This article reexamines the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Thind, whic... more This article reexamines the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Thind, which held that high caste Hindus were not “white persons” and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship, through a rhetorical history of the briefs, judicial opinions, National Archives and Records Administration documents, and British intelligence documents related to the case. As the Court’s final statement on the racial eligibility provisions of the early Naturalization Act, Thind has been the subject of significant scholarly commentary regarding race and citizenship in the United States and heralded as a crucial Asian American civil rights case. The article begins by analyzing the case’s overruling of the majority of lower courts which had found high caste Hindus to be racially eligible for naturalization, two of which the Court had expressly approved of only three months earlier in Ozawa v. United States, a reversal of the Court’s own position not addressed in Thind or by prior studies of the case. In an effort to account for this reversal, the article considers Thind’s political activities in furtherance of Indian independence and the effort of British and American intelligence officials to oppose his naturalization on the basis of his political activities, the parties’ competing citations of British authorities on the significance of India’s caste system for the racial classification of Asian Indians, and how Justice Sutherland’s opinion both responds to and evades the arguments in the case in a manner that suggests a political decision. The article concludes by considering the rhetorical dimensions of race, citizenship, and law.
This Article reexamines Herman Melville's short story "Benito Cereno, " in which the "true histor... more This Article reexamines Herman Melville's short story "Benito Cereno, " in which the "true history" of the story's events is only revealed to the reader at the end of the story through lengthy extracts from the official deposition of Benito Cereno, captain of the slave ship San Dominick, who testifies that a slave revolt resulted in the deaths of numerous Spaniards and slaves on board. The deposition extracts through which this history is presented to the reader contain numerous defects and contradictions that have troubled critics. This Article reexamines the reliability of the deposition extracts through the lens of the exaggeration, distortion, and censorship that characterize the records of historical slave rebellions. The Article argues that the parallels between the deposition extracts in "Benito Cereno " and the unique historiographical problems raised by the records of historical slave rebellions have been largely overlooked by critics and provide a basis for reexamining whether the deposition extracts in fact provide the "true history " of the story and for reevaluating suggestions of a conspiracy between the Spaniards and slaves in the story. The Article also concludes that by using a deliberately defective official document to end "Benito Cereno," Melville provides important commentary regarding the authorship and distortion of official records in slave rebellion trials and the autonomous agency on which law, narrative, and history depend The document selected, from among many others, for partial translation, contains the deposition of Benito Cereno, the first taken in the case. Some disclosures therein were, at the time, held dubious for both learned and natural reasons. The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some things which could never have happened
This article reexamines the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Thind, whic... more This article reexamines the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Thind, which held that high caste Hindus were not “white persons” and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship, through a rhetorical history of the briefs, judicial opinions, National Archives and Records Administration documents, and British intelligence documents related to the case. As the Court’s final statement on the racial eligibility provisions of the early Naturalization Act, Thind has been the subject of significant scholarly commentary regarding race and citizenship in the United States and heralded as a crucial Asian American civil rights case. The article begins by analyzing the case’s overruling of the majority of lower courts which had found high caste Hindus to be racially eligible for naturalization, two of which the Court had expressly approved of only three months earlier in Ozawa v. United States, a reversal of the Court’s own position not addressed in Thind or by prior studies of the case. In an effort to account for this reversal, the article considers Thind’s political activities in furtherance of Indian independence and the effort of British and American intelligence officials to oppose his naturalization on the basis of his political activities, the parties’ competing citations of British authorities on the significance of India’s caste system for the racial classification of Asian Indians, and how Justice Sutherland’s opinion both responds to and evades the arguments in the case in a manner that suggests a political decision. The article concludes by considering the rhetorical dimensions of race, citizenship, and law.
This Article reexamines Herman Melville's short story "Benito Cereno, " in which the "true histor... more This Article reexamines Herman Melville's short story "Benito Cereno, " in which the "true history" of the story's events is only revealed to the reader at the end of the story through lengthy extracts from the official deposition of Benito Cereno, captain of the slave ship San Dominick, who testifies that a slave revolt resulted in the deaths of numerous Spaniards and slaves on board. The deposition extracts through which this history is presented to the reader contain numerous defects and contradictions that have troubled critics. This Article reexamines the reliability of the deposition extracts through the lens of the exaggeration, distortion, and censorship that characterize the records of historical slave rebellions. The Article argues that the parallels between the deposition extracts in "Benito Cereno " and the unique historiographical problems raised by the records of historical slave rebellions have been largely overlooked by critics and provide a basis for reexamining whether the deposition extracts in fact provide the "true history " of the story and for reevaluating suggestions of a conspiracy between the Spaniards and slaves in the story. The Article also concludes that by using a deliberately defective official document to end "Benito Cereno," Melville provides important commentary regarding the authorship and distortion of official records in slave rebellion trials and the autonomous agency on which law, narrative, and history depend The document selected, from among many others, for partial translation, contains the deposition of Benito Cereno, the first taken in the case. Some disclosures therein were, at the time, held dubious for both learned and natural reasons. The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some things which could never have happened
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