Caucasian anthropology alone never guaranteed legal Whiteness in US courts

Evidence

Because so many of the Arab litigants “looked White” after centuries of intermarriage, some judges were not persuaded by the US government’s simplistic claims that people from western Asia were not White. For example, in 1909, the US District Court in Oregon ruled in favor of granting naturalization to a Syrian Christian applicant, Tom Ellis. Although the court found Ellis to be White, the district attorney argued that he was not the right kind of White person because American citizenship was reserved for “only of the white persons who, from tradition, teaching, and environment, would be predisposed toward our form of government, and thus readily assimilable with the people of the United States.” — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 539 (#expands, via linked claim)

In 1923, the US Supreme Court affirmed that being Caucasian was insufficient to qualify an applicant as White. In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Indian applicant, a Hindu, could prove he was anthropologically Caucasian, but the Court rejected his naturalization application by replacing the scientific inquiry rule with the common knowledge rule. A darkskinned Indian, even if anthropologically Caucasian, simply could not be White. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 548 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Courts distinguished biological whiteness from culturally acceptable whiteness for citizenship — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 539; US courts redefined whiteness as common sense to exclude Asian immigrants; Legal whiteness did not confer social privileges of whiteness — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 354 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Courts distinguished biological whiteness from culturally acceptable whiteness for citizenship #expands (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 539
• Provable anthropological whiteness was insufficient for US naturalization once race became common knowledge #corroborates (0.93) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 548