Judicial aspects of race in the United States
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Legislation seeking to direct relations between racial or ethnic groups in the United States has had several historical phases, developing from the
European colonization of the Americas During the Age of Discovery, a large scale European colonization of the Americas took place between about 1492 and 1800. Although the Norse had explored and colonized areas of the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short t ...
, the triangular slave trade, and the
American Indian Wars The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...
. The 1776
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
included the statement that "
all men are created equal The quotation "all men are created equal" is part of the sentence in the U.S. Declaration of Independence – penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 during the beginning of the American Revolution – that reads "We hold these truths to be self-evide ...
," which has ultimately inspired actions and legislation against
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and
racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...
. Such actions have led to passage of the
13th In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave pl ...
, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the
Constitution of the United States The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...
. The first period extended until the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
and the Reconstruction era, the second period spanned the
Nadir of American race relations The nadir of American race relations was the period in African American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century when racism in the country, especially racism against ...
period until the early 20th century, and the last period began with
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
, which led to the repeal of
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
laws. Racial legislation has been intertwined with immigration laws, which sometimes included specific provisions against particular nationalities or ethnicities, such as the
Chinese Exclusion Act The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplo ...
and the 1923 '' United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind'' case in the
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
. Race remains an active area of contention with police killings disproportionate to the racial distribution of the
US population The United States had an official estimated resident population of 333,287,557 on July 1, 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This figure includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia but excludes the population of five unincorpor ...
; whites are under-represented and blacks are over-represented.Paull, John (2019)
The Use of Lethal Force by Police in the USA: Mortality Metrics of Race and Disintegration (2015-2019)
Journal of Social and Development Sciences. 5 (4): 30-35


Until American Civil War and Reconstruction

Until the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
,
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
was legal. After the American Revolutionary War, the
US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...
passed the
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free Whit ...
to provide a way for foreigners to become citizens of the new country. It limited naturalization to aliens who were "free white persons" and thus left out
indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...
, slaves, free African Americans, and later Asians. In addition, many states enforced anti-miscegenation laws (such as
Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
in 1845), which prohibited marriage between whites and non-whites: blacks; mulattoes; and, in some states, Native Americans. After an influx of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast, marriages between whites and Asians were banned in some Western states. After the Revolutionary War, most northern states abolished slavery, even if a gradually. Congress enacted
fugitive slave laws The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from th ...
in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who had escaped from a slave state to a free state or
territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...
. Black Codes were adopted by several states, generally to constrain the actions and rights of free people of color, as slaves were controlled by slave law. Although most northern states had abolished slavery, several tried to discourage freedmen from settling in the state. In some states, the Black Codes were incorporated into or required by state constitutions, many of which were rewritten in the 1840s. For instance, Article 13 of
Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
's 1851 constitution stated, "No Negro or Mulatto shall come into, or settle in, the State, after the adoption of this Constitution."
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
's 1848 constitution led to one of the harshest Black Code systems in the nation before the Civil War. The Illinois Black Code of 1853 completely prohibited black immigration to the state.


Native Americans

The
Indian Removal Act The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for ...
of 1830 legalized deportation of Native Americans to the West and was passed primarily to extinguish Native American tribal claims to territory in what became known as the Deep South. It effectively allowed the federal government to remove the
Five Civilized Tribes The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek ...
to
Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...
. The
Indian Intercourse Act The Nonintercourse Act (also known as the Indian Intercourse Act or the Indian Nonintercourse Act) is the collective name given to six statutes passed by the Congress in 1790, 1793, 1796, 1799, 1802, and 1834 to set Amerindian boundaries of re ...
of 1837 created the Indian Territory, now in
Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...
and Oklahoma, where the tribes would be resettled. While the tribes retained self-government and territory, their peoples were generally not considered US citizens. The largest federal establishment of
Indian reservations An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...
began with the
Indian Appropriations Act The Indian Appropriations Act is the name of several acts passed by the United States Congress. A considerable number of acts were passed under the same name throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the most notable landmark acts cons ...
s in the 1850s. The
Dawes Act The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887) regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it authorized the Pres ...
of 1887 registered members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes and included the
privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
of common holdings of Indians.
Blood quantum laws Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establ ...
determined membership in Native American groups. Some of the measures were repealed by the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which allowed a return to local self-government. Citizenship was not granted to Native Americans until the
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, (, enacted June 2, 1924) was an Act of the United States Congress that granted US citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ...
, but two thirds of Native Americans had already become citizens because of other laws.


