INS formally classified Arabs as white via a nationwide instruction in 1943

Evidence

In 1942, a Michigan court ruled against naturalizing Ahmed Hassan because Arabs were not white, while in Massachusetts, a Syrian man was able to access citizenship because the court ruled in 1944 that Arabs were eligible for citizenship (Lopez 2006; Love 2017). By 1943, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) determined that Arabs were white and eligible for citizenship due to having a shared culture and civilization with Western countries. INS relied on the case United States v. Thind (1923) to argue that Arabs were not like Asians, who were ineligible for naturalization. In other words, “the INS view was that Arabs were white and fully eligible for immigration and naturalization benefits (unlike most Asians at the time) and it issued an ‘instruction’ on the matter for INS offices across the nation” (Cainkar 2009: 77). — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123

Categorization

• QUESTION: The 1943 INS ‘instruction’ issuing a nationwide racial determination (Arabs = white) is a precise documentary artifact — dates when an immigration institution operationalized a racial template formally. Could feed the thread’s search for when state institutions first systematized categories.
• XREF: Institutionalization of racial categories via agency ‘instructions’ parallels the bureaucratic codification claims in the US base-surveillance histories and in the French colonial native-policy chapters. — connects to: Syrian naturalization hinged on courts linking the region to Judaism and Christianity — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 122

Related

• INS declared Arabs white by shared civilization, reversing court rulings to the contrary (similarity 0.92)
• INS granted Arabs citizenship eligibility by classifying them white and separate from Asians. (similarity 0.88)
• Arabs were legally classified as white in 1943 to distinguish them from ineligible Asians. (similarity 0.85)
• Courts disagreed across jurisdictions about whether Arabs were white (similarity 0.84)
• Arabs gained whiteness-status in 1943 while Muslims generally remained excluded because Islam signified non-whiteness. (similarity 0.81)
• Syrian naturalization hinged on courts linking the region to Judaism and Christianity (similarity 0.80)
• Whiteness was defined through exclusion of non-black immigrant groups too. (similarity 0.80)
• Early American courts inconsistently classified Syrians as white for citizenship. (similarity 0.79)