United States is considered the greatest country in the world. And holding that status, there is no doubt massive amounts of people would want to become a part of it by receiving a citizenship. Unfortunately that is not possible so there is a filtering system to keep from everyone coming into the U.S. There are certain criteria in being granted this opportunity. In the 1920’s there are two cases where it forced the American courts to draw and shift the lines that define race, in particular “white”.
Takao Ozawa wanted to be naturalized. He claimed that he was a “free white person” through definitions that were taken very literal. Other Supreme Court from before constituted “white” as anyone that has no Negro blood in him, which applies to Takao because he was Japanese. Another argument which he put up was that he was “free” because he was not a slave. This definition was useless in the U.S. because no one was a slave then. Thind, a native Asian Indian was denied naturalization so he appealed it under the point that “Caucasian” were “free white person”. And technically, Asian Indians were Caucasians because they shared the Aryan blood. But in Thinds case, after a few months after Ozawa’s decision the court loosened up the definition of white by taking the unofficial common speech meaning.
United States took blurry cases on “race”, literally. They looked at the biological features of Ozawa and Thind and determined they were not “white”. They did not observe their ethnicity which was very American. We live in a time different of the 1920’s. Now our definitions about race overlap and cross due to our “melting pot” status. But during the time of the cases race was categorized by mainly looks and physical appearance. The court saw that Ozawa had different eyes or Thind’s darker skin and declined their plea. They did not look at Ozawa’s 20 years in America, his American High school Diploma or his Americanized children. Same went with Thind’s time in the American Army. All this were overlooked because of their biology stood in the way. Now, in the more modern days, determining race is a act of integrating two factors. You have to consider the fact how much one has been Americanized and then their hereditary. For example, if there was a Mexican person who has been in American all their lives they would be considered an second generation Mexican American. The categories are now more specific but now “American” is vaguer.
When these cases were being evaluated, because of the dominant “whites” being the decision makers in court, it was a biased decision. This was how it was and most of the people who had no other choice to deal with it were the people who weren’t white. The powerful people saw being white one way and enforced it unfairly. Fortunately, due to the passing of many civil rights and equality laws, the minority voice is louder and also heard by other fellow minorities in courts now. We as a modern nation have come far from the 1920’s to level the playing field and have realized what inequality exists.
Race and ethnicity are two different things that can be taken unproportionally to judge. The two cases against the U.S. proved that race was a bigger contribution to their decision, rather than their ethnicity. Ozawa and Thind did not get what they wanted, possibly because the “white” court were unfair and was quick to bend their standards in just a few months between these to cases. In Ozawa’s case the courts were more technical but in Thind’s, they were very loose with their definitions. These two minorities had little to resort to after the decision because the structural inequality then. The “white” men made decisions of the minority in America. It looked fair then but now would stir a lot of controversy.
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