=Arnesen|year=2001|journal=International Labor and Working-Class History|volume=60|page=13|jstor=27672732}} Whiteness scholar David Roediger has argued that during the early period of Irish immigration to the United States "it was by no means clear that the Irish were white" or "that they would be admitted to all the rights of whites and granted all the privileges of citizenship". However, Arnesen suggests that the Irish were in fact granted full rights and privileges upon naturalization and that early Irish immigrants "often blended unproblematically into American society".{{sfn|Arnesen|2001|p=14}} Law professor David Bernstein has questioned the idea that Irish Americans were once non-white, writing that Irish Americans were "indeed considered white by law and by custom" despite the fact that they experienced "discrimination, hostility, assertions of inferiority and occasionally even violence". Bernstein notes that Irish Americans were not targeted by laws against interracial marriage, were allowed to attend whites-only schools, were classified as white in the Jim Crow South, and were never subjected to anti-Irish immigration restrictions.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/|title=Sorry, but the Irish were always 'white' (and so were Italians, Jews and so on)|newspaper=The Washington Post|accessdate=2022-09-01}} The sociologists Philip Q. Yang and Kavitha Koshy have also questioned what they call the "becoming white thesis", noting that Irish Americans have been legally classified as white since the first U.S. census in 1790, that Irish Americans were legally white for the purposes of the Naturalization Act of 1790 that limited citizenship to "free White person(s)", and that they could find no legislative or judicial evidence that Irish Americans had ever been considered non-white.{{cite web|url=https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=jpps|title=The "Becoming White Thesis" Revisited|publisher=The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology|accessdate=2022-09-01}}

We can examine contemporary sources to see how this image was presented in the public sphere. Satirical cartoonists such as Thomas Nast produced imagery mocking Irish immigrants connoting them as brutish and unintelligent. A renowned cartoon known as the 'usual way of doing things' depicts an Irishmen as an ape promoting violence suggesting the barbaric nature of the immigrants.{{Cite web |last=Nast |first=Thomas |date=1871 |title=the usual way of doing things |url= }} This divide and rather sudden disdain towards the Irish could perhaps be accredited to the growing belief amongst Americans that they descended from the true Anglo-Saxon race rather than the celts. This is part of a broader belief around the hierarchies of whiteness.{{Citation |title=Anglo-Saxons and Others, 1840–1924 |date=1999-09-01 |work=Whiteness of a Different Color |pages=39–90 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjk2w15.7 |access-date=2025-05-19 |publisher=Harvard University Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctvjk2w15.7 |url-access=subscription }}

{{Main|Italian Americans}}

Although legally classified as white under U.S. naturalization laws, Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often occupied a racially ambiguous position in American society. In parts of the South, especially Louisiana, Italians worked in manual labor roles typically reserved for African Americans, leading some contemporaries to question their whiteness and social status. While Italians were not systematically excluded from voting or citizenship, they were often viewed as racially "other" and culturally foreign.[1][2]{{Citation |title=Anglo-Saxons and Others, 1840–1924 |date=1999-09-01 |work=Whiteness of a Different Color |pages=39–90 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjk2w15.7 |access-date=2025-05-20 |publisher=Harvard University Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctvjk2w15.7 |url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |last=Trémoulinas |first=Alexis |date=2007-07-01 |title=David Roediger, Working toward whiteness. How America's immigrants became white, The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs |url=https://doi.org/10.4000/sdt.22594 |journal=Sociologie du Travail |volume=49 |issue=3 |pages=417–419 |doi=10.4000/sdt.22594 |issn=0038-0296}}

The 1891 lynching of eleven Italian men in New Orleans following the murder of police chief David Hennessy highlighted this precarious position. Though legally white, Italians were not fully accepted into the social privileges associated with whiteness. Public reactions to the lynching often portrayed Italians as inherently criminal and racially suspect.[3] {{Cite journal |last1=Jackson |first1=Joy J. |last2=Gambino |first2=Richard |date=November 1977 |title=Vendetta: A True Story of the Worst Lynching in America, the Mass Murder of Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891, the Vicious Motivations Behind It, and the Tragic Repercussions That Linger to This Day. |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/2207032 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=628 |doi=10.2307/2207032 |jstor=2207032 |issn=0022-4642|url-access=subscription }}

