The definitions of race and ethnicity, as well as the terms used by the U.S. Census, have changed somewhat with almost every new decennial census. Until the Civil War, slavery was legal. After the American War of Independence, the U.S. Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 to allow aliens to become citizens of the new country. It limited naturalization to foreigners who were “free white people” and thus omitted contract servants, slaves, free African Americans, and later Asians. In addition, many states enforced anti-miscegenation laws (such as Indiana in 1845) that prohibited marriage between whites and non-whites: blacks; Mulatto; and in some states, Native Americans. After an influx of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast, marriages between whites and Asians were banned in some Western states. Importantly, the era also saw the Yick Wo v. The Hopkins case in 1886, the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law that appeared racially neutral but applied in a discriminatory manner violated the equality clause. Although the law banning wood laundries does not specify a specific race, it led to specifically radicalized effects, and Yick Wo`s lawyers discovered that the Chinese had been singled out in the recorded minutes of the meeting.
The case concluded that a law with unequal effect is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional, and also reinforced the same protections outlined in the 14th Amendment. [14] Interpretations continue to change. In 1999, Hunt v. Cromartie had the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina`s 12th Congressional District was unconstitutional. The court found that it was created to house African Americans in a district that would have allowed them to elect a representative and ruled that it was unlawful racial manipulation. The court ordered the state to redraw the boundaries of the district. — Hispanic or Latino.
A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South American or Central or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. The term “Spanish origin” can be used in addition to “Hispanic or Latino”. Many ambiguous cases regarding race arise among people who identify as Hispanic, in part because socially accepted and bureaucratic conceptions of race are different in the United States and Latin America. The Treaty of Burlingame of 1868 encouraged Chinese immigration to meet labor needs, particularly on Western railroads. But a few years later, the need for foreign labor diminished as more Americans moved west. As gold mining became less successful, hostility to Asian competition increased. Violence against Asians was widespread and led to the largest lynching in American history, the Chinese Massacre of 1871. [17] As a result, a flood of laws was passed to restrict Asian immigration, a group now dubbed the “yellow peril.” The application of the legislation required a more concrete formation of what the Asian race entailed, and the courts were used to build it. [18] At one point, such definitions existed in the legislation. When blacks (as they were then called) could not become citizens (under Dred Scott) or were denied various other rights (including during the so-called “Jim Crow” period), there were legal definitions of “blacks” in various jurisdictions, often with the “one drop” rule that any African ancestor meant that the person was not “white.” When the so-called “China Exclusion Law” was in effect, a legal definition indicated when it applied. Although much research on whiteness studies argues that Southern and Eastern Europeans were treated as non-whites by earlier immigrants, there are also a significant number of scholars who counteract this narrative, including historian Thomas A.
Guglielmo`s White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945. He and others argue that Italians were in fact considered white and were able to reap the immediate benefits that this status brought, such as the right to citizenship, although they were somewhat discriminated against because of their nationality. In particular, he attempts to distinguish between color and race by asserting that although Italians are racially Italian, when viewed more binary, they are still white. This undeniable phenotypically white classification allowed them, along with other immigrants from the South and Europe, to enjoy all the advantages of whiteness. [15] Historian and anthropologist Patrick Wolfe argues the same thing, arguing that the experience of the European immigrant is simply not comparable to that of a black American, making the evidence of his whiteness undeniable. [16] Anti-miscegenation laws prohibited marriages of Americans of European descent with Americans of African descent, even mixed-race Americans. Some states also banned ethnic marriages with Native Americans and later Asians. Such laws were first passed during the colonial period in several of the thirteen colonies, beginning with Virginia in 1691. After the American Revolutionary War, several of the newly independent states repealed these laws.