The Insular Cases and Contested Citizenship

U.S. Law and Race Initiative Author

11/15/2024 Added

10 Plays

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Please join us for a conversation on the Insular Cases and contested citizenship. Our guest, Dr. Robert McGreevey, and host, Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, will provide an in-depth look at the intersection of U.S. colonial power and migration, and invite questions from the audience, including students.

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[00:00:02.740]Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today
[00:00:05.540]for another US Law and Race Initiative webinar.
[00:00:09.020]My name is Anne Gregory, and I'm a second year PhD
[00:00:12.200]student at University of Nebraska studying Native American legal
[00:00:15.900]and digital histories.
[00:00:17.760]Launched with support in fall of 2023, the U.S. Law and Race
[00:00:22.320]Initiative explores new approaches to research, teaching, and public
[00:00:26.020]engagement with the history of law, race, and
[00:00:28.800]racialization in the United States.
[00:00:31.380]Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative brings together
[00:00:35.920]large university teaching programs,
[00:00:38.740]immersive new forms of digital media content, and
[00:00:41.840]community partnership storytelling in order to connect Americans
[00:00:45.160]to their history in ways that repair the fractures in our national
[00:00:49.220]understanding of race and racialization.
[00:00:52.220]Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky, and Dr. Will
[00:00:57.720]Thomas are the faculty leads on the U.S. Law and Race
[00:01:01.020]Initiative, along with an array of expert partners in the
[00:01:04.580]College of Arts and Sciences and College of Law at UNL.
[00:01:08.880]We're hosting a series of webinars deepening the
[00:01:11.560]national conversation on the legal history of race.
[00:01:15.140]Today we are excited to host a discussion on U.S. immigration, citizenship,
[00:01:20.640]and the insular cases.
[00:01:22.480]We are honored to have with us today Dr. Robert
[00:01:25.120]McGreevey, a professor of history at the College of New Jersey.
[00:01:28.820]His research focuses on the intersection of foreign
[00:01:31.420]policy and migration in the 20th century, and has
[00:01:34.800]been supported by the Society for Historians of
[00:01:37.420]American Foreign Relations, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society,
[00:01:42.320]and the Organization of American Historians.
[00:01:45.840]His first book, Borderline Citizens, the United States, Puerto Rico, and the
[00:01:50.560]Politics of Colonial Migration, was published
[00:01:52.880]by Cornell University Press in 2018.
[00:01:56.460]Our host, Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, is that Happold Professor of
[00:02:00.900]History and Ethnic Studies and Director of the 19th Century Studies Program.
[00:02:05.240]She is a historian of the United States with expertise in American
[00:02:09.380]cultural and intellectual history, African American
[00:02:11.940]history and studies, and pre-colonial Africa.
[00:02:15.140]Her work explores the discursive relationship between American,
[00:02:18.400]European, and subaltern perspectives on imperialism, citizenship, and
[00:02:22.820]social belonging as crucial aspects of the history
[00:02:25.560]of ideas about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.
[00:02:29.900]Dr. Jones and McGreevey are going to be in conversation for
[00:02:33.560]about 35 minutes before we turn it over to your questions.
[00:02:37.740]Please feel free to submit your questions at
[00:02:39.880]any time using the Q&A function on Zoom.
[00:02:43.220]Thank you, Dr. McGreevey, for being here today.
[00:02:46.580]And now I'll turn things over to Dr. Jones and
[00:02:48.820]see you all again at the end of our discussion.
[00:02:52.660]Thank you, Anne. Thank you so much.
[00:03:00.770]Again, it is so great to see you, Robert, and I'm ready
[00:03:06.150]to start talking about, talking about Puerto Rico, but
[00:03:15.730]all the other islands involved, and of course,
[00:03:19.910]Philippines in the Insular Cases.
[00:03:22.310]So first, for the students, if you could just
[00:03:24.650]give us a little background on your book, decided to
[00:03:29.730]write it, and then talk about the Spanish-American War,
[00:03:32.990]and then we can go back and forth on that.
