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message to the lower courts to stop revoking
5
citizenship on the basis of race. By then, it was
clear that, as a practical matter, no good would
come of judicial wrangling over whiteness,
and also that attempting to maintain a white
population through naturalization policy was
a losing battle. Moreover, immigration laws
were rapidly becoming ideologically untenable
Redefining America
as well. At the start of the Second World War,
the United States was the only developed
nation other than Germany to explicitly restrict
citizenship on the basis of race — a common
ground that became increasingly uncomfortable
as Nazi atrocities came to light. Midway
through the war, Congress repealed the Chinese
exclusion laws. Immediately afterward, it lifted
all race-based citizenship requirements.
But all that came too late for Zarif Khan.
sara rahbar & carbon 12 His citizenship was challenged at a time when
the courts had consistently held that whiteness
was a requisite quality in a new American, and
one that Afghans lacked. At some point, his
cause must have seemed hopeless; when his
This mixed media piece is the work of Sarah case came to court, Khan did not contest it.
Rahbar, an Iranian American artist. Almost
six feet tall and four feet wide, Rahbar's On December 30, 1926, a judge declared him
intermingling of cultural elements with the “forever restrained and enjoined from setting
American flag as a background portrays a rich up or claiming any right, privilege, benefit, or
interpretation of a point of intersection between advantage whatsoever” of U.S. citizenship. All
layers of personal, cultural, and national identity. told, Khan had enjoyed those rights for under
In what ways does Schulz's telling of the a year. Then his naturalization was cancelled,
story of Zarif Khan portray similarly complex and the form on file with the court was emended
intersections between different “identities”?
to read “member of the yellow race.” He was
ordered to pay the cost of the lawsuit, plus tax.

• • •
“But now they come to me and say, I am no
longer an American Citizen. . . . Now what am I? If Khan was bitter about his loss of citizenship,
What have I made of myself and my children?” he didn’t show it. He may never even have
Das Bagai addressed the note to the San mentioned it; no one I talked to, including his
Francisco Examiner, which published it. children, knew that it had happened. Instead,
Das Bagai’s death marked the beginning 30 he set his sights on that most American of goals:
of a gradual shift in both public opinion and making money.
official policy on denaturalization. In 1927, the It began in the nineteen-twenties, with
Supreme Court refused to hear a case against the wealthy men who settled into the stools
a naturalized Indian man, thereby sending a at Louie’s and studied their newspapers.
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