Over time, Italian Americans gradually integrated into mainstream white society. Historians argue this process required distancing from Black communities, adoption of white racial norms, and access to federal programs that excluded African Americans, such as the GI Bill and FHA-backed housing.[4] [5]{{Cite book |last=Guglielmo |first=Thomas A |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195155433.001.0001 |title=White On Arrival |date=2003-03-27 |publisher=Oxford University PressNew York, NY |doi=10.1093/oso/9780195155433.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-515543-3}} {{Cite journal |last1=Yuill |first1=Kevin |last2=Katznelson |first2=Ira |date=2006-07-01 |title=When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/25434807 |journal=The American Journal of Legal History |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=327 |doi=10.2307/25434807 |jstor=25434807 |issn=0002-9319|url-access=subscription }}Scholars refer to this as a process of "ethnic whitening," wherein Italians were absorbed into the white majority by embracing prevailing racial hierarchies and shedding solidarity with other marginalized groups.[6]{{Cite book |last1=Guglielmo |first1=Jennifer |last2=Salerno |first2=Salvatore |date=2012-11-12 |title=Are Italians White? |url=https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203616673 |doi=10.4324/9780203616673|isbn=978-0-203-61667-3 }}

{{Main|Spanish Americans|Hispanic and Latino Americans}}

Hispanic Americans are Americans who have a significant number of Spanish-speaking Latin American ancestors or Spanish ancestors. While Latin Americans have a broad array of ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, they all tend to be indiscriminately labeled "Hispanic", giving that term a "racial" value.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

It was not until the 1980s after years of protest from Chicanos that the United States government created the term Hispanic to classify all peoples who come from Spanish-speaking countries. The term Hispanic has in recent years in the United States been given racial value with the perception of a racial Hispanic look being that of Native American race or of the mixed races, usually mestizo or mulatto, as the majority of the people who immigrate from Spanish-speaking countries to the United States are of that racial origin. Due to this racial perception of Hispanics even among Hispanic Americans themselves, white Hispanics and Latinos, black Hispanics and Latinos, and Asian Hispanics and Latinos are often overlooked in the US mass media and in general American social perceptions. The white Hispanics and Latinos who are perceived as "Hispanic" by Americans usually possess typical Mediterranean or Southern European pigmentation (olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes) as most Spanish and white Latin American immigrants are and most white Hispanics and Latinos are.{{cite web|url=http://nlcatp.org/typical-stereotypes-of-hispanics/|title=Typical Stereotypes of Hispanics - NLCATP.org|website=nlcatp.org|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-date=14 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170514022922/http://nlcatp.org/typical-stereotypes-of-hispanics/|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161421.htm|title=Genetic makeup of Hispanic/Latino Americans influenced by Native American, European and African-American ancestries|website=Sciencedaily.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}

On the 2000 U.S. census form, race and ethnicity are distinct questions. A respondent who checks the "Hispanic or Latino" ethnicity box must also check one or more of the five official race categories. Of the over 35 million Hispanics or Latinos in the 2000 census, a plurality of 48.6% identified as "white," 48.2% identified as "Other" (most of whom are presumed of mixed races such as mestizo or mulatto), and the remaining 3.2% identified as "black" and other races.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

By 2010, the number of Hispanics identifying as white has increased by a wide margin since the year 2000 on the 2010 US census form, of the over 50 million people who identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans a majority 53% identified as "white", 36.7% identified as "Other" (most of whom are presumed of mixed races such as mestizo or mulatto), 6% identified as "Two or more races", 2.5% identified as "black", 1.4% identified as "American Indian and Alaska Native", and the remaining 0.5% identified as other races.{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf|title=The Hispanic Population:2010|website=Census.gov|access-date=2013-02-20}}