[00:03:35.750]But just a little bit for them to get a sense of your
[00:03:38.510]scholarship and what drew you specifically to the cases involved in Puerto Rico.
[00:03:44.350]Okay, yeah.
[00:03:45.990]Thank you, Professor Jones. Thank you, Anne, for the introduction.
[00:03:53.290]I actually have a few slides that I could share. Is that work on your end?
[00:03:58.610]Yes, it does.
[00:03:59.850]Okay, so let me try.
[00:04:01.150]Allow you to share those slides.
[00:04:07.740]Okay, hold on. Okay, I think this will work.
[00:04:38.270]Or maybe not.
[00:04:40.550]Okay, well, I am happy to talk about my book with or without the images.
[00:04:47.220]I'll see if I can bring them up a little later.
[00:04:50.340]You should be able to do it now.
[00:04:52.520]Oh, okay, maybe now it will work. Let's see.
[00:04:56.560]Yes.
[00:05:17.220]Yep, I did.
[00:05:23.700]Well, I'll try to get them. I'm not sure why I can't
[00:05:26.480]do it, but let me talk a little bit about the book.
[00:05:34.920]What I could do is I could email them over.
[00:05:37.580]No, I haven't, but go ahead.
[00:05:39.140]Okay, so good morning, everybody.
[00:05:44.760]I'm happy to be here, and Professor Jones and I got
[00:05:50.120]to meet in Germany as part of a workshop on U.S. Empire.
[00:05:55.160]I have been studying U.S. Empire overseas, and part of what was exciting for
[00:06:00.200]me is to join together with scholars who have been studying
[00:06:03.760]U.S. Native American history
[00:06:06.700]and looking at the connections between Native American
[00:06:11.060]history within the U.S. and U.S. colonialism overseas.
[00:06:16.860]So I would say I first got interested in Latin America when
[00:06:23.380]I studied abroad in college.
[00:06:24.940]So this is why I always encourage all of you to consider
[00:06:29.480]studying abroad for a semester.
[00:06:31.580]I was in Costa Rica, and that's where I first saw kind of U.S.
[00:06:36.660]power overseas in the form of Chiquita banana plantations
[00:06:41.660]and exploitative labor practices that were not regulated in a
[00:06:48.220]banana zone of free export.
[00:06:52.540]So since then, I've become really interested in how U.S.
[00:06:55.580]power operates overseas, and I had studied Spanish for many years.
[00:07:03.380]I was looking for kind of a case study to better
[00:07:06.260]understand U.S. Empire, and that's eventually
[00:07:09.840]how I got to Puerto Rico.
[00:07:14.920]Okay, I think now I'm going to try one more
[00:07:16.860]time. Let me see if I can get my slides.
[00:07:38.510]Yeah, it may, you know, it's actually a new
[00:07:40.430]computer on my end, so it may be something that I can't quite figure out, but I can,
[00:07:48.410]I could email it to you if you wanted.
[00:07:51.550]Okay, let me just, let me just do that. Okay, I'm going to
[00:08:03.760]send it to you, Jeannette.
[00:08:05.280]Thank you.
[00:08:07.720]Okay, there. So if you can get it, great. If not, that's fine.
[00:08:13.900]So, yeah, that's kind of the long story of how I became interested in Puerto Rico.
[00:08:19.180]I am trained as a U.S. historian with a focus on immigration
[00:08:24.300]and U.S. foreign policy.
[00:08:26.740]And for me, the opportunity was to consider how
[00:08:30.320]does immigration history intersect with U.S. foreign policy, U.S. empire.
[00:08:54.460]So, do I need to email it to someone else?
[00:09:02.100]I'm sorry.
[00:09:03.660]No, no, it's fine.
[00:09:05.860]I'm not exactly sure why your computer isn't working for this,
[00:09:08.920]but we can, we can, but keep talking, I'll get it.
[00:09:11.540]Okay, so as I started this project, I realized that the law would
[00:09:21.660]be an important part, okay, and race and racism
[00:09:26.120]was another important focus.
[00:09:28.360]And so for me to join you today is kind of a perfect fit
[00:09:32.140]because I've been interested for so many years in how law and race intersect.
