Indolink.com takes a look at a new book, Sexual Naturalization, by Indian-American scholar Susan Koshy, which highlights the historical role of sex (or rather the prohibition of) in U.S. immigration policy:

“…Antimiscegnation laws worked in conjunction with immigration and naturalization laws to impede the reproduction of Asian immigrant communities, position Asians as racial aliens and sexual deviants, and secure the future of the United States as a white nation.” Susan Koshy.

For nearly fifteen years, Indian-American scholar Susan Koshy has been probing certain key historical elements that impact South Asians in America. For instance, she prods the racial undercurrent that define whiteness, ethnicity, gender, color, and citizenship as it is reflected in the American response to Asian immigrants.

I thought this book might make an interesting read for many SM readers. Judging from comments left following previous posts on our site, many white people that are one half of a white/South Asian couple have enjoyed our website because it has provided them with even a little bit of extra insight into their significant other’s culture. History books that outline what it took to enjoy the freedoms we have today are always interesting to me at least.

…the law claimed that interrracial sex was deviant and dangerous and viewed the sexuality of non-whites in opposition to white middle class sexual practices and family values. Koshy goes on to reveal how, for Asian Americans, including South Asian Americans, the antimiscegnation laws reaffirmed their status as perpetual foreigners, as racial and sexual aliens. Not only were sexual relationships between the predominantly male Asian immigrants and white women outlawed, but American women who married noncitizen Asian men were denaturalized. What’s even worse, popular discourse identified Asian women as prostitutes and “bachelor ” communities of Asian migrants as aberrant and pathological sexual formations.

Koshy shows how the presence of large numbers of new immigrants often concentrated in urban centers triggered fears of lawless and deviant sexuality, the proliferation of vice and prostitution, and the contamination of American genetic stock.

Some things never change I guess. Large concentrations of immigrants in urban centers seem destined to trigger fears of vice and contamination, and now terrorism in contemporary times.

Koshy reveals that laws that originally banned sexual relations between blacks and whites were eventually extended to prohibit marriages between whites and “Indians” (native Americans), “Mongolians” ( Chinese , Japanese, and Koreans), “Hindus/Asiatic Indians” (official term for south asians) and “Malays” (Filipinos).

Actually the earliest antimiscegnation laws that were passed in 17th century Maryland and Virginia affected the first South Asians who were brought as indentured slaves by the East India Company to the American colonies. Thus, records from the Maryland State Archives reveal that a daughter born in 1680 to an East Indian man and his Irish wife, was branded a mullato and sold as a slave in Maryland — as a result of antimiscegnation law.

It turns out Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) in the middle of all his wonderful work in the Senate has finished writing another book (I think this is his third). This latest publication, entitled, “Character Is Destiny : Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember,” is a collaborative effort between McCain and his longtime colleague Mark Salter, and is a book comprised of 34 profiles of varous public figures: anyone from Winston Churchill and George Washington to one Mohandas Gandhi. I haven’t read the book so I can’t really comment on the work. But what I can comment on is the interview that McCain gave last night on the Charile Rose show (thanks Sudin), where the Senator discussed a range of current events including the new book.

In the interview, Rose, after discussing his own political future and the Supreme Court among other things, discussion turned to the book. From the transcript of the Charile Rose Show,

CHARLIE ROSE: You sure seem to have the energy to do it.

This is a book called “Character is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young
Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember,” written with Mark Salter, your longtime colleague. Honor, purpose, strength, understanding, judgment, creativity and love. Profiles here of a whole range of people, from Thomas Moore to Gandhi. Respect. Just give me one small example of Gandhi and respect.

JOHN MCCAIN: Gandhi demanded respect. I wrote about him in his time in India — in South Africa, before he left for India, where he stood up for the rights of the, quote, “coloreds,” as they called the Indian people. And he fought, and he developed this non-violent opposition that he –that later won independence for India. He was jailed. He was mistreated. He was beaten. And he demanded the respect that are due to all human beings. And he was an incredible, powerful player, and unfortunately, murdered by, as you know, by a Muslim.

I hope he didn’t put that last bit in his book, you know, the part about Gandhi being murdered by a Muslim, because well, that would be factually incorrect. Now, many of you out there, and most of you I assume haven’t researched for a book which discusses Gandhi, know that Gandhi wasn’t assasinated by a Muslim, but was killed by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu. Continue reading →