#united states v bhagat singh thind

[relaybeacon]

How A Supreme Court Case Redefined Whiteness by PBS Origins

[contentment-of-cats]

Further TL;DR rant on Eli Vanto

"Caucasian features."

It's been bugging the absolute f*ck out of me.

Yes, I am back on my Eli Vanto bullshit.

Break it down.

White America is a Color

First, I think that only in America is the word Caucasian used to mean white people. The American understanding of Caucasian as meaning white, European-descended people was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1923. The case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ruled that under the Naturalization Act of 1906 that only "free white persons" - also called Caucasians - and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to become naturalized citizens. Bhagat Singh Thind's argument rested on the descent of Europeans and Indians from a common Proto-Indo-European origin. The court disagreed.

Excerpt below, full text here.

What we now hold is that the words "free white persons" are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word "Caucasian" only as that word is popularly understood. As so understood and used, whatever may be the speculations of the ethnologist, it does not include the body of people to whom the appellee belongs. It is a matter of familiar observation and knowledge that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus render them readily distinguishable from the various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as white. The children of English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian, and other European parentage quickly merge into the mass of our population and lose the distinctive hallmarks of their European origin. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that the children born in this country of Hindu parents would retain indefinitely the clear evidence of their ancestry. It is very far from our thought to suggest the slightest question of racial superiority or inferiority. What we suggest is merely racial difference, and it is of such character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation.

It is not without significance in this connection that Congress, by the Act of February 5, 1917, 39 Stat. 874, c. 29, § 3, has now excluded from admission into this country all natives of Asia within designated limits of latitude and longitude, including the whole of India. This not only constitutes conclusive evidence of the congressional attitude of opposition to Asiatic immigration generally, but is persuasive of a similar attitude toward Asiatic naturalization as well, since it is not likely that Congress would be willing to accept as citizens a class of persons whom it rejects as immigrants.

So, in America, the term Caucasian means 'white people' and not people of the Caucasus, or a group of people who have 'Caucasian features.' This is still accepted and common usage, despite the science of race being on a par with the sciences of alchemy, astrology, phrenology, a flat earth and the sun orbiting it.

Who with the What, Now?

A German philosopher named Christoph Meiners started the whole shitshow. He divided the races into the 'Caucasian' or 'beautiful' race and the 'Mongoloid' or 'ugly' race. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach carried it further in 1795, dividing humanity into five races by skin color.

First, this image is all over the search results, no findable attribution, but I'm using it because it's accurate in terms of skin colors:

Other 'Caucasian features' included narrow noses with small nostrils and a sharp nasal sill, small mouths with thin lips, prominent supraorbital (above the eye socket) ridges, orthognathism and high cheekbones. Of course, in the late 1700s when all this was being quantified into 'racial features' not many Caucasoids fit into the categories. Not a lot of people do today. I'd love to have everyone in America take a 23-and-Me test, then make them sit down, shut the fuck up and think.

Star Wars and Mis-coloring

I am old enough to remember when Lando Calrissian was the only black man in the galaxy.

Eli Vanto.

Tan.

Really.

The definition of 'tan' is a yellowish brown color, or the processing of leather, but we're going with the classic "brown or darkened shade of skin developed after exposure to the sun." In short a tan is acquired and not an innate skin color. It doesn't help that one of the most referenced fandom resources repeatedly characterizes brown people as 'tan.'

Even Breha Organa is miscolored as 'golden tan.' These guys did not acquire a goddamn tan hanging out on Scarif. Luke Skywalker was mighty white even after living his whole life on a desert planet, and Obi Wan had not a trace of tan despite living there as long as Luke. These are brown people. Black characters such as Adi Gallia and Mace Windu are characterized as "dark."

For shit's sake. Is everyone at Wookiepedia afraid of the word 'brown?'

Light brown. Medium brown. Dark brown.

I realize that the GFFA doesn't have Earth's definitions of ethnicity, nationality, or race but miscoloring is miscoloring. Tacking on 'Caucasian features' is adding a racist trope to insult. Structural racism in the US is deeply ingrained and often the default setting when it comes to media. It is important to give people their representation when it is right fucking there.

Eli Vanto is brown. His canon appearance is in the comics, and while he might have been originally storyboarded as a white redhead, he did not stay that way. His voice actor in the audiobooks gave him a Texas twang, but maybe in other versions of the audiobook, he speaks with a different accent.

Turkish Eli? Sure.

Brazilian Eli? Absolutely.

Oaxacan Eli? Why not.

Desi Eli? Heck yes.

Mizrahi Eli? Bring it.

He's brown. Not white. Not tan with Caucasian features. He is as brown as Thrawn is blue.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 19, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Today in the Washington Post, Nick Anderson showed how the Advanced Placement course on African American studies changed between February 2022, when its prototype first appeared, and February 2023, when the official version was released. One word, in particular, had vanished: the word “systemic.” In February 2022, “systemic” appeared before “marginalization; in April 2022, “systemic” came before “discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism.”

By February 2023, that word was gone. While the College Board, which produces the AP courses, says it did not change the course in response to its rejection by Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who said it contributed to a “political agenda,” its spokespeople have acknowledged that they were aware of how the right wing would react to that word.

The far right opposes the idea that the United States has ever practiced systemic racism. Shortly before former president Trump left office, his hand-picked President’s Advisory 1776 Commission produced its report to stand against the 1619 Project that rooted the United States in the year enslaved Africans first set foot in the English colonies on the Chesapeake, and went on to claim that systemic racism had shaped the eventual American nation.

Trump’s 1776 commission rejected the conclusions of the 1619 Project’s authors and instead declared that “the American people have ever pursued freedom and justice.” While “the American story has its share of missteps, errors, contradictions, and wrongs,” it asserted, “[t]hese wrongs have always met resistance from the clear principles of the nation, and therefore our history is far more one of self-sacrifice, courage, and nobility.”

Since Trump left office, far-right activists have passed laws prohibiting teachers from talking about patterns of racism and have worked to remove from classrooms and school libraries books whose subjects must overcome systemic discrimination.

Today is the anniversary of the day in 1942, during World War II, that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 enabling military authorities to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” That order also permitted the secretary of war to provide transportation, food, and shelter “to accomplish the purpose of this order.”

Four days later, a Japanese submarine off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, shelled the Ellwood Oil Field, and the Office of Naval Intelligence warned that the Japanese would attack California in the next ten hours. On February 25 a meteorological balloon near Los Angeles set off a panic, and troops fired 1,400 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition at supposed Japanese attackers.

On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt put Executive Order 9066 into effect. He signed Public Proclamation No. 1, dividing the country into military zones and, “as a matter of military necessity,” excluding from certain of those zones “[a]ny Japanese, German, or Italian alien, or any person of Japanese Ancestry.” Under DeWitt’s orders, about 125,000 children, women, and men of Japanese ancestry were forced out of their homes and held in camps around the country. Two thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens.

DeWitt’s order did not come from nowhere. After almost a century of shaping laws to discriminate against Asian newcomers, West Coast inhabitants and lawmakers were primed to see their Japanese and Japanese-American neighbors as dangerous.

Those laws reached back to the arrival of Chinese miners to California in 1849, and reached forward into the twentieth century. Indeed, on another February 19—that of 1923—the Supreme Court decided the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. It said that Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as Indo-European, could not become a U.S. citizen. Thind claimed the right to United States citizenship under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1906, which had put the federal government instead of states in charge of who got to be a citizen and had very specific requirements for citizenship that he believed he had met.

