now surprisingly the people of south asia known as asian indians have been in the united states since the 1600s just that we don't know it because when the east india company brought over indian indentured servants to the british american colonies they landed in virginia they were in what eventually will become new jersey and in 1680 due to anti-miscegenation laws a eurasian daughter born to an indian father and an irish mother in maryland was classified as a mulatto so she was sold into slavery but in 1790 following american independence from the british indian immigrants began entering the independent united states as maritime workers so asian indians have been in the united states since its inception we just don't know that the first two ships carrying indian indentured workers arrived in the caribbean and landed in in british guiana on may 5th 1838 so between 1899 and 1914 the first significant wave of indian immigrants they were mostly sikh farmers and laborers from the punjab region of british india these are the ones that most nativists confused for muslims they arrived at california's angel island on ships via hong kong they found employment on farms and in lumber mills in california oregon and washington states and by 1912 the first sikh temple opened its door in stockton california and in 1913 ak monza mozumbar became the first indian-born person to earn u.s citizenship having convinced the spokane washington district judge that he was caucasian and met the requirements of naturalization law that restricted citizenship to free white persons in 1923 as a result of the u.s supreme court decision that no person of east indian origin could become a naturalized american citizen his citizenship was revoked but something curiously happened during world war one the bar zoned act the bard zone act was passed by congress barring asians including indians from immigrating to the united states and then there were the anti-miscegenation laws that were passed in 1918 and there was significant controversy especially in arizona when an indian farmer named bk singh married a sixteen-year-old daughter of one of his white american tenants but curiously that same year a man named bhagat bhagat singh sindh became the first person of east asian descent to be recruited by the us army on july 22 1918. he fought in world war one in november 1918 bhagat singh thinned was promoted to the rank of acting sergeant so let me let me share with you why i wore this shirt because we're going to talk about a mofo right here okay one would think the u.s would honor a world war one veteran in 1923 bhagat singh thin went to court claiming his aryan heritage and asked to be accepted as a u.s citizen because he could be classified as a caucasian he had heard the court case on takao osawa and so he knew well for him in his descent he can claim the aryan heritage over the japanese justice george sutherland delivered the opinion of the court and in it he stated that if the applicant is a white person within the meaning of this section he is entitled to naturalization otherwise not and in ozawa versus the united states we had occasion to consider the application of these words to the case of a cultivated japanese and were constrained to hold that he was not within their meaning as their pointed out the provision is not that any particular class of persons shall be excluded but it is in effect that only white persons shall be included within the privilege of the statute caucasian is a conventional word of much flexibility as a study of the literature dealing with racial questions will disclose and while it and the words white persons are treated as synonymous for the purpose of that case they are not of identical meaning in the endeavor to ascertain the meaning of the statute we must not fail to keep in mind that it does not employ the word caucasian but the words white persons and these are words of common speech and not of scientific origin now those are the words of george sutherland and the majority opinion so in its decision in the case of u.s versus bhagat singh thin 1923 the supreme court deemed that asian indians were ineligible for citizenship because u.s law allowed only free white persons to become naturalized citizens the court conceded that indians were caucasians and that anthropologists consider them to be of the same race as white americans but argue that the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and unprofound differences so the thin decision also led to successful efforts to denaturalize some of those who had previously become citizens and this represe this uh represented a particular threat in california where a 1913 law prohibited aliens eligible for ownership from owning or leasing land now only in 1946 did congress which was beginning to recognize that india would soon become an independent a major world power pass a new law that allowed indians to become citizens and also established a small immigration quota but major immigration to the united states from south asia did not begin until after immigration laws were sharply revised in 1965. let's go to a film clip that shares with us the court decision but the court would not be bound by science in policing the boundaries of whiteness only three months after ozawa the court took up the case of bhagat sin thind a south asian immigrant and u.s army veteran who petitioned for citizenship on the grounds that indians were of the aryan or caucasian race and therefore white and he makes the scientific argument um having learned something actually from the ozawa case that he is caucasian he gets scientific authority to speak on his behalf that in fact south asians are included in the caucasian race so here the court was in a bind because they were presented with so-called scientific evidence that indians were caucasian and the court solved this problem by saying that it didn't matter what science said so-called science they actually said white is not something that can be scientifically determined but white is something that is subjectively understood by who they call the common person the common man it may be true reason the court that the blonde scandinavian and the brown hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them today the same court that used science to determine whiteness in ozawa three months before now refuted its own reasoning in thinned thin might well be caucasian the high court said but he was not white the justices never said what whiteness was only what it wasn't their implied logic was a circular one whiteness was what the common white man said it was the court often decided who was white and who wasn't based on whether they just felt that the person would politically fit well into the kind of society that we were trying to build and sometimes it was pretty explicit that this is what the court was doing there was widespread racial views that asians were undesirable that they threatened to contaminate the american society basically that asians are too different that they can never really become like the rest of us the consequences of the unanimous verdict in u.s versus thinned were catastrophic for the indian community south asians who had naturalized before the verdict were stripped of their citizenship and property okay as the film clip shared with you it was catastrophic for the indian community because they will lose out on their land they will lose out on their ability to become independent uh entrepreneurs um so despite the ruling sing thin finn or bhagat singh thin i'm sorry would continue his journey towards citizenship and after having applied and experienced rejection in oregon finally new york the state of new york will grant him citizenship in new york now historians consider the arrival up until 1924 to be the grace period for asian immigrants because it was in this year that the u.s government passed the immigration act or the national origins acts of 1921 and 1924 and these acts are very important because they essentially made u.s citizenship and property ownership a difficult if not impossible goal for any asian and any asian immigrant hopeful asians face prejudice discrimination and segregation and their disadvantaged position encouraged them to turn inward and develop alternative paths toward cultural and material expression now how does one come to rationalize hate well the ultimate insult instituted as official policy will become known as the japanese relocation program of which we'll get to when we discuss world war ii but for now let's appreciate again the fact that we have covered all the beans we've covered the red beans the white beans the black beans and the yellow beans and so next week we will get down with the brown beans