The media and some Hispanic community leaders in the United States refer to Hispanics as a separate group from all others, as well as "whites" and the "white majority". This may be because "white" is often used as shorthand for "non-Hispanic white". Thus, the non-Hispanic population and some Hispanic community leaders refer to white Hispanics as non-Hispanic whites and white Hispanic actors/actresses in media are mostly given non-Hispanic roles{{cite web|url=http://thehispanicmyth.com/Hispanics_on_TV_myth.htm |title=Hispanic roles on American television|access-date=2008-05-17|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080604015632/http://thehispanicmyth.com/Hispanics_on_TV_myth.htm |archive-date=2008-06-04}} while, in turn, are given the most roles in the US Hispanic mass media that the white Hispanics are overrepresented and admired in the US Hispanic mass media and social perceptions. Multiracial Latinos have limited media appearance; critics have accused the U.S. Hispanic media of overlooking the brown-skinned Indigenous and multiracial Hispanic and black Hispanic populations by over-representation of blond and blue/green-eyed white Hispanic and Latino Americans and also light-skinned mestizo (and sometimes mulatto) Hispanic and Latino Americans (often deemed as white persons in U.S. Hispanic and Latino populations if achieving the middle-class or higher social status), especially some of the actors on the telenovelas.{{cite web|url=http://www.newsweek.com/y-tu-black-mama-tambien-137899|title=Y Tu Black Mama Tambien|date=18 June 2003|website=Newsweek|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/|title=Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis|newspaper=Washington Post|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://latinola.com/story.php?story=9009|title=LatinoLA - Forum :: Blonde, Blue-Eyed, Euro-Cute Latinos on Spanish TV|website=LatinoLA|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-date=2 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170902161618/http://latinola.com/story.php?story=9009|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.vidadeoro.com/2010/10/latinos-not-reflected-on-spanish-tv.html|title=Latinos not reflected on Spanish TV|website=Vidadeoro.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art40221.asp|title=What are Telenovelas?|website=Bellaonline.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-08-06/news/0008060066_1_spanish-latino-leaders-caste|title=Racial Bias Charged On Spanish-language Tv|website=Articles.sun-sentinel.com|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-date=2012-09-15|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120915015308/http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-08-06/news/0008060066_1_spanish-latino-leaders-caste|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/08/19/pride_or_prejudice/|title=Pride or prejudice? - The Boston Globe|website=Boston.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2004/5104-9.htm|title=Differences Between American and Castilian Spanish - Antimoon Forum|website=Antimoon.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}

{{Main|Mexican Americans}}

File:RomualdoPacheco.jpg in the California State Capitol.]]

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.genealogybranches.com/1930census.html|title=US Population in the 1930 Census by Race|first=Joe|last=Beine|website=Genealogybranches.com|access-date=29 August 2017}} 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 are definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race".{{cite web|url=http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~vbashi/soc108-handout-census.htm|title=The Race Question|website=Rci.rutgers.edu|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081007100347/http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~vbashi/soc108-handout-census.htm|archive-date=7 October 2008|url-status=dead}}

During periods in U.S. history when racial intermarriage was not 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 blacks 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.{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/whiteby_han_2006_00_0354|url-access=registration|quote=White by Law.|title=White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race|first=Ian |last=Haney Lopez|date=1 October 2006|publisher=NYU Press|access-date=29 August 2017|via=Internet Archive|isbn=9780814736944}}

