Manifest Destinies, Second Edition
Page 33
91 Ibid., 185.
92 Scott’s federal suit that eventually went to the Supreme Court actually was the second suit he filed to obtain his freedom. The first time, he sued in Missouri state court; he won at trial but then lost in the Missouri Supreme Court.
93 On the requirements for diversity jurisdiction, see Shreve and Raven-Hansen, Understanding Civil Procedure, 118–25. The defendant, Sanford, had recently purchased Scott. The Supreme Court misspelled his name and the case went on to be known as Scott v. Sandford.
94 For a description of Scott’s life and details of his travels in various states and territories, see Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 240–49.
95 By this time, Scott had lived for more than two years in regions where slavery was prohibited. Under some existing state laws, this made him a free man.
96 Fehrenbacher speculates that the woman’s owner either sold or gave her to Scott. The Scotts would go on to have four children: two boys who died in infancy and two daughters who were parties in Scott’s history-making suit for freedom. Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 244.
97 It was common for officers who owned slaves to require them to accompany them to war. General Zachary Taylor (later president) fought in the U.S.–Mexico War with the assistance of his slave “Ben,” as noted in Chapter 1. Stephen Kearny, who led the Army of the West, owned two slaves who were with him at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, when he departed for the invasion of New Mexico. According to his biographer, Kearny’s slaves were a wedding gift from his father-in-law, General William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame). Although we know few details, Kearny’s biographer reports that the Iowa Territory courts considered the legality of Kearny keeping a slave in a region north of the thirty-sixth parallel. Clarke, Stephen Watts Kearny, 49–51, 69.
98 It is speculative, but one wonders whether Scott was influenced by the fact that many black slaves had escaped slavery by going to Mexico. An estimated four thousand black slaves escaped to Mexico from Texas between 1835 and 1860. Horne, Black and Brown, 16.
99 For example, in slavery cases prior to Dred Scott, the Supreme Court had decided questions “on narrow jurisdictional grounds or on points of state law in order to avoid making broad pronouncements on slavery, one way or the other.” Gatell, “Roger B. Taney,” 666; see also Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 365 (arguing that Taney “could have and should have remanded the case to the lower court with instructions to dismiss it for want of jurisdiction,” after reaching the conclusion that he was not a federal citizen).
100 Justices McLean and Curtis dissented; for a discussion, see Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 324–34.
101 Because the ruling so radicalized abolitionists, many have said the case made the Civil War inevitable.
102 Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 366.
103 As Fehrenbacher puts it, Taney’s purpose in Dred Scott was “to launch a sweeping counterattack on the antislavery movement and to reinforce the bastions of slavery at every rampart and parapet.” Ibid., 341.
104 Ibid., 377; see also 365–88.
105 Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 446 (1857).
106 Ibid., 447, 449–50.
107 Ibid., 451–52.
108 Act of March 26, 1790, Ch. 3, 1 Stat. 103 (1790). After the Civil War, Congress amended the statute to allow both whites and persons of African descent to naturalize. Act of July 14, 1870, Ch. 255, 16 Stat. 254 § 7 (1870).
109 Taney wrote the opinion in Fremont v. United States, 58 U.S. 542 (1854), and voted with the majority in De Arguello v. United States, 59 U.S. 539 (1855), and United States v. Ritchie, 58 U.S. 525 (1854), all three deciding questions about land titles in light of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Taney also took part in Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. 603 (1850), a decision concerning the legality of customs collection during the period between the start of the U.S.–Mexico War and the peace treaty. For a discussion of Taney’s role in a case involving the effect of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, see Lawson and Seidman, Constitution of Empire, 152–66. For an analysis of Taney’s decisions in cases involving Spanish and Mexican land grants, see Luna, “Chicanas/os, ‘Liberty’ and Roger B. Taney.”
110 Taney’s failure to acknowledge the collective grant of citizenship to Mexicans was all the more meaningful because he expressly compared African Americans to another racial group: American Indians. Like Mexicans, Indians were ranked by Taney above blacks in the racial hierarchy. As members of sovereign nations, they were outside the polity, but he stated that they could become citizens by renouncing their tribal affiliation.
111 Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 450–51 (1857) (emphasis added).
112 Román, Other American Colonies, 24.
113 Ibid., 37.
114 One category of white Euro-American settler citizens who had not held state citizenship in the past was those emigrating directly from European countries.
115 Anthropologist and legal scholar Mark Weiner has described citizenship law and race as mutually constitutive: “minority groups were characterized in terms of their relative legal capacity—their ability or inability to uphold legality as a general idea and to follow specific forms of legal behavior—and this characterization served to justify a group’s place in the circle of national civil life.” Weiner, Americans without Law, 2.
