Dissident Veteran For Peace: Who is White?

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Who is White?

Below is a list of US court cases from the "Who is White?" page on the web site of Michael Bowen. For a more complete listing with full citations and some background see The Racial Classification Cases on the Univ. of Dayton School of Law's "Race, Racism and the Law" site.

In re Ah Yup (1878) (Chinese are not White)
In re Camille (1880) (persons half white and Native American are not White)
In re Kanaka Nian (1889) (Hawaiians are not White)
In re Hong Yen Chang (1890) (Chinese are not White)
In re Po (1894) (Burmese are not White)
In re Saito (1894) (Japanese are not White)
In re Burton (1900) (Native Americans are not White)
In re Knight (1909) (persons half White, one-quarter Japanese, and one-quarter Chinese are not White)
In re Balsara (1909) (Asian Indians are not White)
In re Majour (1909) (Syrians are White)
In re Halladjian (1909) (Armenians are White)
Bessho v. United States (1910) (Japanese are not White)
In re Alverto (1912) (persons three-quarters Filipino and one-quarter White are not White)
In re Young (1912) (persons half German and half Japanese are not White)
In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar (1913) (Asian Indians are White)
Ex parte Dow (1914) (Syrians are not White)
Petition of Easurk Emsen Charr (1921) (Koreans are not White)
Ozawa v. United States (1922) (Japanese are not White)
United States v. Thind (1923) (Asian Indians are not White)
United States v. Ali (1925) (Punjabis are not White)
In re Feroz Din (1928) (Afghanis are not White)
United States v. Gokhale (1928) (Asian Indians are not White)
De La Ysla v. United States (1935) Filipinos are not White)
De Cano v. State (1941) (Filipinos are not White)
Kharaiti Ram Samras v. United States (1942) (Asian Indians are not White)
In re Ahmed Hassan (1942) (Arabians are not White)
Ex parte Mohriez (1944) (Arabians are White).

To read the opinions you'll need the full citation (see link above) and you'll probably need access to a law library or one of the online legal services such as LEXIS because most of these cases are relatively old and were not decided by the US Supreme Court. In any case, here are some links you can try:

FindLaw: Cases and Codes
Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: Court opinions

Labels: history, identity, Indians, law, race, United States, White folks