[00:09:38.980]And I think there's a lot that we can talk about
[00:09:43.240]with these insular cases.
[00:09:45.800]The two cases, they're insular cases your students will know from
[00:09:50.320]the reading. They're over 23. They're roughly 23, depends how you count.
[00:09:55.460]There are 23 insular cases that were provided
[00:09:58.380]by the Supreme Court from 1901 to 1922.
[00:10:04.120]And I thought I would focus on two of them as part
[00:10:07.560]of the discussion. A lot of these cases do relate to Puerto Rico.
[00:10:12.360]And, you know, the cases are considered among the most important in
[00:10:18.480]legal history because in many ways they justify and
[00:10:23.900]legitimize U.S. colonialism overseas.
[00:10:27.060]And one of the big questions for historians
[00:10:29.640]is, to what extent are there continuities between what
[00:10:33.740]we're seeing after the War of 1898 when the U.S. takes over
[00:10:38.240]Puerto Rico and the Philippines?
[00:10:40.540]Are there continuities between that moment and
[00:10:43.380]earlier moments, say, in Native American history?
[00:10:48.100]And in fact, there are a lot of connections in terms of
[00:10:51.820]the law. So I'd be happy to talk about that as well.
[00:10:55.900]Absolutely. So we did do an extensive discussion of Native American
[00:11:00.320]history and settler colonialism.
[00:11:02.100]So if you can just briefly draw a couple of those links that
[00:11:05.440]you see between the imperialism on the continent, expansion
[00:11:09.540]of the United States westward, continental expansion,
[00:11:13.320]and then what you're talking about,
[00:11:14.760]the overseas expansion and imperialism of the late 19th century in
[00:11:18.820]the wake of the War of 1898.
[00:11:22.080]Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the two cases
[00:11:25.100]I wanted to focus on are Downs v. Bidwell, which is 1901.
[00:11:30.940]And then we have the Gonzales v. Williams case, which is 1904. And I'll just, you
[00:11:37.540]know, for your students, I'll just give kind
[00:11:39.720]of a brief capsule summary of these cases.
[00:11:42.720]And then just as you're saying, Professor Jones, I wanted to kind of trace
[00:11:47.500]out what are the continuities that we can see back to Native American cases.
[00:11:53.240]So, you know, with with the first case, I want to look at
[00:11:56.740]Downs-Bidwell, 1901. This is the case that defined Puerto
[00:12:01.620]Rico as unincorporated. Unincorporated.
[00:12:06.126]And this was a legal designation for the territory that was not
[00:12:12.140]applied to previous territories.
[00:12:15.400]So previously, before 1898, when the U.S. expanded into, say, Texas, California,
[00:12:24.420]American law followed the Northwest Ordinance
[00:12:28.340]so that these territories were incorporated.
[00:12:30.760]And that meant that eventually these territories
[00:12:33.820]would become states, their residents would become citizens.
[00:12:38.480]In the Downs-Bidwell case, 1901, the Supreme
[00:12:42.100]Court decides that Puerto Rico is unincorporated and
[00:12:45.960]that the Constitution does not fully apply and
[00:12:51.100]that there's no expectation of statehood or citizenship.
[00:12:55.820]So the Downs-Bidwell case, you know, at first at first brush,
[00:13:00.200]you might think, was a totally novel kind of
[00:13:04.740]legal category unincorporated.
[00:13:06.960]But in fact, if you look back at the Cherokee cases of the
[00:13:10.780]1830s, and you may have looked at some of these
[00:13:13.020]Worcester versus Georgia 1832.
[00:13:15.240]In those cases, we see language that defines
[00:13:19.320]the sovereignty of native tribes as limited and dependent.
[00:13:23.960]So within the domestic United States, we see
[00:13:26.900]legal categories that limit the sovereignty of native peoples.
[00:13:35.340]And those same categories then are being built upon in 1901 in the
[00:13:40.660]insular cases to define Puerto Rico as unincorporated, also with
[00:13:46.300]the severely limited sovereignty.
[00:13:50.200]OK, so that's just that's just one example.