Abolition of slavery and extension of citizenship

In 1857, ''
Dred Scott v. Sandford ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'', 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, enslaved or free; th ...
'', a "
freedom suit Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or ter ...
" that was appealed to the Supreme Court, was settled with the ruling that the US Constitution had not included people of African descent, enslaved or free, and so could not be US citizens and thus had no standing to file freedom suits or other legal cases. The victory of the North during the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery by the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment and the expansion of the civil rights of African-Americans by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited
disfranchisement Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...
on the basis of race. The
Naturalization Act of 1870 The Naturalization Act of 1870 () was a United States federal law that created a system of controls for the naturalization process and penalties for fraudulent practices. It is also noted for extending the naturalization process to "aliens of A ...
allowed people of African descent to become naturalized US citizens.


Census

The first
census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...
was conducted in 1790 and had three racial categories: free whites, blacks, and all other free peoples. Over time, the categorizations evolved to reflect a more complex understanding of
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
, but the development of new categories often served a political purpose. Issues such as the true whiteness of Southern European immigrants could not be addressed in the census, but anti-black and anti-Native American sentiment were supported by the racial categorization in the census. Americans feared that
mixed-race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-eth ...
citizens would be able to reap the benefits of being white and so instituted laws to prevent that. Mixed-race citizens could legally categorize themselves as white because of their ability to self-report race to the census bureau, the requirement of choosing only one racial category, and the ability of those who were only marginally black to appear white. By 1890, people were required to report any degree of African or Native American ancestry. The idea that a single drop of African or Indian blood qualified someone as officially black or Native American was a generally obeyed legal principle although the so-called
one-drop rule The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
was never codified federally. That qualification prevented mixed-race individuals from ever obtaining the benefits of whiteness.


Nadir of American race relations

After the end of the Reconstruction Period, southern whites reasserted political and social supremacy with the violence and the discrimination that caused the
Nadir of American race relations The nadir of American race relations was the period in African American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century when racism in the country, especially racism against ...
. There were increasing
racial violence Ethnic violence is a form of political violence which is expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the characteristics of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethn ...
, lynchings, and attacks to intimidate blacks and to repress their voting in the South. After regaining power in the state legislatures in the 1870s, white Democrats passed legislation to impose electoral requirements that effectively disfranchised black voters. From 1890 to 1910, Southern states ratified constitutional amendments or new constitutions that increased requirements for voter registration, which resulted in disfranchising most blacks and many poor whites (as in
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...
). With political control in what was effectively a one-party system, the South passed
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
and instituted racial
segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
in public facilities. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defendants in the ''
Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in qualit ...
'' case, which established the "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protec ...
" interpretation for the provision of services. Without the vote, however, black residents in the South found their segregated facilities consistently underfunded and were without recourse in the legal system, as only voters could sit on juries or hold office. Blacks were closed out of the political process in most states. In 1899, '' Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education'' legalized segregation in schools.


Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws prohibited marriages of European-Americans with Americans of African descent, even those of mixed race. Some states also prohibited marriages across ethnic lines with Native Americans and later Asians. Such laws had been first passed during the Colonial era in several of the
Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th cent ...
, starting with Virginia in 1691. After the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
, several of the newly independent states repealed such laws. However, all slave states and many free states enforced such laws in the antebellum era. During Reconstruction, when biracial
Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
coalitions controlled the legislatures, several Southern states repealed anti-miscegenation laws. As Democrats returned to power, between 1870 and 1884, legislatures passed anti-miscegenation laws in all the states of the Confederacy to re-establish white supremacy.Jim Crow">The History of Jim Crow laws, Jim Crow
, Jim Crow History website
Western states that were newly admitted to the Union after the Civil War passed anti-miscegenation laws which were often directed against marriage between Europeans and the increasing Asian immigrant population in addition to prohibiting marriage with blacks and Native Americans. For instance, Utah's marriage law had an anti-miscegenation component passed in 1899. Until it was repealed in 1963, it prohibited marriage between a white and anyone considered a Negro (African Americans, Black American), mulatto (half black),
quadroon In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African/ Aboriginal and three quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black (Latin root ''o ...
(one-quarter black), octoroon (one-eighth black), " Mongolian" (East Asian), or member of the "
Malay race The concept of a Malay race was originally proposed by the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), and classified as a brown race. ''Malay'' is a loose term used in the late 19th century and early 20th century to describe the ...
" (a historic racial classification that included
Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or othe ...
). No restriction was placed on interracial marriages between non-whites.


