The US government shifted Syrians’ racial classification within a decade

Evidence

However, as xenophobia and White nativism against Southern and Eastern European immigrants escalated in the early 1900s, Syrians found themselves caught in the crosshairs. In 1909, the US government classified Syrians as Mongoloid. Within a decade, their racial status had shifted from Caucasian to Asian. At a time when four schemas—biology, phenotype, common knowledge, and geographic origin—complicated racial categorizations, naturalization cases produced different definitions of Whiteness across the country. Anti-immigrant politicians used the newly created Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization (BIN) to decrease the number of naturalizations. Under the pretext of eliminating fraud, corruption, and low standards for admission, Congress ordered the BIN to heavily scrutinize naturalization applications, with an unfavorable bias against non-Europeans and non-Christians. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 534 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The terrorist racial category expanded decade by decade to cover new groups; The US government reclassified Syrians from Caucasian to Mongoloid within a decade — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 534; Early-twentieth-century US citizenship cases racialized Syrians as Muslim foreign threats. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 205 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• The US government reclassified Syrians from Caucasian to Mongoloid within a decade #expands (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 534