IB 110 Chap.2 How US Law Constructed Whiteness
How US Law Constructed Whiteness
A category with no single physical basis
The second lecture begins with the US Census definition of White: anyone whose origins trace back to peoples native to Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. The Census applies the 1997 standards of the Office of Management and Budget when it classifies written answers. The range of people included is so wide that appearance, language and culture cannot be what unites them.
The lecture then asks what does.
From colonial slavery to citizenship law
According to the lecture, the word white came into use in the 1600s, largely to uphold slavery and to draw a line against blackness, and it became deeply ingrained in the United States. Its edges did not stay fixed.
Immigrants from Ireland, Italy and the Slavic countries were at first treated as separate ethnic groups and faced discrimination; the lecture shows a 1915 advertisement telling Irish applicants not to apply. Over time they came to be counted as white.
Law gave the boundary its force. The Naturalization Act of 1790 made citizenship available to aliens who were free white persons after two years of residence.
Naturalization law in the 1870s extended citizenship to Black people but shut out Asians, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers from immigrating for ten years and limited the rights of Chinese residents.
Deciding whiteness in court
Because whiteness opened the door to citizenship and the privileges that came with it, people petitioned the courts to be recognised as white.
The lecture counts more than fifty such cases between the 1870s and the 1950s, brought by Japanese, Chinese, Syrian, Armenian, Korean, Asian Indian, Filipino and mixed-ancestry applicants, and cites Ian Haney López's book White by Law.
A category that needed judges to settle its membership was plainly a legal one.
Race and power
The lecture's summary is that race was always about power: the power to assign traits to a group, to build structures around those traits and to shape the group's experience.
It defines a social construct as something that exists through human perception and interaction instead of existing independently of people, and gives money, countries and gender roles as other examples. The point for this course is that constructed categories have real, measurable effects. Where a family could become a citizen, own land or work shaped the environments later generations inherited.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Census definition of White
- 02
Where the term white came from
- 03
Irish, Italian and Slavic immigrants
- 04
The Naturalization Act of 1790
- 05
Exclusion of Asian immigrants
- 06
Court cases over who was white
- 07
Social constructs and their real effects
Worked example · free
Explain why the boundary of whiteness moved
- 1Describe the change.
- 2Explain what drove it.
- 1Draw the conclusion about race.
Key terms
- Naturalization Act
- The 1790 federal law that made citizenship available to free white persons after two years of residence.
- Chinese Exclusion Act
- An 1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from immigrating for ten years and restricted Chinese residents' rights.
- Whiteness
- A legal and social category whose membership was defined, contested and redrawn over US history.
- White by Law
- Ian Haney López's book on how US courts decided who counted as white, cited in the lecture.
How US Law Constructed Whiteness FAQ
Why does a biology course teach immigration law?
Because law decided who could become a citizen, own land and work, and those decisions shaped where families lived and what environments they faced. The history explains patterns the course later studies in health and pollution.
If race is a social construct, is it still real?
Yes, in its effects. A social construct exists through human agreement, like money or national borders, and it can still decide where people live, what jobs they get and how they are treated by institutions.
What did the naturalization court cases show?
More than fifty applicants from many backgrounds asked courts to classify them as white between the 1870s and 1950s. The need for judges to decide shows that membership in the category was a legal judgment, not a biological fact.
Exam move
Draw a timeline from the 1600s to the 1950s with the four legal milestones in the lecture. Beside each, write who gained or lost access and what that access controlled.
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