Southern governments classified Chinese children as Black to deny them White schooling.

Evidence

White Protestants considered Chinese customs, physical features, and foreignness permanent impediments to their ability to assimilate into White Protestant America. As a result, local and state governments classified Chinese children in the South as Black and excluded them from the higher-quality White schools. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 333

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the one-drop/triracial classifications in US racial law; connects to how religion-or-race sorting works differently across regions — resonates with Both one-drop traditions and with how whiteness is a legal category, not a physical one.
• QUESTION: How did this classification play out in the pivotal Supreme Court cases like Gong Lum v. Rice — was that the ‘Chinese as colored’ logic in action?