U.S. nativists in the late 1920s and 1930s (mostly due to the socially xenophobic and economic climate of the Great Depression) tried to put a halt to Mexican immigration by having Mexicans (and Mexican Americans) declared non-white, by virtue of their Indian heritage. After 70 years of being in the United States and having been bestowed white status by the US government, this was the first time the United States began to show true racist attitudes toward Mexicans in America, something that usually came quickly to people of other races. They based their strategy on a 1924 law that barred entry to immigrants who were ineligible for citizenship, and at that point, only blacks and whites, and not Asians or Native Americans, could naturalize and become U.S. citizens. The test case came in December 1935, when a Buffalo, New York judge rejected Jalisco native Timoteo Andrade's application for citizenship on the grounds that he was a "Mexican Indian". Had it not been for the intervention of the Mexican and American governments, who forced a second hearing, this precedent could very well have made many Mexicans, the majority of whom are mestizo, ineligible for citizenship.{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez3sep03,0,3733464.column?coll=la-home-commentary|work=Los Angeles Times|first=Gregory|last=Rodriguez|title=Shades of Mexican|date=3 September 2007}} When mixed-race Mexicans were allowed to retain their white status in American society they were unperturbed with the fact that the United States still continued its discriminatory practices toward Mexicans of full Indigenous heritage.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}

During the Great Depression, Mexicans were largely considered non-white.{{citation needed|date=June 2007}} As many as 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported in a decade-long effort by the government called the Mexican Repatriation.{{cite news|url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm|work=USA Today|title=U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations|first=Wendy|last=Koch|date=2006-04-05|access-date=2010-05-01}}

In the 2000 U.S. census, around half of all persons of Mexican or Mexican American origin in the United States checked white to register their race (in addition to stating their Mexican national origin). Mexican Americans are the largest white Hispanic group in the United States.

{{Main|West Indian Americans}}

Caribbean countries such as Cuba,{{cite web|url=http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/014.html|title=José Barreiro, Indians in Cuba|website=Hartford-hwp.com|access-date=29 August 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://www.kacike.org/Figueredo.html|title=The Indians of Cuba: A study of Cultural Adaptation and Ethnic Survival|website=Kacike.org|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330051140/http://www.kacike.org/Figueredo.html|archive-date=30 March 2010|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.pathcom.com/~cancuba/articles/extinct.html|title=Not Extinct|website=Pathcom.com|access-date=29 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120406103538/http://www.pathcom.com/~cancuba/articles/extinct.html|archive-date=6 April 2012|url-status=dead}} the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and especially the Dominican Republic have a complex ethnic heritage since they include Indigenous and African legacies. Africans were forcibly transported to the islands throughout the colonial period (and indeed blacks accompanied the first Spanish explorers, with more arriving to harvest sugar in the 18th century prior to the American Revolution).{{cite journal|url=https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5001334916|title=Undesirable Aliens: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in the Comparison of Haitian and British West Indian Immigrant Workers in Cuba, 1912-1939|last=McLeod|first=Marc C.|date=22 March 1998|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=31|issue=3|pages=599–623|access-date=29 August 2017|doi=10.1353/jsh/31.3.599|url-access=subscription}}

Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans exemplify this complex ethnic status. The Cuban exiles and the Puerto Ricans who migrated, entered the United States before 1959 tended to be of European ancestry (most particularly Spanish ancestry) and therefore were/are white.{{cite web|url=http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume16/pdfs/aguirre.pdf|title=Archived copy|access-date=2007-04-25|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080625230758/http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume16/pdfs/aguirre.pdf|archive-date=2008-06-25}}{{cite web|url=http://campello.tripod.com/hispanic.html|title=Hispanics: A Culture, Not a Race|website=campello.tripod.com|access-date=29 August 2017}} Their appearance let them be more accepted by an American culture that openly attacked Afro-Cubans and Afro-Puerto Ricans, and other races. In some cases, this white racial status "allowed them to feel superior over other racial and ethnic groups and to make claims to rights and privileges".

{{Main|American Jews}}

File:They Can Become Citizens.png regarding citizenship for "Asiatic Jews", Syrians, and Armenians.]]

