Racial classification of Indian Americans

Racial classification of Indian** immigrants by the U.S. judiciary
Year	Case	Judgement	Rationale
1909	In re Balsara	probably not White	congressional intent
1910	U.S. v. Dolla	White	visual inspection of skin
1910	U.S. v. Balsara	White	scientific evidence, congressional intent
1913	In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar A. K. Mozumdar Akhoy Kumar Mozumdar was an Indian-born lecturer and writer of the New Thought Movement during the first half of 20th-century United States...	White	legal precedent
1917	In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh	not White	common knowledge, congressional intent
1919	In re Mohan Singh	White	scientific evidence, legal precedent
1920	In re Thind	White	legal precedence
1923	U.S. v. Thind United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, who was a Punjabi Sikh, settled in Oregon, could not be a naturalized citizen of the United States, because he was not a "white person" in the sense intended in...	not White	common knowledge, congressional intent
1923	U.S. v. Akhaykumar Mozumdar	not White	legal precedent
1925	U.S. v. Ali	not White***	common knowledge
1928	U.S. v. Gokhale	not White	legal precedent
1939	Wadia v. U.S	not White	common knowledge
1942	Kharaiti Ram Samras v. U.S	not White	legal precedent
** Court opinions and decisions on the racial classification of Indians, the last of which was in 1942, were made before formal Indian independence in 1947. While often not clear, it was generally assumed at the time that by Indians the courts meant all those originally from the Indian subcontinent Partition of India The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15... , the union of British India and Princely States.
*** 1925 decision ruled specifically against Punjabis while other rulings were generally regarding all Indians, which is understood to have meant all those originally from the region of South Asia.

The racial classification of Indian American
Indian American
Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Indigenous peoples of the Americas who are commonly referred to as American Indians.-The term: Indian:...

s has varied over the years and across institutions and is presently Asian American

Asian American

Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

. Originally, neither the courts nor the census bureau classified Indian Americans as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indians in the U.S. In 1923, the courts deemed Indians to not be white

White American

White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...

and be Asian

Asian people

Asian people or Asiatic people is a term with multiple meanings that refers to people who descend from a portion of Asia's population.- Central Asia :...

instead which has continued to the present for the purposes of law. In 1980, the census bureau classified Indians as Asian, which has continued to the present for the purposes of demographics.

U.S. courts

Courts have classified Indians as white and non-white without any real pattern until the crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, who was a Punjabi Sikh, settled in Oregon, could not be a naturalized citizen of the United States, because he was not a "white person" in the sense intended in...

, which created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white. At the time, this decision retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. The ruling placated the Asiatic Exclusion League

Asiatic Exclusion League

The Asiatic Exclusion League, often abbreviated AEL, was a racist organization formed in the early twentieth century in the United States and Canada that aimed to prevent immigration of people of East Asian origin.-United States:...

demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the Yellow Peril

Yellow Peril

Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...

. As they became classified as non-whites, Indian Americans were banned by anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that enforced racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races...

from marrying white Americans in the states of Arizona, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia.

Suggestive of the poor coordination within the legal system of the early 20th century is the fact that Thind applied for and received U.S. citizenship through the state of New York a few years after his original U.S. citizenship was revoked by the U.S. Supreme Court. Numerous other instances exist of naïve clerks, or clerks acting in protest, who granted citizenship in defiance of the Supreme Court. Enthusiastic anti-Indian sentiments seemed fairly absent in New England.

U.S. Census

Earlier Census forms from 1980 and before listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups along with White and Black or Negro. Previously, Asian Americans were classified as "other".
But the 1980 census marked the first general analyses of Asians as a group, combining several individual ancestry groups into "Asian or Pacific Islander." By the 1990 census, Asian or Pacific Islander (API) was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry.

The U.S. Census Bureau

United States Census

The United States Census is a decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. The population is enumerated every 10 years and the results are used to allocate Congressional seats , electoral votes, and government program funding. The United States Census Bureau The United States Census...

has changed over the years its own classification of Indians. In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were a separate category, Hindu, and in 1950 and 1960, they were classified as Other Race, and in 1970, they were classified as White. Since 1980, Indians, and all other South Asians, have been classified as part of the Asian race

Race (United States Census)

Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are...

.

Professor Madhulika Khandelwal, while serving on the National Board of Asian-American Studies, accredits activism as the catalyst for the 1980s U.S. Census re-classification of Indians. A write-in response of "Indian" in the "Some other race" line of the US Census does not get the respondent classified as a race, since it is unspecified whether the respondent is an Asian Indian or an American Indian. Accordingly, the US Census uses the term "Asian Indian" to make the group in question clear.

Self-identification

On U.S. Census forms, 90% of Indian Americans self-identify as Asian Indian. The US Census includes people who wrote in Dravidian, Bharati

Names of India

The name India may refer to either the region of Greater India , or to the contemporary Republic of India contained therein....

, Indo-Aryan, Indo-Dravidian, Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

, Pacific Asian (see Indo Kiwi

Indo Kiwi

Indo Kiwi or Indian New Zealander are New Zealanders of Indian or subcontinental heritage, living in New Zealand. The term includes Indians born in New Zealand, NRI and Indo Fijians, Indians of African origin, Middle East, Europe, South Asia, the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, the Pacific Rim, or...

and Indo Fijian

Indians in Fiji

Indo-Fijians are Fijians whose ancestors came from India and various parts of South Asia, South-East Asia and Asia itself. They number 313,798 out of a total of 827,900 people living in Fiji...

), or East Indian in the "Some other race" section as "Asian Indians". The remaining self-identify as white

White people

White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

, brown

Brown people

Brown people or brown race is a political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification, similar to black people and white people. Like these, it is a metaphor for race based on human skin color, reflecting the fact that there are shades of skin colour intermediate between "Mediterranean" ...

, and a small proportion as black

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

.

The U.S. Census classifies responses of "Aryan

Aryan

Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...

" as white even though responses of "Indo-Aryan

Indo-Aryans

Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

" are counted as Asian. The US Census classifies write-in responses of "Parsi" under Iranian American even though this Persian

Persian people

The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...

group has lived in India for over 1000 years.

In 1993 the Arab American Institute proposed that the 2000 US Census make a new Middle Easterner racial category and the AAI wanted Pakistani Americans to be included in it. According to the 2000 US Census, 25% of 2nd generation South Asian Americans marked the white category. (pp. 76) Under the South Asian American umbrella, Pakistani Americans marked white in the 2000 US Census to a greater degree than Indian Americans. (pp. 72)

U.S. courts

U.S. Census

Self-identification

See also