Cold War and civil-rights pressure widened judicial definitions of whiteness

Evidence

One of the hallmarks of the immigration cases during this period are the inconsistent holdings from different courts regarding the whiteness of petitioners, the consequence of which was the absurdity that people who were essentially from the same ethnic background could be white in one court and not in another. … It is not just happenstance or law’s indeterminacy that explains the inconsistency; it is also the political context. Moustafa Bayoumi notes that the judge in Mohriez explicitly remarked upon the geopolitical position of the United States during WWII which also brought changes to the United States stance towards Chinese immigrants even as it interned its Japanese citizens. The Mohriez case was decided as the civil rights movement was gearing up domestically and communist critics internationally were pointing out the racist treatment of colored peoples in the United States. Americans could hardly point out the mote of repression in the communist eye while ignoring the Jim Crow beam in their own. This political context explains the more expansive view taken by the judge in Mohriez. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 173

Categorization

• XREF: Geopolitical context shaping domestic racial-legal outcomes echoes the reader’s ch9 note that global events abroad shape domestic hierarchy. — connects to: Same-ethnicity petitioners were declared white in one court but not another; Courts distinguished biological whiteness from culturally acceptable whiteness for citizenship — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 539; Soviet propaganda about US racism forced Cold War-era civil rights reforms — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 1275 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Courts distinguished biological whiteness from culturally acceptable whiteness for citizenship #expands (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 539
• Cold War competition pressured the US toward race-neutral governance. #corroborates (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 376
• Cold War geopolitics made citizenship courts expand racial inclusion of Muslims #exemplifies (0.85)
• Courts constructed whiteness on shifting criteria including religion. #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 183
• The Cold War’s end removed international moral pressure for American racial equality #contradicts (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2196
• Cold War socialist rivalry once pressured American racial equality, but that pressure is gone #corroborates (0.80) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2196
• Conflicting court rulings proved whiteness was legally incoherent and socially constructed #corroborates (0.78) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 535
• Soviet propaganda about US racism forced Cold War-era civil rights reforms #contradicts (0.75) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1275
• Cold War anticommunism reframed racial justice as a strictly domestic matter #contradicts (0.72) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 450