Due to centuries of living in a diaspora, Jews descend from various geographical regions, mostly Europe and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), as well as Asia and Africa. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European Jews in the United States were legally classified as white, but were frequently described as "Mongoloid" or "Asiatic" by advocates of scientific racism.{{citation needed|reason=Needs a source; how frequent or influential these claims were is also arguable|date=January 2024}} During the 19th century, the United States Bureau of Immigration had classified Jews as "Slavonic...a subgroup of the elite Aryan stock", but the Dillingham Commission contended that linguistic, physical, and other criteria classified Jews as Semites, thus "lower down on the Caucasian ladder".{{cite journal|last1=Tuchman|first1=Arleen Marcia|title=Diabetes and Race – A Historical Perspective|journal=American Journal of Public Health|date=2011|volume=101|issue=1|pages=24–33|doi=10.2105/AJPH.2010.202564|pmid=21148711|pmc=3000712|issn=0090-0036}}{{cite book|last1=Singerman|first1=Robert|editor1-last=Gerber|editor1-first=David A.|title=Anti-Semitism in American history|date=1986|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana|isbn=9780252012143|chapter=The Jew as Racial Alien: The Genetic Component of American Anti-Semitism}}{{rp|103, 116–117}} A 1909 Census Bureau ruling related to the case of George Shishim{{cite news|title=Syrians Barred from Franchise|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2713161/la_herald_oct_21_1909_george_shishim/|access-date=23 September 2017|work=Los Angeles Herald|date=21 October 1909|pages=8|via=Newspapers.com}} to classify Syrians as "Mongolians", thus non-white and ineligible for citizenship, caused American Jewish leaders to fear that Jews would be denied naturalization like other "Asiatic" groups.Goldstein, Eric L. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, And American Identity. pp. 103-104

In 1914, during a hearing of the Dow v. United States court case, Judge Henry Smith stated that the term "Jew" was a religious and not a racial distinction. He further stated that European Jews were not separate from other Europeans in any "racial sense" and that European Jews should be considered "racially, physiologically, and psychologically" European. Defending the exclusion of Syrian Jews as non-white, Judge Smith stated that the admission of white European Jews had nothing to do with the exclusion of dark-skinned "African or Asiastic" Jews.{{cite book|last=Gualtieri|first=Sarah|date=2009|title=Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J6gwDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22a+European+Jew+was+first+and+foremost+a+European%22&pg=PA68|location=Berkeley, California|publisher=University of California Press|page=68|isbn=9780520255340}}

Law professor David Bernstein has questioned the idea that American Jews were once considered collectively non-white, writing that American Jews were "indeed considered white by law and by custom" despite the fact that they experienced "discrimination, hostility, assertions of inferiority and occasionally even violence." Bernstein notes that Jews were not targeted by laws against interracial marriage, were allowed to attend whites-only schools, and were classified as white in the Jim Crow South.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/|title=Sorry, but the Irish were always 'white' (and so were Italians, Jews and so on)|newspaper=The Washington Post|accessdate=2023-09-06|first=David|last=Bernstein|date=March 22, 2017}} The sociologists Philip Q. Yang and Kavitha Koshy have also questioned what they call the "becoming white thesis", noting that most European Jews have been legally classified as white since the first US census in 1790, were legally white for the purposes of the Naturalization Act of 1790 that limited citizenship to "free White person(s)", and that they could find no legislative or judicial evidence that American Jews had ever been considered collectively non-white.{{cite journal|url=https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=jpps|title=The "Becoming White Thesis" Revisited|journal=The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology|volume=8|issue=1|accessdate=2023-09-06|first1=Philip|last1=Q. Yang|first2=Kavitha|last2=Koshy|date=March 2016|doi=10.62915/2154-8935.1096|doi-access=free}}

