Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 20:02:56 -0700
From: George Winkel
Subject: The Ozawa and Thind Supreme Court opinions
Dear James,
Attached are two U.S. Supreme Court cases from the early 1920's (in HTML)
defining "white person," under the naturalization statute of 1790. I
thought you might like to take a look at them.
In the first case, Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), the
Court invoked "science," in finding a Japanese man could not be defined as
"Caucasian" (which the Court found synonymous with "White"). It was easy
for the Court to deny the petition of such a non-Caucasian. Nonetheless, in
obiter dicta, the Court mentioned there may be marginal cases which it would
happily resolve on a case-by-case basis.
Lo and behold the very next year came United States v. Thind, 261
U.S. 204 (1923). Sahib Thind, a high-caste Hindu Indian, was in fact born
"Caucasian." At this point the Court balked. This opinion is wry fun
reading, as the Court gets steamed at "science," and fumes about
anthropologists creating such a category as "Caucasian," that "brings into
one race peoples such as the Arabs and Swedes …. [¶] … the blond
Scandinavian and the brown Hindu [having] a common ancestor in the dim
reaches of antiquity …. [¶] [S]o many different peoples — Europeans,
North Africans, West Asiatics, Iranians, and others all the way to the
Indo-Gangetic plains and uplands, whose complexion presents every shade of
color, except yellow, from white to the deepest brown or even black." The
Thind Court wouldn't go for it! It tossed out "science" and reverted
to its view of a customary "common man" definition of "white" instead.
See also Dr. Vernellia Randall's summary of these two opinions on her
website, Race and Racism in American Law\
http://www.udayton.edu/~race/white05.htm
Also, be sure and notice the sentence near the bottom of page 196 of the
Ozawa opinion, where the Court states, "Who are comprehended within
the phrase 'free white persons'? Undoubtedly the word 'free' was originally
used in recognition of the fact that slavery then existed and that some
white persons occupied that status." (My emphasis.) This
confirms A.D. Powell's contention there were recognized "white" slaves
before the Civil War, and it lends support to the Tenzier hypothesis that
fear of growing "white" slavery (albeit mainly of the white descendants of
ancestral African slaves) added to Northerners' motivation to fight in that
War. (There was no One-Drop rule in those days. Anyone's "white" identity
was formulaic, e.g., 3/4+ and free = White. Even "negro" required at least
1/8 African blood according to my old Black's Law Dictionary [rev. 4th ed.
1968, p. 1188]. Between white and negro were the mulattos. (Ibid.)
Evidently, "race" in antebellum times tended to be more visual and fluid
than now — meaning since 1924.)
George Winkel