Immigration inspectors grouped Armenians with Persians and Afghans as racially nonwhite

Evidence

Inspector Tomlinson, who had already received guidance from the new chief of naturalization to hold applications from “Hindus, Turks, peoples of the Barbary states [Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia] and Egypt, Persians, Syrians, and other Asiatics” for extra scrutiny, wrote to his supervisor in Seattle to object to the approval of Cartozian’s application. To Tomlinson, Armenians like Cartozian were “so closely related to the Persians, the Kurds, the Afghans, and the Beluchis that it is difficult to distinguish them … as white persons.” — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 535

Related

• Earlier immigrants argued their own whiteness by distancing from Iranians (similarity 0.79)
• Second-generation Iranians refuse official white classification on forms (similarity 0.78)