Sundown towns and housing discrimination

In the late 19th century,
sundown town Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminator ...
s began to post warnings against blacks who stayed overnight. Some passed laws against minorities; others erected signs, such as one posted in the 1930s in
Hawthorne, California Hawthorne is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is part of a seventeen-city region commonly called the South Bay. As of the 2020 US census, Hawthorne had a population of 88, ...
, which read, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne."Laura Wexler
"Darkness on the Edge of Town"
''The Washington Post'', October 23, 2005, p. BW03, Accessed online 9 July 2006
Discrimination was also accomplished through
restrictive covenants A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a se ...
in residential areas that were agreed to by the community's real estate agents. In others, the policy was enforced by intimidation, including harassment by law enforcement officers. In addition to the expulsion of African Americans from "sundown towns," Chinese Americans were driven out of some towns. For example, in 1870, ethnic Chinese made up one third of the population of
Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...
, where they had worked on railroads and in mines. Following a wave of violence and an 1886 anti-Chinese convention in
Boise Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown area' ...
, almost none remained by 1910.Loewen 2005, ''Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism''. New Press. (page 51). The town of
Gardnerville, Nevada Gardnerville is an unincorporated town in Douglas County, Nevada, adjacent to the county seat of Minden. The population was 6,211 at the time of th2020 Census U.S. Route 395 runs through the center of Gardnerville. State Route 207, known as ...
, blew a daily whistle at 6 p.m. to alert Native Americans to leave by sundown.Loewen 2005, page 23
Jewish Americans American Jews or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by culture, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora Je ...
were excluded from living in some sundown towns.Loewen 2005, page 257. The
National Housing Act of 1934 The National Housing Act of 1934, , , also called the Capehart Act and the Better Housing Program, was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. It created the Federal ...
established the
Federal Housing Administration The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), also known as the Office of Housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a United States government agency founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, created in part by ...
(FHA) to try to encourage home ownership during the Great Depression, but another consequence was redlining. In 1935, the
Federal Home Loan Bank Board The Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) was a board created in 1932 that governed the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB or FHLBanks) also created by the act, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) and nationally-chartered thrifts ...
(FHLBB) asked the
Home Owners' Loan Corporation The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a government-sponsored corporation created as part of the New Deal. The corporation was established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act under the leadership of President Franklin D. Ro ...
(HOLC) to assess 239 cities and develop "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real estate investments in each surveyed city. Because of older housing in minority neighborhoods and the undervaluation of minority readiness to work and protect their homes, the agency defined certain areas as high risk. That prevented many residents of minority neighborhoods from being able to get mortgages or loans to renovate their properties. Redlining had the unanticipated result of increased residential
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
and encouraging
urban decay Urban decay (also known as urban rot, urban death or urban blight) is the sociological process by which a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. There is no single process that leads to urban deca ...
in the United States. Urban planning historians theorize that the maps were later used for years by public and private entities to deny loans to people in black communities.


Racial construction and immigration

In 1751, American polymath
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
classified the world's population into four different colors: black, tawny, swarthy, and white. Franklin classified as the French,
Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...
,
Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 '' Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
, and Swedes as swarthy, as he only considered the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
as white. During the first major waves of immigration to the United States, ethnic groups now generally considered white were not thought of as such, including Southern and Eastern Europeans. The new populations came from Eastern and Southern Europe and were Catholic and Jewish, as opposed to the majority population in the United States of Northern and Western European and African American Protestants. The popularity of
eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
as well as the perception that the new groups were undermining American culture and values led to their classification as nonwhite. That gave the government the opportunity to attempt to curtail the immigration of specific groups by using the
National Origins Formula National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included l ...
. Two factors contributed to the eventual acceptance of the new groups as white. They proved their racial distinction from and superiority to blacks by supporting slavery and engaging in violence toward free blacks. That behavior was especially noted among the Irish. Secondly, they participated in the Civil War, demonstrating their patriotism and commitment to America and their ability to be a part of American society. Importantly, the era also saw the '' Yick Wo v. Hopkins'' case in 1886, the first case in which the
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
ruled that a law that was race-neutral on its face but administered discriminatorily to be an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause. Although the law that banned wood laundries did not specify a certain race, it resulted in specifically radicalized impacts, and Yick Wo's lawyers discovered that the Chinese were singled out within the recorded minutes of the meeting. The case established that a law with unequal impact is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional, and it also strengthened the equal protection outlined in the 14th Amendment.


