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Learning Objectives
By the end of the chapter, the student will be able to do the following:
- Understand how scientific racism impacted immigration and citizenship.
- Explain the history of how Native Americans and African Americans became counted as citizens of the United States.
- Clarify using historical categories to show how whiteness is not a static category.
- Describe how groups not white or not seen a completely white-faced barriers to opportunities and rights due to their racial classifications.
Chapter Summary
The story of the United States as welcoming to immigrants and as a place for freedom is not the version experienced by countless nonwhites. Scientific racism shaped immigration and citizenship policies for those who were categorized as nonwhite. Some groups did come to eventually be known as white, but they became white by oppressing other groups. A main idea of this chapter is that race categories may shift over time within particular circumstances.
When craniometry went out of style, a new way to measure groups against each other was developed in the 20th century in the form of intelligence tests. The Binet Test was used at Ellis Island to categorize immigrants from different European countries into smarter and less smart categories. This test was originally created in order to indicate which school-age children needed more resources for learning. H. H. Goddard, Lewis Terman, and R. M. Yerkes used intelligence testing to determine so-called innate intelligence with the goal of dividing racialized/ethnic groups into desired and undesirable immigrants or citizens. The eugenics movement was highly active from 1900 to 1930 in lobbying for immigration restrictions and population-control measures for those labeled “unfit.” The eugenicists believed that people passed on genetic predispositions for poverty and lifestyle habits. These ideologies influenced 1920s immigration policy, limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and other countries. Eugenics was also influencing Nazi Germany during this period. These pseudoscientific claims continue to be spread today in mainstream venues and publications.
Immigration laws in the U.S. began with racially discriminatory policies, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which began the gatekeeping strategy still in place in the U.S. The Johnson-Reed Act (also called the Immigration Act of 1924) established quotas that limited immigration from certain places. The Naturalization Law of 1790 provided for whites only to become citizens. This changed by 1952. Until 1940, birthright citizenship was not guaranteed to everyone born in the U.S.
Fifty-one court cases established the legally defined racial categorization of litigants between 1878 and 1952. The courts determined the race, mostly whether one was classified as white, and therefore the level of belonging as a citizen.
Jewish, Irish, and Italians in the 1800s faced differential treatment, discrimination, and violence because they were not seen as fully white. They became more white in the eyes of the dominant group when they discriminated against African Americans. African Americans faced numerous barriers to voting, housing, labor, and education. Many Native peoples faced the loss of their land, the construction of reservations, and forced attendance of children at boarding schools. These groups did not benefit from the protections and privileges of whiteness.