The Ghadiali Case Summary

The court’s decision, prompted by Thind’s attempt to claim that being Caucasian was the same as being white, provided an explicit definition of what the term meant. The court concluded that when the government was drafting the regulations in 1906 they were referring to the common understanding of the world and a scientific understanding. Therefore, white did not mean Caucasian or Aryan but only the type of man that those who wrote the statute “understood as white”, which included primarily immigrants from the United Kingston and Northwestern Europe. The court argued that when the framers of the law “extended the privilege of American citizenship to ‘any alien being a free white person,’ it was these immigrants,” with whom the framers would have shared many physical attributes.
I
Given the exclusion of black people from full legal and social equality under segregation laws, American citizenship was best exemplified by the white experience. In America, white people were the ones who were able to freely own property, vote, and participate in public life. The American dream, as it were, was only a possibility for white people. South Asians coming to America were able to recognize that in order to succeed in their new country, they had to be as white as possible. Thus, racialized immigrants were forced to either assimilate or remain as outsiders in the host country. I contend, however, that it is only after attempting and failing to assimilate that racialized minorities remain distinct from the host country. The process by which this exclusion occurs is less of a choice on behalf of the minority group so much as it is forced upon them by the host society. Further, it is only once a minority group has tried and failed to assimilate that they begin to actively seek ways to partner with other racialized