Counter-narratives

Although much of the scholarship on studies of whiteness argues that Southern and Eastern Europeans were treated as nonwhite by earlier immigrants, there is also a substantial body of scholarship countering that narrative, most notably ''White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945'' by the historian Thomas A. Guglielmo. He and others contend that Italians were in fact considered white and were able to reap the immediate benefits that status conferred, such as a right to citizenship, although they were somewhat discriminated against for their nationality. He specifically attempts to differentiate between color and race by claiming that although Italians were racially Italian, when they considered in a more binary manner, they were still white in color. That undeniable classification as phenotypically white allowed them, along with other Southern and European immigrants, to obtain all the benefits conferred by whiteness. The historian and anthropologist Patrick Wolfe makes a similar argument by saying that the experience of the European immigrant is simply incomparable to that of a black American, which makes the evidence of their whiteness indisputable.


National Origins Formula

The 1921
Emergency Quota Act __NOTOC__ The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act (ch. 8, of May 19, 1921), was formulated mainly in response to the larg ...
and the
Immigration Act of 1924 The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
restricted immigration according to national origins. While the Emergency Quota Act used the 1910
census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...
, xenophobic fears in the
WASP A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
community lead to the adoption of the 1890 census, which was more favorable to the WASP population, in the Immigration Act, which responded to the rising immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Asia. The
National Origins Formula National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included l ...
was established in 1929 explicitly to keep the status quo's distribution of ethnicity by allocating quotas in proportion to the actual population. The idea was that immigration would not be allowed to change the "national character." The total annual immigration was capped at 150,000. Asians were excluded, but residents of nations in the Americas were not restricted, which made official the racial discrimination in immigration laws. The system was repealed with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, but currently implemented immigration laws are still largely subject to national origin-based quota


"Yellow Peril"

The 1868
Burlingame Treaty The Burlingame Treaty (), also known as the Burlingame–Seward Treaty of 1868, was a landmark treaty between the United States and Qing China, amending the Treaty of Tientsin, to establish formal friendly relations between the two nations, with ...
encouraged Chinese immigration to meet labor needs, especially on Western railroads. However, only a few years later, the need for foreign labor declined as more Americans moved West. As gold mining became less fruitful, hostility toward Asian competition increased. Violence against Asians was prevalent, leading to the largest lynching in American history, the
Chinese Massacre of 1871 The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racial massacre targeting Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California, United States that occurred on October 24, 1871. Approximately 500 white and Hispanic Americans attacked, harassed, robbe ...
. Consequently, a barrage of legislation was passed to restrict Asian immigration, a group that was now characterized as the "
Yellow Peril The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racial color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a psychocultural menace from the Eastern world ...
". The enforcement of the legislation required a more concrete formation of what the Asian race entailed, and the courts were used to construct it.


Key legislation


Asian Immigration and "Whiteness"