The racial status of Jews has continued to engender social debate,{{cite news|last1=Green|first1=Emma|title=Can Jews Still Assume They're White?|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/|access-date=21 September 2017|work=The Atlantic|date=5 December 2016}} with some commentators arguing that Jews are collectively non-white.{{cite news|last1=Bailey|first1=Sarah Pulliam|title=How the Jewish identity of 'Wonder Woman's' star is causing a stir|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/06/07/how-the-jewish-identity-of-wonder-womans-star-is-causing-a-stir/|access-date=21 September 2017|newspaper=Washington Post|date=7 June 2017}}{{cite news|last1=Sommer|first1=Allison Kaplan|title=Is Israeli Wonder Woman Star Gal Gadot White or a Person of Color?|url=http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/1.794707|access-date=21 September 2017|work=Haaretz|date=8 June 2017|language=en}} As the US census defines white people as people "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa", Jewish Americans of European, North African, and Middle Eastern heritage are classified as white. African American Jews, Asian American Jews, Native American Jews, some Hispanic and Latino Jews, and other non-white Jews are often known as Jews of color.

{{Main|Middle Eastern Americans}}

The US Census Bureau includes the "original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East" among white people.{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf|title=Definition of Race Categories Used in the 2010 Census|date=March 2011|editor=Karen R. Humes|editor2=Nicholas A. Jones|editor3=Roberto R. Ramirez|publisher=United States Census Bureau|page=3|access-date=September 8, 2013}} 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. On March 9, 2024, the US Federal Register announced a new Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) option in federal forms, including the census on race and ethnicity questions.{{cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/2016/10/25/499343633/new-u-s-census-category-proposed-for-middle-eastern-people|title=New U.S. Census Category Proposed For People Of Middle Eastern, North African Descent|last1=Chow|first1=Kat|date=25 October 2016|work=NPR.org|access-date=23 September 2017|language=en}}{{cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/11/519548276/for-some-arab-americans-checking-a-census-box-is-complicated|title=For Some Americans Of MENA Descent, Checking A Census Box Is Complicated|last1=Chow|first1=Kat|date=11 March 2017|work=NPR.org|access-date=23 September 2017|language=en}}[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/13/stateline-census-mena-africa-mideast/13999239/ "Lobbying for a 'MENA' category on U.S. Census"] Wiltz, Teresea. USA Today. Published October 7, 2014. Accessed December 14, 2015.{{Cite news |last=Wang |first=Hansi Lo |date=March 28, 2024 |title=Next U.S. census will have new boxes for 'Middle Eastern or North African,' 'Latino' |url=https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1237218459/census-race-categories-ethnicity-middle-east-north-africa |access-date= |work=NPR}}

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 (1925), and Ex Parte Mohriez (1944).

{{Main|Arab Americans}}

From 1909 to 1944, members of Arab American communities in the United States sought naturalized citizenship through an official recognition as white.{{cite book|title=Whitewashed: America's Invisible Middle Eastern Minority|first=John|last=Tehranian|date=2009|publisher=New York University Press|isbn=978-0814782736|location=New York|oclc=495794668}}{{cite book|title=Between Arab and White : Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian-American Diaspora|first=Sarah|last=Gualtieri|date=2009|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0520255340|location=CA|oclc=773565102}} During this period, the courts were inconsistent in defining Arabs as white granting some eligibility for citizenship, while denying others.{{cite book|title=White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race|url=https://archive.org/details/whiteby_han_2006_00_0354|url-access=registration|first=Ian|last=Haney-López|date=2006|publisher=New York University Press|isbn=978-0814736944|edition= Rev. and updated, 10th anniversary|location=New York|oclc=213815614}} Therefore, in the first half of the 20th 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 Zahlé, Lebanon, Shishim immigrated to the United States in 1894 becoming a police officer in Venice, Los Angeles. According to Sarah Gualtieri, 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.[http://www.arabamericanhistory.org/archives/dept-of-justice-affirms-arab-race-in-1909/ "Dept. of Justice Affirms in 1909 Whether Syrians, Turks, and Arabs are of White or Yellow Race"] Arab American Historical Foundation. Accessed December 14, 2015. Shishim's attorneys, 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. Despite this ruling, neither US 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, 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.{{cite book|title=Handbook of Arab American Psychology, "Race and Racialization: Demographic Trends and the Process of Reckoning Social Place"|last=Cainkar|first=Louise|others=Amer, Mona M., Awad, Germine H.|year=2016|isbn=978-0-415-84193-1|location=New York, NY|pages=19–34|oclc=910664424}} Ex Parte Mohriez (1944) and the 1977 OMB Directive 15 include Middle Eastern and North African in the definition of white.{{cite web|url=https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/populations/bridged-race/directive15.html|title=Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – Directive No. 15 – Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting|website=Center for Disease Control|access-date=February 27, 2018}}