But, the court said, Thind was not a “white person” under U.S. law, and only “free white persons” could become citizens.

What were they talking about? In the Thind decision, the Supreme Court reached back to the case of Japan-born Takao Ozawa, decided a year before, in 1922. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that Ozawa could not become a citizen under the 1906 Naturalization Act because that law had not overridden the 1790 naturalization law limiting citizenship to “free white persons.” The court decided that “white person” meant “persons of the Caucasian Race.” “A Japanese, born in Japan, being clearly not a Caucasian, cannot be made a citizen of the United States,” it said.

As the 1922 case indicated, Asian Americans could not rely on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, to permit them to become citizens, because a law from 1790 knocked a hole in that amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” But as soon as that amendment went into effect, the new states and territories of the West reached back to the 1790 naturalization law to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship based on the argument that they were not “free, white persons.”

That 1790 restriction, based in early lawmakers’ determination to guarantee that enslaved Africans could not claim citizenship, enabled lawmakers after the Civil War to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship.

From that exclusion grew laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese workers from migrating to the United States. Then, when Chinese immigration slowed and Japanese immigration took its place, the U.S. backed the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 under which Japanese officials promised to stop emigration to the United States. The United States, in turn, promised not to restrict the rights of Japanese already in the United States, although laws prohibiting “aliens” from owning land meant Japanese settlers either lost their land or had to put it in the names of their American-born children, who were citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1942, the assumption that Japanese Americans were dangerous and anti-American was rooted back in the earliest years of the country, in the 1790 naturalization law designed to make sure that Africans could not become United States citizens.

After the 1923 Thind decision, the United States stripped the citizenship of about 50 South Asian Americans who had already become American citizens. One of them was Vaishno Das Bagai, an immigrant from what is now Pakistan who came from wealth and who settled in San Francisco in 1915 with his wife and three sons to start a business. Less than three weeks after arriving in the United States, Bagai began the process of naturalization. He became a citizen in 1920.

The Thind decision took that citizenship away from Bagai, making him fall under California’s alien land laws saying he could not own land. He lost his home and his business. In 1928, explicitly telling the San Francisco Examiner that he was taking his life in protest of racial discrimination, Bagai died by suicide. His widow, Kala Bagai, became a community activist.

World War II changed U.S. calculations of who could be a citizen as global alliances shifted and all Americans turned out to save democracy. From Japanese-American internment camps, young men joined the army to fight for the nation. In 1943, the War Department authorized the formation of Japanese-American combat units. One of those units, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, became the most decorated unit for its size in U.S. military history. Their motto was “Go for Broke.”

Congress overturned Chinese exclusion laws in 1943 and, in 1946, made natives of India eligible for U.S. citizenship. Japanese immigrants gained the right to become U.S. citizens in 1952.

“[S]elf-sacrifice, courage and nobility” definitely enabled people like Thind, Vaishno Das Bagai and Kala Bagai, and the soldiers of the 442d Regimental Combat Team to assert “the clear principles of the nation.” But it’s hard to see how a teacher can explain “missteps, errors, contradictions, and wrongs” from 1942 that were rooted in a law from 1790 without using the word “systemic.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ebelal56-blog]

The Surprising Reason South Asian Immigrants Are Thriving in America!

Discover the surprising reason why South Asian immigrants are thriving in America. Learn about their unique journey and success in this eye-opening video! Imagine stepping into a world where dreams collide with reality, a world where the journey of countless souls intertwines with the fabric of a nation. The story of South Asian immigration to the United States is one of resilience, struggle, and triumph that spans over a century. It begins in the late 1800s, when the first wave of immigrants, primarily Punjabi Sikhs, arrived on the shores of California and the Pacific Northwest. These pioneers, with their agricultural expertise, sought a better life, but they faced a harsh reality. Discrimination loomed large, fueled by a wave of anti-Asian sentiment that painted them as outsiders. Laws like the 1917 Immigration Act and the 1923 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created barriers that seemed insurmountable. Can you imagine uprooting your life, only to be told you don’t belong? Fast forward to post-World War II. The world was changing, and so was the narrative of South Asian immigration. Small numbers of families made their way to the U.S., often through war bride provisions or as students. Yet, it wasn’t until 1965 that a seismic shift occurred. The Immigration and Nationality Act, known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished the restrictive national origins quotas that had stifled immigration for decades. This was a game-changer! Suddenly, skilled professionals and families could reunite, leading to an influx of educated South Asians entering the workforce. Picture a wave of doctors, engineers, and academics—individuals who would not just find their place in America but would also elevate the socio-economic status of their communities. Then came the 1990s, a decade defined by a tech boom that transformed the landscape of employment. The H-1B visa program became a beacon of hope for many Indian IT professionals. It was a time when the American dream seemed more accessible than ever. South Asian communities began to flourish in urban centers like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, creating vibrant enclaves filled with cultural richness. Festivals, religious institutions, and community organizations sprang up, weaving a tapestry of tradition and innovation. But let’s not forget the shadows that loomed over this progress. The aftermath of September 11 brought heightened scrutiny and racial profiling, particularly for South Asians, especially those who identified as Muslim or Sikh. Suddenly, the narrative shifted, and the very communities that had worked so hard to integrate faced new challenges. Yet, from this adversity arose a powerful wave of advocacy for civil rights, a testament to the resilience of these communities. Today, the landscape of South Asian immigration is more diverse than ever, with individuals arriving from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, alongside the continued migration from India and Pakistan. This new generation is not just surviving; they’re thriving. The second-generation South Asians are making waves in politics, business, arts, and entertainment, carving out spaces in American society that reflect their unique identities. As we stand at this juncture, it’s essential to recognize the significant contributions South Asians make in fields like technology, healthcare, and academia. They are not just participants in the American story; they are shaping it. Their influence is palpable, from the success of prominent South Asian Americans in politics to the representation in media and culture. So, what does this history tell us? It’s a reminder that the journey of immigration is complex, marked by struggles and victories. It’s a story that continues to unfold, one that invites us all to reflect on our shared humanity and the strength found in diversity. As South Asians continue to rise, they embody a narrative of inclusion that enriches the American experience, reminding us that we are all part of this great tapestry called America.

[todaysdocument]

Bill of Complaint, 1/7/1921

Bhagat Singh Thind served during World War I and was naturalized at least twice. However in 1921, the District Court of Oregon filed a bill of complaint denying citizenship to Thind. The case went to the Supreme Court and in its 1923 decision, the court ended up defining Asian Indians as non-white and ineligible for naturalization.

File Unit: U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 1921 - 1926

Series: Civil, Criminal, and Admiralty Case Files, 1859 - 1923

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685 - 2009

Transcription:

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,            )

                       Plaintiff,                                )

                                                                        )

               vs.                                                   )                      BILL OF COMPLAINT

                                                                       )

Bhagat Singh Thind,                             )                       IN EQUITY

                       Defendant.                         )

TO THE HONORABLE JUDGES OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON:

     The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, by Lester W. Humphreys, United States Attorney for the District of Oregon, pursuant to authority conferred upon him by the laws of the United States brings this its Bill of Complaint against the above named defendant, and for cause of suit alleges:

                                                                                             I.

     That the defendant Bhagat Singh Thind, now resides in Multnomah County, State of Oregon, and within the jurisdiction of this Court, and since on or about the 18th day of November, 1920, has claimed to be a citizen of the United States by reason of certain hereinafter described proceedings in naturalization.

                                                                                             II.

     The the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon is a court having jurisdiction to naturalize aliens in the said State of Oregon, in which the naturalized alien, to-wit:  Bhagat Singh Thind, then resided and had so resided for some time prior to the said 18th day of November, 1920.