[00:13:52.080]And another quick example would be the Gonzalez case, which is
[00:13:57.320]the case I discussed quite a bit in my in my book.
[00:14:03.960]Oh, great. You did it. Thank you.
[00:14:06.500]You're welcome. Thank you so much.
[00:14:09.760]OK, so in the Gonzalez case, which is 1904, and here I'll kind of let me see.
[00:14:22.500]If we can go to the very end, there's there's kind of a list of cases.
[00:14:26.360]OK, so here's the Gonzalez. Yeah, Gonzalez v. Williams is 1904.
[00:14:33.180]And like I say, there are 23 cases, but I thought it would help to
[00:14:36.660]just focus on a couple.
[00:14:38.540]And in the Gonzalez case, this is the case where Isabella Gonzalez, who
[00:14:43.600]is a Puerto Rican woman from San Juan, travels
[00:14:47.980]to New York and she's initially detained as likely
[00:14:53.260]to become a public charge
[00:14:56.340]and contested contest that designation and takes her case all the
[00:15:01.660]way to the Supreme Court, where she's defined as a U.S. national.
[00:15:08.460]OK, so originally, when she tried to enter New York, she was denied entry
[00:15:11.960]on the basis that she was an alien like an immigrant
[00:15:15.860]from any foreign country.
[00:15:17.700]But because of her case, the Supreme Court redefined immigrants
[00:15:22.820]from Puerto Rico and by extension Philippines
[00:15:25.820]as U.S. nationals who were no longer subject
[00:15:29.820]to U.S. immigration laws.
[00:15:33.180]So this national status also has a kind of antecedent
[00:15:38.800]in the Native American history of the early 19th century.
[00:15:44.080]We know that Indians born onto reservations were designated
[00:15:50.880]as U.S. nationals.
[00:15:53.880]So, again, these categories that we see applied to
[00:15:56.900]colonies overseas are first used in Native American cases.
[00:16:06.820]Absolutely. So Gonzalez v. Williams, again, this idea
[00:16:10.560]of the U.S. national as not a citizen.
[00:16:14.040]So one of the things that you ask the students to look
[00:16:17.220]at is a piece of writing about why the insular cases still matter.
[00:16:24.680]And one of the things that the writer said was that
[00:16:29.020]it was important to understand the development of constitutional
[00:16:32.400]law and citizenship.
[00:16:34.360]And so we just talked about U.S. nationals,
[00:16:36.640]but can you talk a little bit more about some of the acts and then exactly
[00:16:41.080]what makes Puerto Rican citizens, but not full citizens?
[00:16:46.980]And then also as it extends to other colonies of the United States.
[00:16:53.140]Sure. Yeah. So if you don't mind just going back
[00:16:55.500]to the in the slides to the map that I had.
[00:16:58.600]Absolutely.
[00:16:59.860]OK. So in this map, you can see this is taken from the New York
[00:17:03.760]and Puerto Rico's teamship companies records.
[00:17:06.780]And you can see that the the two lines connecting
[00:17:09.900]Puerto Rico to the mainland United States run to, you
[00:17:15.540]know, from San Juan to New York and then from
[00:17:18.020]Ponce in the south of Puerto Rico to New Orleans.
[00:17:20.819]And the reason I want to start with this is
[00:17:24.079]this is an example of the coast wise shipping laws which
[00:17:30.140]define Puerto Rico as coast wise or so close to
[00:17:35.040]the eastern seaboard as to be part of the United States.
[00:17:39.600]These laws are also known as the Jones Act.
[00:17:47.020]The Jones Act. We'll talk a little bit about that.
[00:17:49.460]But these laws are actually still in place and
[00:17:53.880]there's a whole legacy from this period, including the insular
[00:17:57.080]cases and all of the legal decisions from the Supreme
[00:18:01.520]Court that uphold these early colonial early 20th century decisions.
[00:18:08.480]So the coast wise laws required that only U.S.
[00:18:12.700]ships could travel between Puerto Rico and the United States.