{{Main|Armenian Americans}}

Another 1909 immigration and naturalization case found that Armenians were white and thus eligible for citizenship. A US 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."{{cite news|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/12/25/101752700.pdf|title=Citizenship for Armenians – Circuit Court Declines to Bar Them on Government's Plea|date=24 December 1909|work=The New York Times|access-date=23 September 2017}}

{{Main|Native Americans in the United States}}

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, some European Americans promoted the idea that Native Americans were peoples without a future, who should be assimilated into mainstream American culture. Tribal citizenship was frequently defined according to blood quantum standards (proven through a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood), so that non-citizens of mostly white ancestry and more distant Native ancestry were denied any legal status within the tribe of their ancestors. This led to the classification of increasing numbers of people of distant Indigenous ancestry as white. In recent years, more Americans increasingly self-identify among mixed-race people as being Native American; however, this has no legal standing. In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as legally white during the Jim Crow era.Kathleen O'Toole, "Toggling Between Ethnicities," Stanford Today, November/December 1998. The 2000 US census includes "tribal affiliation or community attachment" as part of the definitions of American Indian and Alaska Native.

{{Main|Pacific Islander Americans}}

In the 1889 case of In re Kanaka Nian, the court ruled that Hawaiians are not white based on scientific evidence.{{cite web|title=In re Kanaka Nian, 6 Utah 259 (1889)|url=https://cite.case.law/utah/6/259/|access-date=2022-12-21}}

{{Main|South Asian Americans}}

{{Further|Racial classification of Indian Americans}}

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 US courts nor the US Census Bureau categorized Indians as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the US. Various court judgements instead deemed Indians to be "white" or "not white" for the purposes of law.{{cite book|last=Haney Lopez|first=Ian|title=White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race|publisher=New York University Press|year=1996|url=http://departments.oxy.edu/core/s02/csp52/prereq.htm|access-date=2013-08-21|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927200107/http://departments.oxy.edu/core/s02/csp52/prereq.htm|archive-date=2007-09-27|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.despardes.com/articles/feb06/20060212-are-desis-white.asp|title=Are "Desis" White?|author=Francis C. Assisi|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061007144304/http://www.despardes.com/articles/feb06/20060212-are-desis-white.asp|archive-date=2006-10-07}}

Unlike Indian Americans, Nepalese Americans and Sri Lankan 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.{{cite book|title=Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms|last=Dong|first=Lan|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2016|isbn=9781440829215|pages=94, 601–602}}

In 1909, Bhicaji Balsara became the first Indian to gain US 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 therefore not eligible to receive US citizenship.{{cite book|title=Postmodernism & a Sociology...(c)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CnMon2RiFLAC&pg=PA143|publisher=University of Arkansas Press|isbn=978-1-61075-322-7|pages=143–}}