[griseldagimpel]

Race is a Social Construct

Periodically, I’ll see posts come across my dash about how racism is different in Europe because racists in England hate Polish people, too; or how such-and-such actor from Brazil or Mexico isn’t a person of color because things are different there. And, yeah.

Race is a social construct, and how it is constructed is going to vary from country to country.

In the United States, where I’m at? Japanese people aren’t white because Ozawa v. United States said you had to be Caucasian to be white, no matter what degree of assimilation. (Source: https://immigrationhistory.org/item/takao-ozawa-v-united-states-1922/)

Then United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind said Indian people weren’t white even if they were Caucasian, they did not meet the “common sense” definition of white. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind) And yes, this was a blatant contradiction of Ozawa v. United States. Because race - including whiteness - is a social construct, and that doesn’t mean it has to be constructed well or in a consistent manner.

People from the Middle-East and North Africa are considered Caucasian in the United States because Coptic Christian immigrants argued that they were Caucasian because they were Christian. (Source: https://medium.com/@copticvoiceus/why-are-middle-easterners-classified-as-caucasian-78c89f2573f3)

And you’re probably like, hey, wait a minute: religion isn’t the same thing as race! And you’re right; it’s not. But racial constructs are shaped by things like religion and language, even if those things aren’t race in and of themselves.

Race is a social construct, but it’s a construct the way the pillow I sewed in 7th grade Home Ec is a construct. It’s going to be a patchwork of court cases and lies and assimilation.Because how does a demographic move into being part of the privileged umbrella? Assimilate assimilate assimilate. Lie as necessary. Be bigoted toward the “correct” racial out group.

I’m white, but I’ve got ancestors who weren’t white at the time they lived, and I’ve got ancestors who wouldn’t be considered white today in the United States. BUT - I’ve also got ancestors who lied and obfuscated and hated all the “right” people. And this isn’t something unique about me. This is true for a lot of white people in the United States.

I’ve got step-family that’s Puerto Rican. They’ve got white, Black, and indigenous ancestry. Some of them pass for white (because genetics is random like that), and those same family members also face racism.

You can be white in one country and not another country. Hell, I’d bet you could be white in one part of the United States and not another part.

And while other countries construct race differently, a lot of the underlying rules are the same. There are demographics that, if they assimilate and lie and hate the “right” people, can transition into the privileged class. And there are demographics that will never be able to do that, at least not in this time and age.

To conclude, if you find yourself trying to parse something about race and whiteness that seems contradictory or nonsensical, hey, there’s a good chance that’s because it is.

[citizenk-writes]

Let’s Talk Immigration.

Immigration is a universal practice by people that’s survived countless generations. The United States is known universally as a “melting pot” of culture and nationality. Yet, the history of the United States pertaining to immigrants/immigration lead us to understand that the so-called “melting pot” is a sham. We understand our diversity to be born of the perseverance of immigrants in search of ensuring life and liberty — not of American acceptance.

For decades (and still today), the United States created and reinforced stereotypes of immigrants that provoke American hatred to incoming migrants - especially those of color. The historic criminalization of Immigrants of color coming to America is a tactic used to preserve white supremacy and induce fear for the public’s disapproval of certain immigrant groups.

The United States adopted race as a form of legal category to grant citizenship. This practice preceeded the establishment of it as an independent nation as race and social darwinism was used as a justification for slavery - the concept of race legalized behaviors and statuses based on skin color. Decades from its first application, race — specifically whiteness, would play a huge role in granting citizenship to incoming groups. Initially white people were only granted citizenship (even indentured servants after they worked off their debt) but after the 14th Amendment, this extended to only to those of African descent that currently lived in the United States. This would not be shared by incoming groups.

After the influx of immigrants in the 1890s, the chase for citizenship would left to be determined by Supreme Courts as to what groups were considered white. The Supreme Court determined whiteness through legal precedent, acclaimed scientific evidence, and common knowledge. Some groups went as far as claiming white status through social hierarchy in their countries, to ensure their whiteness in America. In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, a Hindu Indian, tried to claim the status of whiteness by claiming his status in India as a full-blooded Indian Hindu to be the equivalent of white in America. This was shot down by the court, as he was told: “It may be true that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu may have the same ancestor...but the average man knows perfectly well that there are undeniable and profound differences between them to-day.” In other words, he was denied as per common knowledge.

Ultimately, the Courts would strategically determine whiteness through Christian religious practices. Immigrants from Armenia and Syria were legally white, while Asian Indians, Punjabis, Japanese and Koreans were due to precedent and common knowledge that masks their rejection due to religious practices and appearance.

The United States did not only deny citizenship to members of these communities, they worked to criminalize them to deter support from the American people and deter immigration entirely from selective countries. Criminalization is the process of transforming people or behaviors into deviants by changing legislation or judicial interpretation. Criminalization essentially aids those in power to reform criminal policy, and in the case of immigration, can prevent residency in the United States or defame the image of certain immigrants entering the country. Throughout history, it is clear that the United States uses criminalization tactics to target immigrants of color. Through the Page Act of 1875 and Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the creation of Border Patrol and Mexican Removal Act, the increase of deportable crimes with the implementation of Broken Windows and 1996 Immigration Reform, and the creation of Homeland Security, Guantanamo Bay, and the Persecution of Muslims all look to target those of color. Asians, Hispanics, and Middle Eastern immigrants all face immigration discrimination today because of the United States’ attack on immigrants for over a century.

The first explicit criminalization of and racism towards voluntary immigrants can be dated to the Page Act of 1875 and Chinese Exclusion of 1882. Asian immigration to the United States begins in the 1800s in extremely small numbers. Making up less than .1 of the United States population, Asian immigrants began to receive discriminatory backlash for their entry through the California borders. In 1875, California passed a law: [the] Act to Prevent the kidnapping and Importation of Mongalian, Chinese, and Japanese Females for Criminal or Demoralizing Purposes or later on named the Page Act of 1882. This legislation was meant to prevent Asian female immigration to the United States by stigmatizing all of them prostitutes. By misusing the 13th Amendment and capitalizing on the recent emancipation of African Americans, California representatives claimed the legislation was meant to protect Asian women and American values. However, the legislation enforcement methods of invasive searches, assumptions, and interrogations reduced the immigration of Asian women to almost none by the 1890s, which encouraged the idea that because they are not trying to immigrate anymore - that they are prostitutes and immoral. This would act as a form of ethnic cleansing as women were not present to bear children. Less than a decade later, Chinese men would be targeted as well. Middle class Americans, after recently adjusting to the liberation of African-Americans no less than 10 years prior in 1865, blame Chinese immigrant laborers for “taking their jobs”. The Chinese Exclusion Act denied citizenship to any Chinese men residing in the United States, and denied further entry of Chinese men. It focused laborers, however the law was not about protecting American economic mobility. As it did with the Page Act, this Chinese immigration policy preserved and protected white purity because it was focused on the race of the laborer, rather than the laborer itself. The law did not seek out laborers from those immigrating into the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe in the 1890s, as it did for the Chinese. As a result, Chinese people were excluded from immigration for 60 years and those who resided in the United States became the target of working class America - facing discriminatory attacks and unequal employment opportunities. Criminalizing Asians as promiscuous women and beggar-men is a narrative seen today.

