Racial classification of Indian Americans

The racial classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions.[1] Originally, neither the courts nor the census bureau classified Indian Americans as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the United States. For most of America's early history, the government only recognized two racial classifications, "White" or "Not White". Due to immigration laws of the time, those deemed "Not White" were often stripped of their American citizenship or denied the ability to become citizens. Through various court judgements by the US Supreme Court, South Asians were classified as either "White" or "Not White", depending on their ethnic background. Today, South Asians are classified according to their self-identification, as the region is home to more than 2000 ethnic groups spanning all the racial groups of mankind, including Caucasian, and Mongoloid.[2]

Initial perceptions

The earliest Indian immigrants into the United States were called "Hindoos" even though the majority of them were Sikhs. Court clerks classified these early immigrants from the Punjab region as being "white", "brown" or "black" based on their skin color and racial background for the purpose of marriage licenses. In addition to being racialized by their color, they were also racialized as being "foreigners".[1]

Indians who came to the United States as students or lecturers in the early 1900s found it impossible to avoid the country’s racial conflict. Still, the perception of Indian Americans as foreigners helped provide for better treatment, especially in states where de jure segregation was in place. As opposed to being seen as black, Indians were seen as outside of the traditional American racial spectrum, and consequently freed from the encumbrances that system entailed.[3][4][5]

A Punjabi-Mexican American couple, Valentina Alarez and Rullia Singh, posing for their wedding photo in 1917.

By the mid-1950s, many of the Indians who had come as students and as activist visitors had left the United States.[6] Those who remained settled in the then vibrant black neighbourhoods of Tremé in New Orleans, Black Bottom in Detroit, West Baltimore, and Harlem in New York. Many started families with Creoles, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans.[6][7] Punjabi Sikhs in California found a closer camaraderie with Mexicans, resulting in a unique mixed-race community in the Yuba City area - the Punjabi Mexican Americans.[8][9]

U.S. courts

Throughout much of the early 20th century, it was necessary for immigrants to be considered white in order to receive U.S. citizenship. U.S. courts classified Indians as both white and non-white through a number of cases

In 1909, Bhicaji Balsara became the first Indian to gain U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was ruled to be "the purest of Aryan type" and "as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”. Thirty years later, the same Circuit Court to accept Balsara ruled that Rustom Dadabhoy Wadia, another Parsi from Bombay, was colored and therefore not eligible to receive U.S. citizenship.[10]

In 1923, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that while Indians were classified as Caucasians by anthropologists, people of Indian descent were not white by common American definition, and thus not eligible to citizenship.[11] The court conceded that, while Thind was a high caste Hindu born in the northern Punjab region and classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Aryan race, he was not "White" since the word Aryan "has to do with linguistic and not necessarily with physical characteristics" and since "the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences" between Indians and white Americans. The court also clarified that the decision did not reflect or imply anything related to racial superiority or inferiority, but merely an observable difference.[12] At the time, this decision retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. The ruling also placated the Asiatic Exclusion League demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the Yellow Peril. As they became classified as colored, Indian Americans were not only denied American citizenship, but also banned by anti-miscegenation laws from marrying white Americans in the states of Arizona, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia.[13]

In 1935, Thind relied on his status as a veteran of the United States military during World War I to petition for naturalization through the State of New York under the Nye-Lea Act, which made World War I veterans eligible for naturalization regardless of race. The government objected his latest petition, but Thind was finally granted American citizenship; yet the Government attempted to revoke it after nearly two decades from his first petition for naturalization.[14]

In 1946, Congress, beginning to recognize that India would soon be independent, passed a new law that allowed Indians to become citizens, while also establishing an immigration quota.[12]

In 1993, Dale Sandhu, an East Indian whose origin is from the Punjab, alleged that his former employer, Lockheed, terminated him on racial grounds, as a person of "Asian" race. Lockheed argued that Sandhu is from India and Caucasian, so he cannot allege discrimination based on race. The California Superior Court Judge accepted Lockheed's view. The Superior Court Judge concluded that Sandhu is legally of the Caucasian race, by definition, and had no legal grounds under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).[15][16]