116 See Weiner, Americans without Law, 6 (“citizenship is not simply a narrow legal matter of rights but also one of identity and cultural acceptance”); see also Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, 182; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 6.
117 See, generally, Smith, Civic Ideals; Kettner, Development of American Citizenship.
118 Smith, Civic Ideals, 323.
119 Act of July 14, 1870, Ch. 255, 16 Stat. 254 § 7 (1870).
120 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
121 See, generally, Williams, The American Indian.
122 See Newton et al., Cohen’s Handbook, 894–98.
123 For example, consider the relative political and cultural assimilation of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Tribes (the so-called Five Civilized Tribes) living in what became Oklahoma, who supported the Confederacy in the Civil War because of slave owners among their people. For a history of Indian, black, and white relations in Oklahoma, see Wickett, Contested Territory.
124 Chinese Exclusion Act, 8 U.S.C. § 261–99 (1882).
125 On racial discrimination against the Chinese, see, generally, Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America; McClain, In Search of Equality; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore; Yamamoto et al., Race, Rights and Reparations.
126 Haney López, White by Law, 42.
127 Ibid., 44.
128 López, “Undocumented Mexican Migration,” 643n145.
129 Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 50.
130 Ibid., 38–62.
131 For a study of appellate cases involving naturalization and claims to white status, see Haney López, White by Law.
132 In fact, the 1882 ban triggered the development by the Chinese of routes into the United States via Mexico, since there was relatively little reinforcement of the border. See Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 50; López, “Undocumented Mexican Migration,” 649–50.
133 In 1907–8, a diplomatic accord between the United States and Japan essentially ended Japanese immigration, which by then had led to 400,000 Japanese workers coming to the United States after the Chinese Exclusion Act. Yamamoto et al., Race, Rights and Reparations, 32–35; see also López, “Undocumented Mexican Migration,” 655; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 18.
134 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 19; Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 2–3; López, “Undocumented Mexican Migration,” 649–50.
135 In re Rodriguez, 81 F. 337, 348 (W.D. Tex, 1897). The judge took the unusual step of soliciting additional briefing in the case from “several members of the bar”; two of these attorneys filed briefs with the court (along with those submitted by the parties). Ibid.
136 University of Texas, Austin General Libraries, an
d the Texas State Historical Association, “Handbook of Texas Online.”
137 De León, “In Re Rodriguez,” 1.
138 Rodríguez signed his naturalization papers with an X mark. De León, “In Re Rodriguez,” 14n3.
139 In re Rodriguez, 81 F. 337, 355 (W.D. Tex, 1897).
140 Ibid., 349.
141 Ibid.
142 Haney López, White by Law, 61, 243n54; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 54. A local newspaper described Rodríguez as “very dark.” De León, “In Re Rodriguez,” 3.
143 In re Rodriguez, 81 F. 337, 349 (W.D. Tex, 1897).
144 Ibid., 354.
145 Ibid., 353.
146 Ibid., 350.
147 For an analysis of legal indeterminacy in twentieth-century cases involving Mexican Americans, see Martínez, “Legal Indeterminacy.”
148 In re Rodriguez, 81 F. 337, 350 (W.D. Tex, 1897) (emphasis added).
149 Menchaca, Recovering History, 228.
150 See Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land, 145–46, 148.
151 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 54.
152 Ibid., 18.
153 Rodríguez, “Unstable Victory of White Mexicanidad,” 12.
154 Ibid.
155 What I have termed here the reverse one-drop rule for Mexican Americans may have an analogue for American Indians. Historian Murray Wickett observes: “Because whites were willing to recognize mixed-blood Indians as partially white, there existed the possibility of ultimate assimilation over time—a possibility that was never extended to African Americans. The fact that through intermarriage and miscegenation Native Americans could be absorbed into white society while African Americans could not meant that the government and white settlers themselves adopted very different attitudes and proposed very different answers to race relations in the west in the late nineteenth century.” Wickett, Contested Territory, 41.
156 A concrete example of how this worked is offered by historian Linda Gordon in her study of a dispute in an Arizona mining community that led Euro-Americans to draw a boundary that included Jews, Irish, French Canadians, and Italians—but not Mexicans—as “white.” Gordon, Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, 115–16. For studies describing how Jews, Irish, and Italians became “white,” see Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks; Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color.
157 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
158 Nash, “Hidden History of Mestizo America,” 20.
159 Rodríguez, Changing Race, 91.
160 Ibid.
161 Ibid.; see also Bair, “Remapping the Black/White Body,” 415; Sharfstein, “Crossing the Color Line,” 654; Telles, Race in Another America, 80.
