This early twentieth-century overview reveals how whiteness was constructed not only in opposition to blackness through legal regulations but also in relation to other immigrant groups like Asians, which often included South Asians. Excluding these groups and denying citizenship based on religious identity helped define what it meant to be white.

DEFINE: Clarifies how the category of whiteness was constructed negatively — through exclusion of Asians, South Asians, and religious others — rather than defined by intrinsic traits.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 93