Becoming "White":
Race, Religion and the Foundations of Syrian/Lebanese Ethnicity in the
United States
SARAH GUALTIERI
No one was white before he/she came to America. It took generations, and
a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white country.
—James Baldwin "On Being White and Other Lies," Essence,
April (1984).
ON 14 SEPTEMBER 1915, George Dow, a Syrian immigrant living in South Carolina
appeared before a circuit court judge and waited to hear the fate of his
petition for naturalization. Twice already, it had been denied in a lower
court because he was deemed racially ineligible for citizenship. Specifically,
Dow had been refused naturalization on the grounds that he did not meet
the racial requirement of the United States law, which limited naturalization
to "aliens being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity
and to persons of African descent." George Dow could not, therefore, be
accepted into the fold of American citizenry. The Syrian community—which
by conservative estimates numbered around 150,000 persons nationwide—was
outraged by the refusal to naturalize Dow. His was not the first case
to ignite a community response, but around it Syrian immigrants mobilized
to a degree that was unprecedented. Their efforts would ultimately prove
effective, for in this, George Dow's final appeal, the judge ruled that
Syrians "were to be classed as white persons," and were eligible for naturalization.4
Although it was not the last time a Syrian appeared before the courts
attempting to litigate his (the cases involved men only) racial status,
the Dow case established a weighty legal precedent in favor of Syrian
whiteness.
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