Nineteenth-century law forced new immigrant groups into three state-recognized racial categories

Evidence

Throughout the 19th century, many state and federal laws recognized only three racial categories: “white,” “Negro,” and “Indian.” In California, the influx of Chinese and the debates surrounding the legal status of Mexicans provoked a brief juridical crisis of racial definition. California attempted to resolve this dilemma by classifying Mexicans and Chinese within the already existing framework of “legally defined” racial groups. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete demonstration of how the state extends racial meaning to previously unclassified groups — instantiates the definitional thesis in the same paragraph.
• SEED: The California juridical crisis over classifying Chinese and Mexicans is a vivid case ready for a standalone explainer on how census and legal categories manufacture race.