In 1994, in Sandhu v. Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, the California Sixth District Court of Appeals reversed the 1993 decision for Dale Sandhu. Lockhead argued that the Court of Appeals should uphold the earlier court's conclusion, citing that the "common popular understanding that there are three major human races — Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid." Lockheed also argued that, in the modern 20th century understanding of race, Sandhu is Caucasian. The Court of Appeals said that "Asian Indian" was one of the 15 identified races in the 1980 US Census. The Court of Appeals said that any scientific definition of race does not have much to do with the realities of racial discrimination. The Court of Appeals said that Sandhu was subject to discriminatory hostility, based on being a member in a group which is perceived as distinct from other Lockheed employees. The Court of Appeals said that Sandhu could make a claim of racial discrimination under FEHA within the jurisdiction of the Court.[16]

In 2015, in Dhar v. New York City Department of Transportation, Dhar, a former employee and a Christian Bangladeshi, alleged a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on his race, religion, and national origin. He alleged that his former supervisor, a Hindu Gujarati, illegally favored other Hindu Indian/Gujarati employees. The court dismissed the claim.[17][18]

U.S. Census

Official classification
Further information: Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

The U.S. Census Bureau has changed over the years its own classification of Indians. In the 1930 and 1940 censuses, "Hindu" was listed as a racial category.[19] In 1975, the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial and Ethnic Definitions of the Federal Interagency Committee on Education made a report. The report describes how, as it was deliberating on how to classify groups for the 1970 US Census, South Asians presented a problem for the Ad Hoc Committee. The report presented the classification problem as being whether to classify South Asians as White Americans, because they are Caucasians, though sometimes with darker skin than other Caucasians, or to classify South Asians as Asian, a minority category, because they came from Asia, and could be subject to some discrimination in the United States. The report said that the Ad Hoc Committee decided to classify South Asians as White people, and South Asians were classified as White Americans for the 1970 US Census.[20]

Upon learning of the Ad Hoc Committee's decision, the Association of Indians in America (AIA) mobilized. During the 1970s, Indian Americans debated if they should give up trying to be "considered 'Caucasian/White'" to try to "seek or accept minority status".[21] Indian American groups, through their own petitioning, successfully changed their racial classification to Asian in the 1970s to have themselves included in state and federal Asian racial categories to benefit from affirmative action.[2] Specifically, starting in the mid-1970s, the AIA made the argument that since Indian Americans were minorities and thus entitled to the benefits of affirmative action,[20] Indian Americans should have "minority" group status. Without their request to be designated as minorities, Indian Americans would have continued to be designated as White Americans by the U.S government.[22]

In 1977, the Office of Management and Budget accepted the AIA's petition to change the race of Indian Americans from "White/Caucasian" to "Asian Indian."[22] Specifically, Indian Americans had their official race changed to Asian in 1977 "through Statistical Directive 15 of the Office of Management and Budget", causing Indian Americans to be listed as Asian in the 1980 US Census.[1] Due to the efforts of the AIA leaders, a new census category, "Asian Indian," was introduced for the 1980 US Census.[20] In 1977, there were so few Indian Americans that the racial change of Indian Americans from White Americans to Asian American attracted little attention.[23][24]

In 1989, the East–West Center published a research paper about Indian Americans that said that the term, "Asian Indian," one of the fourteen "Races" in the 1980 US Census, is an "artificial census category and not a meaningful racial, ethnic, or ancestral designation."

Self-identification

In the 1990 US Census, 65% of second generation South Asian Americans identified themselves using a South Asian term, 25% identified themselves as white and 5% identified themselves as black.[2] The 1990 U.S. Census classified write-in responses of "Aryan" as white even though write-in responses of "Indo-Aryan" were counted as Asian, and the 1990 US Census classified write-in responses of "Parsi" under Iranian American, who are classified as White along with Arab Americans and other Middle Eastern Americans.[25] The Asian American Institute proposed that the 2000 US Census make a new Middle Easterner racial category and the Punjabi from Pakistan wanted Pakistani Americans to be included in it.[26]

