Colonial officials excluded mixed-race paupers from recognition as European by phenotype.

Evidence

Some local committees refused to acknowledge a problem at all. As the Assistent Resident of Tegal told the commission: … It is my personal feeling … that in this district, for the overall European population, the situation is satisfactory … it is a known fact that most of [the needy] children are European only in name; as a rule, they were not well raised and grew up as natives. That such people would feel themselves much happier as native and would more easily make their livelihoods as natives, certainly needs no demonstration. One could … stipulate that only those [children] could be [legally] recognized who have typical characteristics of a European origin, namely … white, brown or light eyes, brown or blonde hair and more or less white skin. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 960

Categorization

• XREF: Phenotype-based recognition of legal identity echoes the category-policing themes in Reluctant Fundamentalist and my broader work on who counts as ‘us.’ — connects to: Progressive-era immigration law expressly excluded the diseased, criminal, illiterate, and Asiatic. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3884
• SEED: Essay angle: how legal categories of belonging are adjudicated through bodily appearance lists — from colonial Indies to modern citizenship documentation.