Mexicans have always resided in the United States - specifically as historians study the Southwestern border of the United States. After the US-Mexico War, the 1848 Treaty of Gudalupe-Hidalgo annexed Mexican territory, which is present day: California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado to the United States. The Mexicans who resided in territory admitted to the Union were granted all-inclusive citizenship. After the 1897 ruling in In re Rodriguez, a Texas federal court case, it set percentage of full-blooded Mexicans receiving the rights of free white men, but not the status. Decades later in 1924, after the creation of the National Origins Act which implemented a quota system according to the 1890 census figures, was the creation of the United States Border Patrol. The National Origins Act xenophobically enforced ethnic selection of immigration - however could not control the influence of low-wage workers from Mexico (and the Caribbean) receiving opportunities from American businesses. At the time Border Patrol departmentalized under the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Department of Labor and militarize troops to patrol the United States-Mexico border for those illegally crossing the border of all backgrounds. Soon, the efforts focused on Mexican migrants and intolerantly arrested and deported them. This was a method of increased social status for white men and a response through racialized revenge. Though this was not the first example of white immigration enforcement at the border, which began in 1904 to enforce Chinese Exclusion Acts, but it was the first opportunity opened to Americans in a large, deputized manner.

In 1929 began Mexican Removal Programs. Collaborative efforts between local and federal governments resulted in the deportation of over a million Mexican and Mexican-American citizens after being blamed for taking American jobs. The Department of Labor justified these deportations by claiming the immigrants and citizens illegally entered the United States, however this was a weak attempt to cover their racism. Mexicans, for years, were stereotyped as inadequate workers that steal jobs from Americans. The truth was that Americans’ anger was misdirected. The anger towards Mexicans willing to work for less, in which granted them more work opportunities, is not on the blame of the person. It is the full discretion of the employer to hire someone, and if the American is not willing to lower their wage desire - then there is no one else to blame. The creation of Border Patrol and Mexican Removal Programs further another reason to fuel hatred towards Mexicans by claiming they illegally enter the United States. This criminalization of Mexicans opened the door for decades of discrimination.

Years of hatred and criminalization would be (and still be) experienced by immigrant groups through Japanese internment, determent of Haitian immigration in the 1980s, and more - however notably in the 1990s immigrants would be criminalized and stereotyped in ways visible today. During the Clinton administration, “getting tough on crime” was a critical agenda and platform in United States politics. Not only did this include cracking down on drugs as Reagan did two administrations previously, but added immigration to the list. Clinton’s 1996 immigration reform laws shifted immigration and national security to an extreme; this limited the court’s role in deportation cases and expanded the list of criminal offenses that ultimately became deportable charges. This became strongly enforced through Broken Windows policing. Broken Windows policing, which encouraged increased police activity in black and brown communities under the notion of improving the quality of life in low-income, inner city areas, only enforced stricter law interpretations, looser reign on officers, and misused application of the law. Quality of life crimes expanded the list of arrestable offenses to include public intoxicity, public urination, spitting on the street, and other “lewd” acts. Nonviolent offenses like driving without a license, trespassing, and speeding would become offenses that criminalized immigrants and deport them. Not only did Broken Windows inspire criminalizing nonviolent offenses, it indirectly inspired interagency and intergovernmental law enforcement because it requires the coordinated efforts between local law enforcement and immigration. This form of policing became the method of enforcing tougher immigration policy in black and brown communities. Thus, the expansion of criminalizing nonviolent offenses were added to deportable crimes that directly criminalized immigrants and created a narrative that inspired discussions of national security.

The conversations of immigration and national security skyrocketed after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. After the September 11th terrorist attack in 2001, the Bush Administration expanded its resources in interagency law enforcement. Under the motivation of ensuring national security, the creation of DHS reinforced the narrative that immigration is synonymous to threats of national security. Under the Obama Administration, by imposing policies that required coordination between immigration and domesric law enforcement, over 1 million undocumented immigrants were criminalized and deported for nonviolent offenses. This gave leway to local law enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants for minor crimes and turn them over to DHS as immigration enforcement. As a result, today ICE and CBP aggressively enforce immigration law and encourage the narrative that immigrants are a threat to American national security. This narrative would prove to be especially true to Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants.

The September 11th attacks was not only detrimental to the Americans, but to Muslim-Americans and immigrants faced with the backlash. The infamous term of “radical Islamic terrorism” became America’s biggest fear since the Cold War. Naturally, uneducated Americans tie terrorism to the religion itself, rather than the radical terrorism it is. This account would motivate the multide of anti-Muslim policies such as the frozen Travel Ban, No-Fly List, refocus of the Countering Violent Extremism program to target only Muslim countries, and disproportional spying on Muslims in the United States. The United States has bombed and has an active part in the destruction of Muslim countries such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and more - however sought to exclude aslyum seekers’ immigration to the United States. As a result, the criminalizing and inducing the fear of Muslim countries by bombing them and attempting to ban their citizens continues the narrative of Muslims being terrorist and a threat to national security.

There are no attacks on what is considered “white” immigrant groups and their immigration to America. In fact, federal immigration reform in 1965 removed the quota system and implemented a new system of immigration. The new system, which is still used today, determined residency and citizenship through need for refuge, useful skill sets, and relative sponsorship. This catered to northern and western European immigrants because it chose who they wanted to allow into the United States. As seen above, Immigrants of color are portrayed in criminal manner while white immigrants are not subjected to the xenophobia.

Conversions today concerning immigrants do not refer back to the history the United States has with immigration. America has a clear history in immigrants that targets people of color, with its first performance explicitly targeting Chinese people through stereotyped policy. Immigrants of color are often seen as people who enter to devalue American morals, similarly to the perception that California lawmakers created upon claiming Asian women are prostitutes. Yet, this was a tactic used to discourage Americans from accepting Chinese immigration Another misinformed perception of immigrants of color their attempt to interfere with American work - however the history of Chinese Men and Mexicans show that they were willing to work for less which employers desired, and is not the responsibility of the immigrant that the job was given to them. Finally, Immigrants of color are subjected to being referred to as “criminals” and accused of increasing the criminality of immigration - however it is the fault of domestic policy that has increased the criminalization of immigrants. As time progressed, the government has done an effective job at masking it’s xenophobia, racism, and ethnic cleansing through manpulating terrorism and expanded crime policies to captilize on American fear.

Thus, if the United States cared about immigration equality and protecting life and liberty universally, then they would acknowledge the consistent discrimination against immigrants of color and take responsiblity for their attempt to maintain whiteness. The United States has shifted from its uncensored racism to implicit and suggestive bias in policies that are selectively enforced on immigrants of color. It is critical to hold the government accountable to have real and effective conversations about immigration safety and national security. America is only hindering itself from practical solutions to solving issues affecting our safety and American values.

Sources:

Kaplan, Amy. “Where is Guantanamo?” Course pack for Pols 3191W: Critical Writing on the Politics of Race and Nation, complied by Jeanne Theoharis, Fall 2019, Brooklyn College. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40068318

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40068318

Akbar, Amina, Theoharis, Jeanne. “Islam on Trial” Course pack for Pols 3191W: Critical Writing on the Politics of Race and Nation, complied by Jeanne Theoharis, Fall 2019, Brooklyn College. http://bostonreview.net/forum/amna-akbar-jeanne-theoharis-islam-trial

Aja, Alan, Marchevsky, Alejandra. “How Immigrants Became Criminals.” Course pack for Pols 3191W: Critical Writing on the Politics of Race and Nation, complied by Jeanne Theoharis, Fall 2019, Brooklyn College. http://bostonreview.net/politics/alan-j-aja-alejandra-marchevsky-how-immigrants-became-criminals

http://bostonreview.net/politics/alan-j-aja-alejandra-marchevsky-how-immigrants-became-criminals

Friedman, Andrea. “Reconstructing California, Reconstructiing the Nation.” Course pack for Pols 3191W: Critical Writing on the Politics of Race and Nation, complied by Jeanne Theoharis, Fall 2019, Brooklyn College.

