What exactly did "free white persons" in the 1790 Naturalization

>>3247142
As with many things in early US law, depends on who you ask, pissing contests about who and who isn't white are as old as the classification's existence.

>>3247149

But surely it wasn't just random. It wasn't like half the judges would decide an Italian wasn't white and half the judges would say that he was. There had to be some kind of consensus around that time.

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>>3247142
anglo saxons, scottish, dutch, germans and scandis I think. and preferably protestant as well.

Just look at the archives who's failed to obtain a citizenship because they did not fulfill the criteria 1790 Naturalization Act. I think that list is rather short since no one ever posts any examples.

>>3247171

Are you saying Italian Americans and the other groups I listed weren't allowed to be citizens until 1870?

>>3247142
It varied somewhat. Ben Franklin went full-blown autist and claimed that Swedes were "swarthy" and not white (not sure if he ever actually met any Swedes in his life).

But considering the French, Spanish and Dutch governments helped the American government, I would assume they would count as "white". Similarly, individual Prussians, Poles, and Italians were in the American military, so they would probably also count.

My guess is Turks, North Africans, and other Muslim groups would not count.

>>3247190
Later on in American history:

>In 1909, the Superior Court and the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. ruled on a case that redefined Middle Easterners and their racial distinction. According to the Arab American Historical Foundation and the Los Angeles Herald, a case in which George Shishim a Lebanese policeman, arrested a "white" man, who claimed that because Shishim was Lebanese, he must not be racially "white," but rather "Chinese-Mongolian."[47] Shishim, his attorneys, and the Syrian-Lebanese and Arab American communities rallied to prove that Lebanese, Syrians, and all Arabs and Middle Easterners were in fact "white" to both gain official citizenship in the United States, as well as avoid other exclusive and restrictive penalties of being labeled as Asian.[48] One of Shishim's arguments appealed to the white justices' desire to connect to their revered religious figure, Jesus. Shishim said: "If I am a Mongolian, then so was Jesus, because we came from the same land."[47] As noted in the 1909 publication of the "Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League," the presiding Judge Hutton concluded that Syrians had descended from Hebrews, who descended from "the Semitic family of the 'Indo-Aryan race,'" but because the Mongol conquerors had killed the Syrian men, and interbred with the Syrian women, "western nations have been unable to restore [the Syrians'] original characteristics" (6).[49] Shishim won and was granted citizenship, and Middle Easterners were thereafter legally considered "white" in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States

>>3247190
Are you sure? Wording in immigration laws was fudged specifically to allow Arab Christians and Jews to immigrate to the US, at least after the period OP is talking about.

The only case I know of where the citizenship of a white person was disputed was the case of John Svan, an immigrant from Finland.

>On January 4, 1908, a trial was held in Minnesota about whether John Svan and several other Finnish immigrants would become naturalized United States citizens or not, as the process only was for "whites" and "blacks" in general, and district prosecutor John Sweet was of the opinion that Finnish immigrants were Mongols. The judge, William A. Cant, later concluded that the Finnish people may have been Mongolian from the beginning, but that the climate they lived in for a long time, and historical Finnish immigration and assimilation of Germanic tribes (Teutons)—which he considered modern "pure Finns" indistinguishable from—had made the Finnish population one of the whitest (fairest) people in Europe. If the Finns had Mongol ancestry, it was distant and diluted. John Svan and the others were made naturalized US citizens, and from that day on, the law forbade treating Finnish immigrants and Americans of Finnish descent as not white.

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>>3247166

you are joking but with the immigration laws in the later 19th century and interbellum it had become that ridiculous.

the finns were thought to be asiatic because of swedish racialist pseudoscientists, so they had to prove that they weren't. pretty funny to read how blue eyes blonde haired white finns had to demonstrate they weren't asians. that's where the mongol meme comes from btw.

you have to remember that 1790bill was enacted before racial science became a thing(though Meiners, Voltaire etc already wrote about negroes being subhuman and Blumenbach was developing craniology etc), and their concept of race wasn't as sterile as the later ones.

It should more be seen as a Spenglerian view of race. white being "like us", without defining what that exactly is.

>>3247190
Franklin probably meant the saami with "swedes"

>>3247187
it is complicated. they surely enjoyed some French, polish, and spanish aristocrats and honored them. so maybe I am mistaken. and there were a number of huguenots who were fully embraced as fellow americans.

on the other hand, what needs to be reconized is that this is a federal bill, granting american citizenship, which is different from residents in the individual states.

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>>3247204

God that is so autistic.

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>>3247205

So we wuzn't Khans? Damn. /pol/ lied to me

>>3247204
>George Shishim a Lebanese policeman, arrested a "white" man, who claimed that because Shishim was Lebanese, he must not be racially "white,"

Strewth