Some Indian Americans who were unfamiliar with the ethnonymic conventions used in the United States, mistakenly indicated that they were "American Indian" as their race in the 1990 US Census, because they were unaware that this term is used in the United States to refer to Native Americans.[2]

National Origin and Race
Race Selected on 1990 US Census (%)
South Asian
NationalityNWhiteBlack'Asian Indian' boxNationality
write-in		Other
Indian2,0904.3%2.2%88.8%1.2%3.5%
Pakistani2996.7%0.3%25.8%65.9%1.3%
Bangladeshi531.9%0.0%43.4%50.9%3.8%
Sri Lankan387.9%0.0%26.3%65.8%0.0%
Total2,4804.6%1.9%79.3%11.1%3.2%
Source: IPUMS 1990 1% unweighted sample
Source: Morning (2001)[27]

U.S. forensics
Main article: forensic anthropology

In 2005, an article in a journal by the FBI Laboratory defined the term "Caucasoid," as the term is used in forensic hair examinations. It defined the term as, "an anthropological term designating one of the major groups of human beings originating from Europe and originating from the Indian subcontinent."[28][29]

Identity

Self-identification

Indian Americans self-identify as belonging to different races, depending on their genetic ancestry and resulting personal appearance. As India is home to more than 2,000 different ethnic groups that span all the races of mankind, Indian-Americans belong to most of the major racial groupings -- including Caucasian, and Mongoloid. The caste system in India has preserved genetic heritage across generations, and as a result, there are many Indians that belong to groups whose ancestry is from outside the subcontinent, primarily rooted in the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia.[30]

Nikki Haley, the Indian American governor of South Carolina, whose parents are from Punjab in Northwest India, identified as 'white' on her voter registration card in 2001.[31]

The official classification of South Asians as part of the Asian racial category represents an agreement of convenience for South Asians on where they fit on the racially divided black-white spectrum in America.[2] South Asian Americans and other types of Asian Americans mutually feel that there exists "profound racial difference" between themselves and the other Asian ethnic group. Furthermore, "Working-class or state school-educated second generation Indian Americans do not see a natural alliance or unity with other Asian American groups."[2]

Identification by others

In 1989, the East–West Center published a research paper about Indian Americans that said that Americans find identifying South Asians by their "race" or "color" to be difficult. The paper said that a 1978 survey of Americans asked the question, "Would you classify most people from India as being white, black, or something else?" The paper said that 38% of respondents classified most people from India as "other," 23% classified them as "brown," 15% classified them as "black," 13% did not know how to classify them, and 11% classified them as "white."[32]

In 2000, a series of interviews of second-generation Asian American college student leaders found that most of the interviewees who did not include Indian Americans as Asian Americans did not express a clear reason that was more than perceived difference in physical appearance and culture.[33]

In 2013, Miss America winner Nina Davuluri was bullied online and was called an "Arab" and a "terrorist" due to her perceived association with Islam and Arabs.[34]

An Indian immigrant to the United States regarded himself as a "white American" for the 16 years that he lived in the United States, but, after 9/11, he assumed that his neighbors would regard him as an Arab, a Muslim, a foreigner, or a possible terrorist.[35]

A 2017 book about Indian Americans said that Indians and other South Asians are a part of Asian Americans, yet apart from Asian Americans, and admitted among Asian Americans, but not acknowledged among Asian Americans. It said that Asian Americans most suitable characterization for Indians and other South Asians might be "ambiguously nonwhite."[36]

See also
  • Asian American immigration history
  • Indian American
  • A. K. Mozumdar
  • Race legislation in the United States

References
  1. Harpalani, Vinay, DesiCrit: Theorizing the Racial Ambiguity of South Asian Americans (August 12, 2013). 69 NYU Annual Survey of American Law 77 (2013); Chicago-Kent College of Law Research Paper No. 2013-30. pp. 123, 124 & 136. Available at SSRN: link
  2. Morning, Ann. "The racial self-identification of South Asians in the United States" (PDF). Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Vol. 27): 1–19. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  3. New York Times. "Negro Pastor Traveled in the South in Turban". New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
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  13. Loving Day: Celebrate the Legalization of Interracial Couples
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