“Formation: The Early Years” Course pack for Pols 3191W: Critical Writing on the Politics of Race and Nation, complied by Jeanne Theoharis, Fall 2019, Brooklyn College.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/pqitw

https://immigrationhistory.org/item/thind-v-united-states%E2%80%8B/

[fidius]

Is this willful ignorance? It's very clear what the Supreme Court meant--South Indians were not white in the sense that the racist law of the time said people had to be to qualify for citizenship in the way that was required by the law that Bhagat Singh Thind used to get citizenship. The decision was evil, and possibly unjustified even by that Court's own standards, but it was straightforward.

On this day, 19 February 1923, the US supreme court decided unanimously to bar South Asians from becoming US citizens and to denaturalize those who had already done so. Their decision was on the basis that South Asians (referred to often erroneously as “Hindus” at time by the press) and US whites of European descent did not have common racial ancestry (whatever the hell that means). South Asians did not regain the right to become citizens until 1946. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1655743187944158/?type=3

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

I'm mixed about the classification thing because a lot of people under that designation tried to be classified as white and were successful. So its like, in the US theyre classified as such because they explicitly set themselces apart from black people. East and South Asians tried the same and were denied, and black people were barred from doing so. So its hard to see people complain about being classified as valuable when we were property. But times changed so I get why they want that.

I’m putting this ask together with a different ask, which is also about the US census: “Should racial category be made for mestizo/ indigenous latin American people? right now they are racially classified as Hispanic/ Latino whites”

—

Asian people in this country tried to be classified as white because they were desperately trying to be treated decently by the government in any way that they could. For example, in Ozawa v United States, the Japanese defendent was attempting to be classified as white because only “free white persons” were allowed to be naturalized at that time. (See also U.S. v Bhagat Singh Thind.)

It is absolutely unacceptable and wrong to fault them for doing what they could with the limited resources they had. They were trying to get the basic things that any white person got in the country–a decent education for their children, citizenship, property rights, et cetera. I do not blame them for trying the legal tactic of being classified as white, and neither should you. Keep in mind that the tactic of trying to be white actually worked for Irish people, who were formerly discriminated against. So it wasn’t a total pie in the sky. 

For the record, the attempt to be classified as white or get legal rights on par with white people failed. It sometimes failed outright when lawyers argued that Asians could never be white. For example, the Attorney General argued in Takuji Yamashita v Hinkle, that “there can be no real assimilation of an alien race unless it is accompanied by a social assimilation that destroys its marked physical characteristics…” (Yamashita had been suing because POC, including Asians, at that time were not allowed to own land.) It also sometimes failed because legislation was quickly rewritten to mark Asian people as nonwhite.

But the current system is still flawed. Now that there is affirmative action and scholarships for people of color, the system makes it difficult for some people of color to obtain those resources–Middle Eastern people and native/indigenous people both Latinx and non-Latinx. This means that resources that were set aside for all POC are only being benefited off of by some of them, which is unfair.

I hope that clarifies the issues for you. Feel free to real up more on America’s history of anti-Asian legislation and the myriad of creative ways that Asian-Americans tried to fight discrimination. 

Mod Z  

[scy-chicago]

Public Health: Reconciling Two Vastly Different Fields

In this blog, SCY Summer Intern Kelly Fan writes about her thoughts and experiences on studying two contrasting subjects. Kelly is a rising senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago on the pre-med track and is pursuing a dual degree in Sociology and Biological Sciences.

Three years of undergrad have taught me a lot, and one idea that’s been conveyed to me through studying two contrasting fields – sociology and biology – is that, though they may contradict each other in various ways, their differences can actually productively support one another.

Sociology disrupts the idea that many facets of life are rooted in biology. Gender and race, for example, are constructed and reproduced through social institutions rather than being innate characteristics of individuals. To many people, especially those with stronger life science backgrounds (like myself before deciding to pursue sociology as a major), the idea of social constructs seems rather abstract and maybe even nonsensical. How could something so apparent, like one’s gender, be decided by something other than nature?

Indeed, when we think of what determines someone’s gender, we often think of biological markers, like hormones, genitalia, and chromosomes. However, gender’s implications in society extend far beyond biological qualities. Socialization has played a significant part in the construction of expectations for men and women, the inequalities between genders, and even the physical and mental characteristics of individuals. Gender division in the United States cannot be explained with biology alone. The same thing could be said of race; historical foundations for the creation of different racial categories and racial inequalities are often overlooked. Determining who is white, for one, may seem self-explanatory. In reality, a series of court cases among other historical events helped shape the United States’ categorization for race. In 1923, for example, an Indian man argued that he was white because he was a member of the Caucasian race, but the court rejected this notion and instead rescinded his citizenship (United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind).

In general, sociology places great emphasis on disrupting essentialism – the idea that certain facets of society (like gender and race) are innate and solely biological. Upon taking my first sociology course, I was intrigued by this notion; it felt as though I was being asked to place skepticism upon a field of study that I had so much belief in throughout my entire life.

Yet, I could not ignore what seemed to me to be glaringly indisputable facts of biology. Men and women do have different chromosomes and different races do have physical characteristics that distinguish them from one another. I struggled to grapple with these contradictions and to find a balance between the two fields. It seemed difficult to study one without becoming doubtful in the other.

Eventually, I came to realize that sociology does not dismiss biology as a legitimate field of study, but rather that it critically analyzes the field of medicine and biology as systems of authority that have the power to affect populations. Yes, men and women have different chromosomes and genitalia, but what about people whose chromosomes aren’t either XX (female) or XY (male)? Different races have different health outcomes, but is this an issue of biological predisposition or of systemic inequality?

Course material taught in biology classes surrounding gender are binary-oriented. The in-betweens and binary non-conforming situations are rarely discussed. I was shocked when I learned in a sociology class that doctors would perform surgery to alter the genitalia of babies whose genitalia did not meet the standards for “normal” males or females. When I learned of the prevalence of intersex people – people whose sex chromosomes or other sex characteristics differ from typical male and female categorization – I was astounded that my biology courses had framed these conditions as rare and abnormal, when in reality, many intersex people are able to live healthy lives. Moreover, they are about as common as people with red hair.

Fascinated by this topic, I brought it up in a meeting with one of my advisors at the UIC College of Medicine. He was a faculty member who was working towards redesigning the medical school curriculum. To say I was disappointed when he asked me to clarify what “intersex” meant is an understatement. If this man, who has the potential to impact the medical education of future physicians, does not know what “intersex” means, what are the odds of medical students being educated on sexual minority issues? What other important topics would be left out of the curriculum?

Biology is extremely important in medicine and in the advancement of health sciences. It allows for an understanding of the human body that translates into applications for medicine. Biology itself, however, often does not address topics of population disparities, and it is frequently taught in a way that ignores or mis-frames minority issues.

Majoring in sociology has taught me not to distrust biology, but rather to recognize the importance of biology and medicine as tools for helping or hurting populations. Medicine holds a level of authority that allows it to greatly impact peoples’ views and understandings of health; people place a great amount of trust in scientists and doctors. Perhaps the bridge between sociology and biology – a field that addresses both medical and population concerns – is public health. Public health draws from various fields of research and uses both scientific and sociological methods to confront population health problems. Looking at certain health issues through a public health lens can help answer questions of who is being most affected by an issue, why they are in that position, and how this affects them on a physiological and social basis.

