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with their legal rationales. Among those rulings: Jakob Frank Denzinger was denaturalized, as was 5
that Hawaiians are not white (based on scientific the anarchist Emma Goldman and the alleged
evidence); that Mexicans are not white (based Communist spy Solomon Adler. But, beginning
on legal precedent); that Burmese are not white in the early twentieth century, the Naturalization Kathryn Schulz
(based on common knowledge); that Japanese Bureau (later the Immigration and Naturalization
are not white (based on legal precedent); that Service) sought to denaturalize Asians who had
people who are one-quarter Japanese are not been granted citizenship by courts that were
white (based on legal precedent); that Syrians either ignorant of current immigration law or
are white (based on scientific evidence); that deliberately defying it. According to the legal
Syrians are not white (based on common scholar Patrick Weil, this process was so far from
knowledge); that Arabs are white (based on systematic as to be scattershot. In effect, it came
common knowledge); that Arabs are not white down to chance: an Asian citizen who’d had the
(based on common knowledge); that Native good luck to find a lenient representative of the
Americans are not white (based on nothing). Naturalization Bureau then had the bad luck to
That is the kind of wild inconsistency that be found by a strict one.
eventually compels the Supreme Court to weigh No one knows exactly how such a person
in, and in 1922 it agreed to do so. Instead of found Zarif Khan. Perhaps he tried to obtain
resolving the muddle, however, the Court issued a passport, or perhaps he was summoned for
two rulings in under a year that made matters jury duty, or perhaps someone read about his
worse. In the first, Ozawa v. United States, a citizenship ceremony in the local papers and
Japanese man brought up and educated in decided to tip off the authorities. Whatever
Berkeley argued that, for naturalization purposes, happened, on August 12,1926, U.S. Attorney
he was white. The Court acknowledged that Albert D. Walton — best known for helping to
Ozawa’s character was irreproachable, and represent the federal government during the
3
also that he had a paler complexion than many Teapot Dome scandal — filed a suit alleging that
people whose whiteness went uncontested. Khan’s naturalization was “illegally procured.”
But it denied him citizenship, ruling that “the Khan’s case arrived at a curious moment in
words, ‘white person’ were meant to indicate immigration history. The year before, an Indian
only a person of what is popularly known as the man from San Francisco named Vaishno Das
Caucasian race.” A year later, the Court took up Bagai had been stripped of his citizenship, as
the case of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian man had his wife and children — a particularly dire
who was, as the Justices reluctantly conceded, development for a California resident, because,
technically Caucasian. This time, however, by state law, those ineligible for citizenship
the judges ruled that “white persons” was could not own property. Sometime later, Das
“synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as Bagai told his family that he was going on
that word is popularly understood.” a business trip, booked a hotel room in San Jose,
Like Zarif Khan, Thind had already been and killed himself. In the note he left behind,
naturalized; upon ruling against him, the he described his suicide as a political protest.
Supreme Court stripped him of his citizenship. “I came to America thinking, dreaming, and
For most of U.S. history, that process, called hoping to make this land my home,” he wrote.
denaturalization, was used to revoke citizenship
that had been fraudulently obtained, or to remove
3 An early 1920s scandal involving oil companies that paid bribes to
from the ranks of Americans felons, traitors. people in the highest offices of the U.S. government for the right to
and war criminals. The former Auschwitz guard drill on federal land. — Eds.
43
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