Popular street notions of whiteness, not science, guided citizenship rulings

Evidence

Concurrent with these decisions was U.S. v. Baghat Singh Thind, an oft-cited case in Asian American legal studies arguing that ”Hindus”-that is, all South Asians, whether Sikh, Hindu, or Muslim-were ineligible for naturalization because the right to citizenship was based on popular notions of the white race. The court acknowledged that Thind was Caucasian based on an argument purporting North Indians’ link to an Aryan race, even though common people on the street would not have viewed him as a white person (Haney López 1996; Moore 1995). The logic of popular racial consensus became the guiding precedent for cases that involved Afghans, Arabs, Persians, Syrians, and Turks- national groups that were categorized as racially other through their association with Islam. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 207 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US citizenship law grounded whiteness in popular perception rather than science — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 207; Courts distinguished biological whiteness from culturally acceptable whiteness for citizenship — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 539

Broader Connections

• US citizenship law grounded whiteness in popular perception rather than science #corroborates (0.97) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 207