While sociology and biology are seemingly disparate topics, they have the ability to be utilized simultaneously to address both medical and social topics. The prospect of navigating both fields used to intimidate me, but now it excites me. Through learning more about public health, I am able to see how medicine and sociology can intersect in a way that does not contradict either field and instead fosters a better understanding of human health and society.

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

02/24/17

That February when ‘Hindus’ lost American citizenship

And it was on February 19, 1923, that the US supreme court unanimously ruled against Bhagat Singh Thind in the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, quashing not just Thind’s hope for citizenship, but also that of all South Asians.

The case resulted not just in the US supreme court barring South Asians from becoming American citizens, but also ruling to 'denaturalise' those who had already done so.

It took over two decades, until 1946, for South Asians to win back the right of citizenship in America.

[readontheinternet]

Associate Justice George Sutherland said that authorities on the subject of race were in disagreement over which people were included in the scientific definition of the Caucasian race, so Sutherland instead chose to rely on the common understanding of race rather than the scientific understanding of race. Sutherland found that, while Thind may claim to have 'purity of Aryan blood' due to being 'born in Village Taragarh Talawa near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab' and having 'high caste' status, he was not Caucasian in the 'common understanding', so he could not be included in the 'statutory category as white persons'. The Court reiterated its holding in [Ozawa v. United States], explaining that the words 'free white person' in the naturalization act were 'synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as that word is popularly understood,' pointing out that the statutory language was to be interpreted as 'words of common speech and not of scientific origin... written in the common speech, for common understanding, by unscientific men.'   "The Court... also concluded that 'the term 'Aryan' has to do with linguistic, and not at all with physical, characteristics, and it would seem reasonably clear that mere resemblance in language, indicating a common linguistic root buried in remotely ancient soil, is altogether inadequate to prove common racial origin.'   "The Court argued that the exclusion of non-whites was based on the idea of racial difference rather than the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another race. The Court argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the 'great body of our people' would reject assimilation with Indians.

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, a 1923 Supreme Court case in which a bunch of white men made it clear that only white people get to define race, and by their own personal inclinations instead of facts or science.

[alexanderrm]

Interestingly this wasn’t always reflected in racist laws- for example, in the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind the supreme court acknowledged that Indians were Caucasian according to at least some scientists but chose to instead use a “common sense” definition of “white” and dismiss scientific arguments, explicitly acknowledging that racist laws were based on arbitrary categories without even a pretense of scientific basis.

Climatic Chart of the World, Showing the Distribution of the Human Race and the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms.

Yaggy’s Geographical Portfolio, 1893.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 19, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Today is the anniversary of the day in 1942, during World War II, that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 enabling military authorities to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” That order also permitted the secretary of war to provide transportation, food, and shelter “to accomplish the purpose of this order.” 

Four days later a Japanese submarine off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, shelled the Ellwood Oil Field, and the Office of Naval Intelligence warned that the Japanese would attack California in the next ten hours. On February 25 a meteorological balloon near Los Angeles set off a panic, and troops fired 1,400 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition at supposed Japanese attackers.

On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt put Executive Order 9066 into effect. He signed Public Proclamation No. 1, dividing the country into military zones and, “as a matter of military necessity,” excluding from certain of those zones “[a]ny Japanese, German, or Italian alien, or any person of Japanese Ancestry.” Under DeWitt’s orders, about 125,000 children, women, and men of Japanese ancestry were forced out of their homes and imprisoned in camps around the country. Two thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens.

DeWitt’s order did not come from nowhere. After almost a century of shaping laws to discriminate against Asian newcomers, West Coast inhabitants and lawmakers were primed to see their Japanese and Japanese-American neighbors as dangerous. 

Those laws reached back to the 1849 arrival of Chinese miners in California and reached forward into the twentieth century. Indeed, on another February 19—that of 1923—the Supreme Court decided the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. It said that Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as Indo-European, could not become a U.S. citizen. Thind claimed the right to United States citizenship under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1906, which had put the federal government instead of states in charge of who got to be a citizen and had very specific requirements for citizenship that he believed he had met. 

But, the court said, Thind was not a “white person” under U.S. law, and only “free white persons” could become citizens.

What were they talking about? In the Thind decision, the Supreme Court reached back to the case of Japan-born Takao Ozawa, decided a year before, in 1922. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that Ozawa could not become a citizen under the 1906 Naturalization Act because that law had not overridden the 1790 naturalization law limiting citizenship to “free white persons.” The court decided that “white person” meant “persons of the Caucasian Race.” “A Japanese, born in Japan, being clearly not a Caucasian, cannot be made a citizen of the United States,” it said. 

As the 1922 case indicated, Asian Americans could not rely on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, to permit them to become citizens, because a law from 1790 knocked a hole in that amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” But as soon as that amendment went into effect, the new states and territories of the West reached back to the 1790 naturalization law to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship on the basis of the argument that they were not “free, white persons.” 

That 1790 restriction, based in early lawmakers’ determination to guarantee that enslaved Africans could not claim citizenship, enabled lawmakers after the Civil War to exclude Asian immigrants from citizenship. 

From that exclusion grew laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese workers from migrating to the United States. Then, when Chinese immigration slowed and Japanese immigration took its place, the U.S. backed the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 under which Japanese officials promised to stop emigration to the United States. The United States, in turn, promised not to restrict the rights of Japanese immigrants already in the United States, although laws prohibiting “aliens” from owning land meant Japanese settlers either lost their land or had to put it in the names of their American-born children, who were citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. 

After the 1923 Thind decision, the United States stripped the citizenship of about 50 South Asian Americans who had already become American citizens. One of them was Vaishno Das Bagai, an immigrant from what is now Pakistan who came from wealth and who settled in San Francisco in 1915 with his wife and three sons to start a business. Less than three weeks after arriving in the United States, Bagai began the process of naturalization. He became a citizen in 1920. 

The Thind decision took that citizenship away from Bagai, making him fall under California’s alien land laws that said he could not own land. He lost his home and his business. In 1928, explicitly telling the San Francisco Examiner that he was taking his life in protest of racial discrimination, Bagai committed suicide. His widow, Kala Bagai, became a community activist.

World War II changed U.S. calculations of who could be a citizen as global alliances shifted and Americans of all backgrounds turned out to save democracy. From Japanese-American concentration camps, young men joined the army to fight for the nation. In 1943 the War Department authorized the formation of Japanese-American combat units. One of those units, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, became the most decorated unit for its size in U.S. military history. Their motto was ��Go for Broke.” 

Congress overturned the Chinese exclusion laws in 1943 and, in 1946, made natives of India eligible for U.S. citizenship. The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946, and Japanese immigrants gained the right to become U.S. citizens in 1952. 

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 and noted that it was a “setback to fundamental American principles.” “We now know what we should have known then,” he said. “[N]ot only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans…. I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise—that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.”

But now so-called “internment camps” are back in the news.

Trump has promised his supporters that in a second term he would launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” To deport as many as ten million of what he called “foreign national invaders,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller explained on a November podcast, the administration would federalize National Guard troops from Republican-dominated states and send them around the country to round people up, moving them to “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” that would serve as internment camps.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[riverofmolecules]

On this day in 1923 (February 19), the U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously to bar South Asians from becoming American citizens and to denaturalize those who had already done so in the landmark decision, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. ...  Through its decision, the Supreme Court quashed the hopes of Thind and fellow South Asians in the United States to gain full recognition as American citizens. It was not until 1946, more than two decades later, that South Asians were again allowed the right of citizenship.