Discriminatory laws were mostly enacted according to national origins, but also involved racial typologies developed by
scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
theorists. While those who were racially Asian were excluded from obtaining U.S. citizenship, immigration from Asian countries was not entirely barred. A small quota allowed for the emigration of white residents from these countries. These racial naturalization requirements necessitated the more concrete ideation of the category of “Asian” as distinct from white so immigrants could be rejected on the basis of race instead of national origin. This need was quickly supplied by a plethora of judicial rulings and pieces of legislation focused primarily on classifications based contradictorily on
phenotypic In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...
features, scientific
objectivism Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievemen ...
, and “common knowledge”, depending on the case. The two most important cases are '' Ozawa v. United States'' (1922) and '' United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind'' (1923). Japanese-born Takao Ozawa applied for citizenship after living in the United States for 20 years, but his application was denied because he was not considered white. Ozawa argued that he was physically whiter than many people considered “white” and thus should also be considered such. The courts rejected this, claiming that Japanese were not considered scientifically to be a part of the Caucasian race since they were not from the
Caucasus region The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
. The following year, Indian
Bhagat Singh Thind Bhagat Singh Thind (October 3, 1892 – September 15, 1967) was an Indian American writer and lecturer on spirituality who served in the United States Army during World War I and was involved in a Supreme Court case over the right of In ...
argued that since he was both technically Caucasian and Aryan he should be considered white. Indian Americans were not classified as members of any race until the end of the 19th century. Prior to this case, Indians were sometimes granted citizenship on this premise, but Thind's citizenship was in the process of being revoked for the second time when he sued the United States. The Supreme Court altered its approach and said that while he may be technically Caucasian, common knowledge does not equate Caucasian with the general understanding of "white". Justice George Sutherland delivered the opinion on the unanimous ruling, stating that the "white" race must be interpreted "in accordance with the understanding of the common man from whose vocabulary they were taken". This ruling, which officially classified all Indians as non-white, retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. The decision was intended to placate racist
Asiatic Exclusion League The Asiatic Exclusion League (often abbreviated AEL) was an organization formed in the early 20th century in the United States and Canada that aimed to prevent immigration of people of Asian origin. United States In May 1905, a mass meeting was h ...
(AEL) demands, which were growing in proportion to increasing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion nowiki/>''sic''.html" ;"title="sic.html" ;"title="nowiki/>''sic">nowiki/>''sic''">sic.html" ;"title="nowiki/>''sic">nowiki/>''sic''alongside the pre-existing outrage at the "Yellow Peril". While mid-20th century legislation has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification. Hence, this classification remains, and is still relevant today because many laws and quotas are race-based.


World War II

President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted discriminatory practices with Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, which paved the way for Japanese American internment. About 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including both American and Japanese citizens, were interned during the war. Americans of Italian and German descent, along with Italian and German nationals, were also interned but on a much smaller scale (see Italian American internment and
German American internment Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, ...
), despite both Italy and Germany joining Japan in the war against the United States. In '' Korematsu v. United States'' (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the executive order in the first instance of its application of strict scrutiny to racial discrimination by the government; it was one of only a handful of cases in which the Supreme Court held that the government met that standard. Other cases pertaining to Japanese American internment included '' Yasui v. United States'' (1943), '' Hirabayashi v. United States'' (1943), and ''
Ex parte Endo ''Ex parte Mitsuye Endo'', 323 U.S. 283 (1944), was a United States Supreme Court ''ex parte'' decision handed down on December 18, 1944, in which the Justices unanimously ruled that the U.S. government could not continue to detain a citizen wh ...
'' (1944). In ''Yasui'' and ''Hirabayashi'', the court upheld the constitutionality of curfews based on Japanese ancestry. In ''Endo'', the court accepted a petition for a writ of
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
and ruled that the
War Relocation Authority The War Relocation Authority (WRA) was a United States government agency established to handle the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It also operated the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York, which was t ...
(WRA, created by Executive Order 9102) had no authority to subject a citizen whose loyalty was acknowledged to its procedures. Despite renewed xenophobic fears concerning the "Yellow Peril", the 1943
Magnuson Act The Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, also known as the Magnuson Act, was an immigration law proposed by U.S. Representative (later Senator) Warren G. Magnuson of Washington and signed into law on December 17, 1943, in the United States. It ...
repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and allowed Asians to naturalize. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans had not been justified by military necessity. Rather, the report determined that the decision to detain Japanese Americans had been based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."


Aftermath of World War II

The
United Nations Participation Act The United Nations Participation Act of 1945 was a law passed by the United States Congress in 1945, dealing with the process of United States joining the newly created United Nations and related bodies of the United Nations. This act provides th ...
of 1945, passed after the victory of the Allies, included provisions that immigration policy should be conducted in a fair manner and nondiscriminatory fashion. In 1946, Democratic President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
ended racial segregation in the Armed Forces by
Executive Order 9981 Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces, and led to the re-integra ...
. Later that year, the US Congress passed the Luce–Celler Act of 1946, which effectively ended statutory discrimination against
Filipino American Filipino Americans ( fil, Mga Pilipinong Amerikano) are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipinos and other Asian ethnicities in North America were first documented in the 16th century as slaves and prisoners on ships sailing to and from New ...
s and Indian Americans, who had been considered "unassimilable," along with most other Asian Americans. In 1947, '' Mendez v. Westminster'' challenged racial segregation in California schools applied against
Latinos Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...
. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, in an ''en banc'' decision, held that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican-American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional. In 1954 '' Hernandez v. Texas'', a federal court ruled that Mexican Americans and all other
ethnic An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
or "racial groups" in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The
McCarran-Walter Act The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (), also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code (), governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. It came into effect on June 27, 1952. Befor ...
of 1952, or Immigration and Naturalization Act, "extended the privilege of naturalization to Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians." "The McCarran-Walter Act revised all previous laws and regulations regarding immigration, naturalization, and nationality, and brought them together into one comprehensive statute."


