9/22 Reading

Ian Haney López's book explores the historical and legal constructions of race in the United States.
Emphasizes that laws have played a crucial role in defining and regulating racial identities, particularly Whiteness.
The book highlights the racial prerequisite cases that established who could be considered a citizen based on race.

1790 Naturalization Act: Restricted naturalization to "white persons."
This racial prerequisite persisted until 1952, affecting citizenship acquisition for over 150 years.
As immigration surged in the early 20th century, applications for naturalization increasingly revolved around complex racial identifications.
From 1907 to 1920, over one million people were naturalized under these restrictive laws, with many others being denied due to racial identity disputes.

Naturalization cases were typically informal, without extensive records.
Some cases rose to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1920s, revealing the difficulties applicants faced in proving their Whiteness.
- Geographical Diversity of Applicants: Included those from Hawaii, China, Japan, Burma, and the Philippines.
- Mixed-race individuals faced rejection; cases from Mexico and Armenia were accepted based on fluctuating definitions of Whiteness.
The courts struggled with the criteria for determining Whiteness, leading to a legal taxonomy of racial identity.

Courts had to justify their decisions on racial classifications:
- Factors included skin color, facial features, national origin, language, culture, and scientific theories.
Judges' rationales fell into two predominant categories: Common Knowledge and Scientific Evidence.

This rationale relied on prevalent societal concepts of race.
- Example: In re Ab Yup (1878), a court described “white person” according to popular speech: "The words ‘white person’ have undoubtedly acquired a well settled meaning in common popular speech."
Courts made decisions based on widely accepted beliefs about racial divisions.

Opposed to common knowledge, this rationale aimed to apply objective scientific classifications:
- Court referenced classifications from anthropological studies, such as those by Blumenbach, which divided humans into five races (Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay).
Courts faced contradictions between scientific claims and societal perceptions, especially concerning immigrants from southern and western Asia, leading to a judicial preference for common knowledge.

A significant shift occurred in the Supreme Court rulings in the early 1920s:
- Ozawa v. United States (1922): Denied a Japanese applicant citizenship based on both common understanding and pseudoscientific reasoning.
- United States v. Thind (1923): Ruled against a South Asian applicant, refuting scientific classifications in favor of common knowledge, clarifying that racial categories were defined by societal perceptions rather than objective measures.
The Court suggested that the average American’s perception of race was the proper measure of racial identity.

The cases indicate that racial categories are socially constructed through law; laws both reflect and shape societal understandings of race.
Legal Processes:
- Law not only codifies existing racial categories but also creates and defines them, establishing the bonds of privilege and subordination within society.
- Cheryl Harris emphasized that law significantly shapes identity, privilege, and property associated with Whiteness.

Recent legal scholarship critiques historical failures in recognizing race as a socially constructed category.
The literature predominantly addressed the burdens of Black individuals without a systematic exploration of how societal and legal interactions constructed Whiteness.
Example of critical case: The Mashpee Tribe—their legal identity was defined by the laws that did not reflect their actual cultural composition, leading to a form of nonexistence in legal terms.

The prerequisite cases illustrate the complexities of defining Whiteness:
- Defined not just by inclusion in legal terms but also by the exclusion of others as non-White.
Racial consciousness has become more accepted in legal discussions, yet the implications of transparency among White scholars need addressing.

The phenomenon, described by Prof. Barbara Flagg, indicates that Whites often fail to recognize their racial identity:
- This inattention to their own racial category allows for a privilege that stems from not needing to acknowledge one’s racial identity.
Judges faced difficulties defining Whiteness due to their own lack of reflection on racial parameters.

Racial identity emerged from a comparative relationship between White and non-White identities:
- Legal definitions were frequently established by identifying who did not qualify as White rather than a clear characterization of Whiteness.
- The one-drop rule historically embedded the concept that any trace of non-White ancestry classified an individual as non-White.
- Thus, Whiteness is established as a category defined through negation of non-Whiteness, with associated negative perceptions affixed to non-Whites compared to positive attributes of Whites.

The examination of racial prerequisite cases illustrates the legal construction of race in American society, offering insights into how the law defines and confers meaning to racial identities, emphasizing the role of law in perpetuating social constructions of race.