In 1923, the US Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that people of Indian descent were not "white" men, and thus not eligible for citizenship.United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Certificate From The Circuit Court Of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit., No. 202. Argued 11, 12 January 1923.—Decided 19 February 1923, United States Reports, v. 261, The Supreme Court, October Term, 1922, 204–215. 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.{{cite web|title=Not All Caucasians Are White: The Supreme Court Rejects Citizenship for Asian Indians|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5076/|publisher=History Matters|access-date=20 August 2013}} Associate Justice George Sutherland wrote that Indians "cannot be properly assigned to any of the enumerated grand racial divisions". Following the Thind ruling, the US government attempted to strip Indian Americans of their citizenship, but were forced to drop many of the cases after losing their case against Thind's own lawyer, Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, who successfully argued that he would be unjustly harmed by removal of his American citizenship.{{cite book|title=Asian American history and culture. Volume One-Two : an encyclopedia|last1=Ling|first1=Huping|last2=Austin|first2=Allan W.|last3=Adachi|first3=Nobuko|isbn=978-1-315-70630-6|location=London [England]|oclc=908047319}}{{cite book|last=Coulson|first=Doug|title=Race, nation, and refuge: the rhetoric of race in Asian American citizenship cases|isbn=978-1-4384-6662-0|location=Albany|oclc=962141092|date=October 2017}}

The US 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,Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, [https://web.archive.org/web/20051031073634/http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076.html Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States] Working Paper no. 76 (2005); see footnote 6 in paper with many selecting "Asian Indian" to differentiate themselves from peoples of "American Indian" or Native American background.{{cite web|last=Morning|first=Ann|title=The racial self-identification of South Asians in the United States|url=http://as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1043/S.Asian.Race.ID.JEMS.January.2001.pdf|publisher=Journal of Ethnic Migration Studies|access-date=20 August 2013}}

{{Main|Southeast Asian Americans}}

In the 1894 case of In re Po, the court ruled that Burmese are not white based on common knowledge and legal precedent.{{cite web|title=In re Po, 28 N.Y.S. 383, 7 Misc. Rep. 471 (1894)|url=https://cite.case.law/nys/28/383/|access-date=2022-12-21}} Moreover, courts ruled Filipinos as not white in the following cases: In re Lampitoe (1916), In re Mallari (1916), In re Rallos (1917), United States v. Javier (1927), De La Ysla v. United States (1935), and De Cano v. State (1941).{{cite web|title=In re Lampitoe, 232 F. 382 (S.D.N.Y. 1916)|url=https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8814824/in-re-lampitoe/|access-date=2022-12-21}}{{cite web|title=In re Mallari, 239 F. 416 (1916)|url=https://cite.case.law/f/239/416/|access-date=2022-12-21}}{{cite web|title=In re Rallos, 241 F. 686 (1917)|url=https://cite.case.law/f/241/686/|access-date=2022-12-21}}{{cite web|title=United States v. Javier|url=https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-javier|access-date=2022-12-21}}{{cite web|title=Roque Espiritu De La Ysla v. United States, 77 F.2d 988 (9th Cir. 1935)|url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/77/988/1546067/|access-date=2022-12-21}}{{cite web|title=DeCano v. State|url=https://casetext.com/case/decano-v-state|access-date=2022-12-21}}

{{Main|Muslim Americans}}

According to a survey conducted by ISPU, most Muslims that voted for Trump identified as White (which until recently was what Arabs fell under in the United States census) and exhibited anti-Muslim sentiment as readily as non-Muslim Trump supporters.{{Cite news |date=4 December 2020 |title=Majority Of Muslims Voted For Biden, But Trump Got More Support Than He Did In 2016 |url=https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/942262760/majority-of-muslims-voted-for-biden-but-trump-got-more-not-less-support |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220424001456/https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/942262760/majority-of-muslims-voted-for-biden-but-trump-got-more-not-less-support |archive-date=2022-04-24 |access-date=2022-04-23 |work=NPR.org |language=en}}

{{Portal|United States}}

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{{Reflist}}

• Ignatiev, Noel (1996). How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge. {{ISBN|0-415-91825-1}}
• {{cite book|last=Maghbouleh|first=Neda|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TdHdnQAACAAJ|title=The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=2017|isbn=9781503603370|author-link=Neda Maghbouleh}}
• {{cite book|title=Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs|year=2018|first=David|last=Roediger|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-1541673472}}

{{White people}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Definitions Of Whiteness In The United States}}

Category:Ethnic groups in the United States

Category:Race and law in the United States

Whiteness in the United States

Category:White Americans