Racial classification of Indian Americans
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| Year | Case | Judgement | Rationale |
| 1909 | In re Balsara | probably not White | congressional intent |
| 1910 | U.S. v. Dolla | White | ocular inspection of skin |
| 1910 | U.S. v. Balsara | White | scientific evidence, congressional intent |
| 1913 | In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar | White | legal precedent |
| 1917 | In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh | not White | common knowledge, congressional intent |
| 1919 | In re Mohan Singh | White | scientific evidence, legal precedent |
| 1920 | In re Thind | White | legal precedence |
| 1923 | U.S. v. Thind | not White | common knowledge, congressional intent |
| 1923 | U.S. v. Akhaykumar Mozumdar | not White | legal precedent |
| 1925 | U.S. v. Ali | not White*** | common knowledge |
| 1928 | U.S. v. Gokhale | not White | legal precedent |
| 1939 | Wadia v. U.S | not White | common knowledge |
| 1942 | Kharaiti Ram Samras v. U.S | not White | legal precedent |
| ** Court opinions and decisions on the racial classification of Indians, the last of which was in 1942, were made before formal Indian independence in 1947. While often not clear, it was generally assumed at the time that by Indians the courts meant all those originally from the Indian subcontinent, the union of British India and Princely States. | |||
| *** 1925 decision ruled specifically against Punjabis while other rulings were generally regarding all Indians, which is understood to have meant all those originally from the region of South Asia. | |||
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the originally negligible population of Indian Americans, the U.S. government did not officially classify Indians as being of any particular race. From 1910 to 1920, several courts deemed Indians as white and a few as not white. However, starting from 1923, the official judicial stance has been to classify Indians as not white in accordance with the "common man's understanding", under the assumption that all references to 'white' in U.S. laws are in the common man's use and not scientific. The U.S. legal classification of Indians contrasts with the anthropological racial classification system developed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach(1752-1840) in which Indians are deemed Caucasian. To the right is a table of the case history of judicial racial classification of Indians.
The crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. While the decision was placating racist Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the Yellow Peril, and while more recent legislation influenced by the civil-rights movement has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification. Hence, this classification remains, and is still relevant today because many laws and quotas are race-based. Thus, Asian Indians are counted as Asian when tallying the Asian quota of University of California schools, as well as when tallying minorities to ensure large corporations are diverse. Some Indians prefer to select a choice other than Asian on forms which ask for a "self-described" racial identity with limited selection. Increasingly, many of these forms explicitly mention "Asian (including South Asian)" to reduce doubts.
Amid a sea of zealous prosecutors working to denaturalize Indian Americans, some clerks either in protest or in naivete continued to process citizenship requests made by Indian Americans in the period when Indians were deemed unassimilable. Bhagat Singh Thind himself, after being stripped of citizenship in 1923 by the Supreme Court, was awarded citizenship by a clerk in New York a few years later.
Further marking a certain lack of unity between the governmental organizations, the U.S. Census Bureau has changed over the years its own classification of Indians (see Race_(United_States_Census)). In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were a separate category, Hindu, and in 1950 and 1960, they were classified as Other Race, and in 1970, they were classified as White. Since 1980, Indian Americans have been called Asian Indian, a subcategory under the Asian category[2].
[edit] References
- ^ Lopez, Ian Haney (1996). White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University Press.
- ^ Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States Working Paper no. 76 (2005); see footnote 6 in paper
