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Unsuitable Suitors: Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Naturalization Laws, and the Construction of Asian Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Deenesh Sohoni
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Abstract

In this article, I use state-level anti-miscegenation legislation to examine how Asian ethnic groups became categorized within the American racial system in the period between the Civil War and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. I show how the labels used to describe Asian ethnic groups at the state level reflected and were constrained by national-level debates regarding the groups eligible for U.S. citizenship. My main point is that Asian ethnic groups originally were viewed as legally distinct—racially and ethnically, and that members of these groups recognized and used these distinctions to seek social rights and privileges. The construction of “Asian” as a social category resulted primarily from congressional legislation and judicial rulings that linked immigration with naturalization regulations. Anti-miscegenation laws further contributed to the social exclusion of those of Asian ancestry by grouping together U.S.-born and foreign-born Asians.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 587 - 618
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

An early version of this work was presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Association (2006). The author wishes to thank Fred Dingledy at the William and Mary Law School Library and Amin Vafa for invaluable research assistance. I am also indebted to Misha Petrovic, Tracy Peters, Erin Ryan, and several anonymous reviewers for providing critical commentary on earlier versions of this article.

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