162 Harris, “Story of Plessy v. Ferguson,” 203, 204, 211. For an inspiring story of racial reckoning and reconciliation spearheaded by the grandchildren of Homer Plessy and the original trial judge, see the website of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation, www.plessyandferguson.org.
163 Harris describes the test case brought by the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. Ibid., 202–5.
164 Ibid., 210.
165 Ibid.
166 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 552 (1896).
167 Senate Debate, January 2, 1902, 568. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to the Senate debate on the omnibus statehood bill are to this page.
168 It was Beveridge who had conducted whistle-stop hearings in 1902 in five New Mexico towns in order to make the point that the territory’s Mexican majority was racially and linguistically “unfit” for statehood.
169 About one-quarter of those on the tribal rolls of the Five Civilized Tribes were full-blooded Indians at the turn of the century. Wickett, Contested Territory, 38–39.
170 In fact, Indians opposed Oklahoma statehood for this very reason. Wickett, Contested Territory, 169–70.
171 For two important studies on race in Latin America that make comparisons to the United States, see Sawyer, Racial Politics in Post-revolutionary Cuba; Telles, Race in Another America.
Epilogue
1 For studies of how these groups became white, see Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks; Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color. For studies on poor whites’ questionable white status, see Foley, White Scourge; Roediger, Wages of Whiteness.
2 On the distinction between assignment and self-assertion of racial and ethnic identities, see Cornell and Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race, 27.
3 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 3.
4 See Mezey, “Erasure and Recognition”; Rodríguez, Changing Race.
5 Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 151–52.
6 As a Texan, Johnson was personally familiar with the difference Mexican Americans could make in an election. The 1975 expansion of the Voting Rights Act to include language minorities also increased interest in Mexican Americans. Fraga et al., “Su Casa Es Nuestra Casa,” 515.
7 For a description of these events based on interviews with participants on the advisory committee, see Gómez, “Birth of the ‘Hispanic’ Generation”; Gómez, “What’s in a Name?”
8 Gómez, “Birth of the ‘Hispanic’ Generation,” 46.
9 U.S. Census Bureau, “Race and Hispanic Origin,” 2.
10 Ennis, Rios-Vargas, and Albert, “Hispanic Population,” 2 (1990–2000 growth); Malave and Giordani, Latino Stats, 1–3 (2000–2010 growth, noting that Latinos accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2010).
11 U.S. Census Bureau, “Race and Hispanic Origin,” 4.
12 Ennis, Rios-Vargas, and Albert, “Hispanic Population,” 2; Tienda and Mitchell, Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies, 19.
13 Ennis, Rios-Vargas, and Albert, “Hispanic Population,” 2–3.
14 U.S. Census Bureau, “Race and Hispanic Origin,” 7.
15 For a discussion of how the census race categories have changed generally over time, see Rodríguez, Changing Race, 65–86.
16 Moore and Pachón, Hispanics in the United States, 51.
17 Rodríguez, Changing Race, 75.
18 Ibid.
19 See, generally, Carrasco, “Latinos in the U.S.” For a comprehensive analysis of the range of estimated deportations and “repatriations,” see Ramirez, “Contested Illegality.”
20 Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 209–11.
21 Kosek, Understories, 116. In the same era Colorado set up a blockade at the New Mexico border to keep out “the Mexicans from New Mexico”—who had since the mid-1800s migrated seasonally to work in Colorado. Ibid.
22 Gómez, “What’s in a Name?,” 57.
23 Moore, “Foreword,” 12.
24 Tienda and Mitchell, Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies, 39.
25 U.S. Census Bureau, “Race and Hispanic Origin,” 1.
26 For the text of census questions as they pertain to Latino identity, see Tienda and Mitchell, Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies, 42–43. In 1970, no specific questions about Hispanic ethnicity were included, but in their place were three questions on national origin: (1) “Where was this person born?” (2) “Is this person’s origin or descent . . .” (choose one: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish, Other); (3) “What country was his [sic] father born in?” Ibid.
27 Ibid.; see also Tafoya, “Shades of Belonging,” 4.
28 Tienda and Mitchell, Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies, 43. The specific instruction for the race question in 2000 was: “What is this person’s race? Mark one or more races to indicate what this person considers himself/herself to be.” This is the first census in which respondents were invited to check multiple categories.
29 U.S. Census Bureau, “Race and Hispanic Origin,” 1.
30 Tafoya, “Shades of Belonging,” 4; see also Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 185–86; Tienda and Mitchell, Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies, 23, 40–45.
31 Tafoya, “Shades of Belonging,” 1.<
br />