Civil Rights Movement and later

Legislation enacting racial segregation was finally overturned in the 1950s and the 1960s, after the nation had been morally challenged and educated by activists of the
Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
. In 1954, ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' had the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
rule that "separate but equal" was inherently discriminatory, and the integration of public schools was ordered. An executive order of 1961, by President
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
, created the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
to oversee workplace affirmative action. In 1965, Executive Order 11246, signed by President
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
, enforced that policy. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the policy included court-supervised
desegregation busing Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in ...
plans. Over the next 20 years, a succession of court decisions and federal laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
of 1965, the 1972 '' Gates v. Collier'' Supreme Court ruling to end racial segregation in prisons, the
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (or HMDA, pronounced ) is a United States federal law that requires certain financial institutions to provide mortgage data to the public. Congress enacted HMDA in 1975. Purposes HMDA grew out of public concern o ...
(1975), and measures to end
mortgage discrimination Mortgage discrimination or ''mortgage lending discrimination'' is the practice of banks, governments or other lending institutions denying loans to one or more groups of people primarily on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sex or religion. Instan ...
, prohibited ''de jure'' racial segregation and discrimination in the US. The Immigration Act of 1965 discontinued some quotas based on national origin, with preference given to those who have US relatives. For the first time, Mexican and other Latin American immigration was restricted. Residential segregation took various forms. Some state constitutions (such as that of that of California) had clauses giving local jurisdictions the right to regulate where members of certain "races" could live. Restrictive covenants in deeds had prevented minorities from purchasing properties from any subsequent owner. In the 1948 case of '' Shelley v. Kraemer'', the US Supreme Court ruled that such covenants were unenforceable in a court of law. Residential segregation patterns had already become established in most American cities, but they have taken new forms in areas of increased immigration. New immigrant populations have typically moved into older areas to become established, and that pattern of population succession is seen in many areas. Many ethnic populations appear to prefer to live in areas of concentration, with their own foods, stores, religious institutions and other familiar services. People from a village or region often resettle close together in new areas, even as they move into suburban areas. In 1978,
American Indian Religious Freedom Act The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, Public Law No. 95–341, 92 Stat. 469 (Aug. 11, 1978) (commonly abbreviated to AIRFA), codified at , is a United States federal law, enacted by joint resolution of the Congress in 1978. Prior to the ac ...
(AIRFA) was to preserve the rights of American Indians, Eskimos,
Aleut The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the ...
s, and Native Hawaiians to traditional religious practices. Before the AIRFA was passed, certain US federal laws interfered with the traditional religious practices of many indigenous Americans. Redistricting of voting districts has always been a political process and been manipulated by parties or power groups to try to gain advantage. In an effort to prevent African-American populations from being divided to dilute their voting strength and representation, federal courts oversaw certain redistricting decisions in the South for decades to overturn the injustice of the previous century's disfranchisement. Interpretations continue to change. In 1999, '' Hunt v. Cromartie'' had the US Supreme Court rule that the 12th electoral district of
North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
to be unconstitutional as drawn. Determining that it was created to place African Americans in one district, which would have enabled them to elect a representative, the Court ruled that it constituted illegal racial gerrymander. The Court ordered the state to redraw the district's boundaries.


Hispanic immigration


See also

*''
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States ''Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States'', 379 U.S. 241 (1964), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Commerce Clause gave the U.S. Congress power to force private businesses to abide by Title ...
'' *
Immigration to the United States Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country in the worl ...
* List of United States immigration legislation *'' NAACP v. Alabama'' *
National Origins Formula National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included l ...
* Racial classification of Indian Americans *
Racism in the United States Racism in the United States comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are related to each other, are held by various people and groups in the United States, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and ...
*
Slavery in the United States The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Sl ...
*''
Smith v. Allwright ''Smith v. Allwright'', 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set thei ...
'' *'' Yick Wo v. Hopkins''


References

{{Law of the United States
Judicial The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...
Judicial The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...