The Thind decision determined that South Asians could not be naturalized citizens as they were obviously not white, shifting the idea of whiteness from the 1800s basis of race science (which would put South Asians or “Hindus” with Europeans as Caucasoid/Aryan) to just social definition (white people don’t think you’re white, so you’re not).

At the same time, Thind’s argument was not anti-racist as the crux was that South Asians were actually white and should be allowed access to whiteness. The point was not to change racially biased immigration and citizenship policies but to legally ‘pass’.

[pussymagicuniverse]

witch puns are good

a fictocritical reading of caliban and the witch: women, the body, and primitive accumulation by silvia federici

TW: rape, murder

all italics are direct quotations from federici’s text

I.

in a system where life is subordinated to the production of profit, the accumulation of labor-power can only be achieved with the maximum of violence

in Maria Mies’ words, violence itself becomes the most productive force

sometimes it’s remarkable that we keep having to fight the same shit. but it’s oddly comforting that for more than five hundred years we’ve never stopped fighting this shit. people have always been against a tax on life. whether under feudalism or capitalism there is rarely a shortage of those who assert themselves against injustices of the like. before hospital bills that tacked on as many charges as they could to see if you contest them, serflords would issue tallages, a sum of money arbitrarily decided, that the lords could exact at will. akin to spending hours on the phone with a goddamn insurance company to dispute a bill, in 1299 the monks of dunstable asserted that “they would rather go down to hell than be beaten in this matter of tallage”

everyone knows vaguely of the heretics. some know they existed in their variety. people who were essentially against the presiding Church. but hersey was so much more than that. the heretic movement was a conscious attempt to create a new society. the heresy was in refusing to sit back and accept the imposition as it came. in the 830s Սմբատ Զարեհավանցի [Smbat Zarehavantsi] began his preachings, his followers later to be known as the Tondrakians [Թոնդրակեաններ]. their call for property rights for peasants was blasphemy their proclamation of gender equality a dangerous dissension. as with all dissidence they suffered their defeat when the authorities joined forces; feudal lords spiritual and secular joined forces with emirs and byzantines in their persecution.

the advent of capitalism was a similar persecution. against the church of capitalism heresies were drawn and defined. capitalism has created more brutal and insidious forms of enslavement, as it has planted into the body of the proletariat deep divisions that have served to intensify and conceal exploitation. it is in great part because of these imposed divisions--especially those between women and men--that capitalism accumulation continues to devastate life in every corner of the planet. capitalism demanded the loss of the body and the loss of land. it’s amazing what can be accomplished with stolen goods.[1]  it’s amazing what will be touted out as ‘progress’. experiments and trials were carried out in europe and shipped around the world reworked and exported back. informing on one another like their witch hunting participants justifying one with the other. Anna Eriksdotter gets decapitated while Maria da Conceição burns while Agnes Sampson is garroted.

some people say it’s easy to point a finger at capitalism. they insist upon metrics and grimace at conjecture. well, wouldn’t you know that between 1350 and 1500 the real wage increased by 100%, prices declined by 33%, rents also declined, the length of the working-day decreased, and a tendency appeared towards local self-sufficiency. even during the Black Death starvation wasn’t as rampant as it was during the inauguration of capitalism. we know this because “had the production of grain dropped as sharply as the population, its price would have remained high." as soon as land began to be privatized, the prices of foodstuffs, which for two centuries had stagnated, began to rise and instead initiated two centuries of starvation.[2] 

in september 1565 in antwerp ‘while the poor were literally starving in the streets,’ a warehouse collapsed under the weight of the grain packed in it

II.

with land privatization came a destruction of the commons, a space which had not only hosted survival but life for generations. as enclosures came up one of the most popular forms of social protest was ripping them down. it was not the workers--women or men--who were liberated by land privatization. what was ‘liberated’ was capital, as the land was now ‘free’ to function as a means of accumulation and exploitation, rather than as a means of subsistence. liberated were the landlords, who now could unload onto the workers most of the cost of their reproduction, giving them access to some means of subsistence only when directly employed. when work would not be available or would not be sufficiently profitable, as in times of commercial or agricultural crisis, workers, instead, could be laid off and left to starve.

besides encouraging collective decision-making and work cooperation, the commons were the material foundation upon which peasant solidarity and sociality could thrive [...] the social function of the commons was especially important for women, who, having less title to land and less social power, were more dependent on them for their subsistence, autonomy, and sociality.

it is significant that, in England, most of the witch trials occured in Essex, where by the 16th century the bulk of the land had been enclosed, while in those regions of the british isles where land privatization had neither occurred nor was on the agenda we have no record of witch-hunting

though the Enclosures continued into the 18th century, even before the Reformation more than two thousand rural communities were destroyed in this way. so severe was the extinction of rural villages that in 1518 and again in 1548 the Crown called for an investigation. but despite the appointment of several royal commissions, little was done to stop the trend. can you believe that? but there were several commissions. what began, instead, was an intense struggle, climaxing in numerous uprisings, accompanied by a long debate on the merits and demerits of land privatization which is still continuing today, revitalized by the World Bank’s assault on the last planetary commons.

in pre-capitalist europe women’s subordination to men had been tempered by the fact that they had access to the commons and other communal assets, while in the new capitalist regime women themselves became the commons, as their work was defined as a natural resource, laying outside the sphere of market relations

III.

as people began to congeal united against the gentry the state the church, their community required dissection. the witch-hunt deepened the divisions between women and men, teaching men to fear the power of women, and destroyed a universe of practices, believes, and social subjects whose existence was incompatible with the capitalists work discipline. for the mass people to be divided required the most principle division of all. it was a strategy of enclosure which, depending on the context, could be enclosure of land, bodies, or social relation. it was one of many divisions to come. bacon’s rebellion would later become a warning call to the ruling classes as they watched African men, free man and enslaved man, join with white indentured servants. it was this that led to the creation of the virginia slave laws of 1705. once enshrined into law differences are hard to overcome. two hundred years later this distinction of whiteness would be upheld in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, assuring its citizens that “‘free white persons,’ as used in that section [of the constitution], are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man” rather than the scientifically charged ‘caucasian’. 

the differences should not be underestimated [...] but the similarities in the treatments to which the populations of Europe and the Americas were subjected are sufficient to demonstrate the existence of one single logic governing the development of capitalism and the structural character of the atrocities perpetrated in this process

women were well interlaced with social protest. “it would appear that the most direct expressions of popular discontent were often associated with women, who clearly spoke with special force when community values or basic self-defence were threatened." coupled with this is the fact that at the very moment when population was declining, and an ideology was forming that stressed the centrality of labor in economic life, severe penalties were introduced in the legal codes on Europe to punish women guilty of reproductive crimes.“infanticide was the major cause, after witchcraft, for the execution of women during the Renaissance.”

it was necessary to execute them for crimes of infanticide and abortion because bodies were needed for scientific research. remember anne greene? hung 1650 died 1655. after being raped by her master’s grandson she gave birth to a child that was stillborn. the line on wikipedia goes “which, as she alleged, and according to medical evidence, was stillborn”. i suppose even wikipedia can be pleasantly surprised by the validity of a woman’s words. regardless, she was sentenced to death and hung. at her own request her friends tug and twisted the hanging body to ensure her demise. a day later when her dissection was about to start it was discovered that she still had a pulse. thankfully they decided to revive her and she was granted a full pardon. in a world of witches they called it a miracle.

it was also in this period that the word ‘gossip,’ which in the Middle Ages had meant ‘friend,’ changed its meaning, acquiring a derogatory connotation, a further sign of the degree to which the power of women and communal ties were undermined

one way to find a witch was through pricking, for all witches supposedly bore a spot where they felt no pain. this was the mark of the devil. only one way to find a needle in a haystack is to stab through every hay. funny how while descartes was filling up echo chambers in jars his words of self-actualization were ringing true in trial rooms and torture chambers. we are what we make of the world. white men accused women of being branded by the devil while they went on to brand women they had enslaved. it goes beyond being an ironic juxtaposition into the humorless grotesque.

every incident is just a trial run for the next one. the trial of dorothy good is still happening over and over again. she was a four years old when her spectre was accused of having bitten some other girls, she was jailed and on her finger was found a red spot. dorothy good was a four year old when under fierce questioning she said she had been suckling a snake. dorothy good was a four year old when she was asked if the snake had come from a dark demon. dorothy good was a four year old when she didn’t understand and called out for her mother. her mother sarah would be hung four months later. dorothy good was a four year old kept in jail for seven months. dorothy good “would emerge so mentally damaged that she needed a carer for the rest of her life” [1]

this story is not new. this story never ended. we know this continues by the thousands. these aren’t flukes. these aren’t mass panics. it’s always a systematic destruction. with the persecution of the folk healer, women were expropriated from a patrimony of empirical knowledge, regarding herbs and healing remedies, that they had accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation, its loss paving the way for a new form of enclosure. by destroying the keepers and purveyors of a knowledge that exists outside the established power structure, the knowledge way be assessed and recreated by those who seek to control its proliferation. within a handful of centuries thousands of years of reproductive knowledge was burned at the stake, its ashes swept up and disposed. with the marginalization of the midwife, the process began by which women lost the control they had exercised over procreation. midwives were pushed out and called incompetant while male doctors would go on to invent the prototype for a chainsaw as a tool for assisting childbirth. totally normal. the midwife not only reminded them of their ignorance of reproduction but she propagated the power to withhold it.“church court records featured women accused of using certain plants or 'physicks,' which might also be obtained from apothecaries or 'cunning' women." while in the Middle Ages women had been able to use various forms of contraceptives and had exercised an undisputed control over the birthing process, from now on their wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state, and procreation was directly placed at the service of capitalist accumulation

the witch-hunt destroyed a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the production of women’s power in pre-capitalist europe, and the condition for their resistance in the struggle against feudalism. knowledge that had been passed down for millenias was criminalized and privatized.

many witches were midwives or ‘wise women,’ traditionally the depository of women’s reproductive knowledge and control. The Malleu dedicated an entire chapter to them, arguing that they were worse than any other women. across oceans women’s knowledge was documented in detail decorated and defended in the name of scientific exploration. but the purveyors of knowledge were left as inconsequential footnotes beside intricate illustrations. look at how pretty the peacock flower is. learn how it’s used as an abortifacient. maria sibylla merian eagerly followed in the footsteps of her colonial fathers to acquire appropriate assume anything that may be deemed valuable. maria sibylla merian chose not to visually represent “the Indians who are not treated well when in service with the Dutch, us[ing the peacock flower] to abort their children, not wanting their children to be slaves, like them. The black female slaves from Guinea and Angola have to be treated very kindly. Otherwise they do not want children in their state of slavery and will not have any. Indeed, they sometimes even kill them because of the harsh treatment commonly inflicted on them, because they feel that they will be reborn in a free state in the country of their friends, as I heard from their own lips." after this brief diversion it’s back to her forte of caterpillars. it is the condition of the enslaved woman that most explicitly reveals the truth and the logic of capitalist accumulation

Liz Polcha writes;“scholars have suggested that her citation points to an inclusivity or mutuality among women, as if merian shared a commonality with the women she enslaved. what the peacock flower passage ultimately shows is the unnamed enslaved women’s complex understanding of the relations between herbalism, sexual oppression, and juridical notions of slave status—a complex understanding that merian lacked.” i’m inclined to agree with her. it’s hard to believe that merian, born just fifteen years after the würzburg witch trial, living at the time of the salam witch trials, was unaware of the connotations of abortifacients.

the suspicion under which midwives came in this period--leading to the entrance of the male doctor into the delivery room--stemmed more from the authorities’ fears of infanticide than from any concern with the midwives’ alleged medical incompetence. a fear not unfounded due to the midwife’s knowledge of abortives to avoid and thus could incidentally prescribe. while white europeans were leveling accusations of cannibalism, back within their local colonies they were simultaneously licking sniffing and smoking every morsel of the body. under the guise of medical practice blood would be sipped human hearts would be dried and marrow would be ground while accusations of cannibalism would ring till high heaven on the other side of the atlantic.

with their handy little medical degrees, that women obviously weren’t allowed to get, doctors also expelled women from their own bodies under the guise of objectivity and scientific research. the banner of scientific research owes a debt of gratitude to the witch hunts. it is not a coincidence that the progress of anatomy depended on the ability of the surgeons to snatch the bodies of the hanged and after being found to be foolproof the custom would continue well into the 19th century. in 1788 columbia college’s school of medicine caused an uproar when it was discovered that they were graverobbing at a nearby cemetery of Black men, most of whom had been slaves. while this led to statute criminalizing the improper treatment of dead bodies, it permitted the use of people executed as criminals “in order that science [might not] be injured by preventing the dissection of proper subjects.” after 38 Sioux were hung on December 26, 1862 their bodies were plundered by surgeons of the day. the body of Maȟpiya Akan Nažiŋ was pillaged by the founder of the Mayo clinic.

witch-hunting did not destroy the resistance of the colonized. due primarily to the struggle of women, the connection of the American [Indigenous] with the land, the local religions and nature survived beyond the persecution providing, for more than five hundred years, a source of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance. this is extremely important for us, at a time when a renewed assault is being made on the resources and more of existence of indigenous populations across the planet; for we need to rethink how the conquistadors strove to subdue those whom the colonized, and what enabled the latter to subvert this plan and, against the destruction of their social and physical universe, create a new historical reality.

the global expansion of capitalism through colonialism and Christianization ensured that this persecution would be planted in the body of colonized societies, and, in time, would be carried out by the subjugated communities in their own names and against their own members

in the 1840s, for instance, a wave of witch-burnings occured in Western India. more women in this period were burned as witches than in the practice of sati. meanwhile today accusations of sorcery are used to oust women from valuable land that men covet just as every witch-hunt prior has come with the appropriation of the land of accused.

there is no evidence of men rising up to protest this assault. either no records exist because there were none; one of this first roles of the printing press was to populate pamphlets with the propaganda against witches. why have countless propaganda from one side and not a shred of rebuttal. why instead did countless clamor at the chance to be self-assigned hunters. is there a chance they existed their records were destroyed to wipe any trace of male betrayal off the face of the planet.

the hunt isn’t over. Ama Hemmah was burned alive in 2010.  Noxhamla Landa was burned to death in 2018. Fabiane Maria de Jesus was lynched in 2014.

nothing may ever be undone.

but for us to do more, we must know what has been done. as with most things that involve women the witch hunts have often been written off as hysterical. but when we look back we see something systematic and sinister. we like to think we wouldn’t let something like this keep happening.

[1] The Trial by Sadakat Kadri

marina manoukian is a reader and writer and collage artist. she currently resides in berlin while she studies and works. she likes honey and she loves bees. you can find more of her words and images at marinamanoukian.com or twitter/instagram at @crimeiscommon.