[00:18:17.340]And this creates a kind of monopoly in terms of shipping so
[00:18:21.360]that the costs of goods imported to Puerto Rico are artificially high.
[00:18:26.460]Right. Imagine if you had competition among shipping companies from
[00:18:30.380]Cuba and Venezuela and Spain that would drive the prices down.
[00:18:34.780]But instead imports are very, very expensive in Puerto Rico.
[00:18:39.240]And anyone that's been to Puerto Rico knows
[00:18:41.000]the prices of things are very, very high.
[00:18:44.620]When Maria hit the hurricane that really ravaged the island, we saw
[00:18:49.980]the coast wise laws still in effect. Right. Over 100 years later.
[00:18:57.440]And the effects were devastating. The effects of this
[00:19:03.460]law were that the prices of basic building supplies
[00:19:10.760]to rebuild people's homes, to repair roofs now were
[00:19:16.800]so high that so many people couldn't afford to rebuild.
[00:19:24.040]So this is just one of the examples. And I think, you know, in
[00:19:28.160]the reading as well, they trace out some of the this is by Rivera Ramos.
[00:19:34.880]They trace out some of the consequences that are still
[00:19:39.940]with us. So Professor Jones asked about citizenship in particular.
[00:19:44.620]And, you know, I mentioned because of the Isabella Gonzalez
[00:19:48.420]case, Puerto Ricans were redesignated as nationals instead of aliens.
[00:19:54.020]Then we move forward in time to the World War I period, 1917. And
[00:19:59.040]this is when Puerto Ricans are granted citizenship, but it's
[00:20:02.380]a second class citizenship.
[00:20:04.320]It is not the same as U.S. mainland citizenship. And
[00:20:09.080]there are all sorts of ways that the Constitution is not
[00:20:13.860]fully extended to the people of Puerto Rico.
[00:20:16.880]So, for example, the right to a trial by jury,
[00:20:22.180]for example, you know, there even even the right to representation.
[00:20:29.340]So, for example, we don't have in the Puerto Rican case, there is
[00:20:34.940]no voting senator, there is no voting member of the House in Washington, D.C.
[00:20:41.840]And so Puerto Ricans continue to live in this kind of
[00:20:46.340]in between space. Right. I would describe it as a colonial status.
[00:20:51.120]Right. I would as well. And I think that's that comes through
[00:20:55.300]in your work and also in Ramos' piece, right, that there is this
[00:20:59.600]ongoing legacy of not only the war of 1898, but the Insular
[00:21:08.120]Cases, the Foraker Acts, and of course, this important rule about who can
[00:21:15.860]bring goods to and from Puerto Rico. And so, can you just
[00:21:19.880]talk briefly before we move to questions and answers
[00:21:22.040]about Guam and some of the other areas
[00:21:24.300]that are important to understanding
[00:21:27.160]of U.S. imperialism in the late 19th century as a result of the 1898 war, which
[00:21:34.300]we know as the Spanish-American War, Spanish-
[00:21:36.960]American-Philippine War, depending on the book you read.
[00:21:40.180]Right. Yeah, it is it is important to note that, of
[00:21:45.940]course, Puerto. .Rico is not the only case of US colonialism overseas.
[00:21:51.900]So as you mentioned, Guam, the Mariana Islands,
[00:21:54.980]and then of course, the Philippines. And so
[00:21:58.540]all of these islands were acquired from Spain
[00:22:02.140]at the end of the war of 1898.
[00:22:05.320]And the status, you know, question looks a little bit different in these different
[00:22:11.780]in the different cases in the Philippines, of course, the
[00:22:15.540]Philippines eventually became independent.
[00:22:19.160]But what historians have made clear is that it was really because
[00:22:23.220]of nativism. It was really because of white racism within the United States.
[00:22:30.600]Where members of the Senate and House could not even
[00:22:33.680]conceive of Filipino senators, you know, and the population was so
[00:22:40.820]substantial, even 100 years ago, that some estimates where there would
[00:22:45.100]be 20, 30, maybe even 50 members of the U.S. House.
[00:22:50.200]And so there's, there's a whole history of anti
[00:22:55.740]immigrant, anti-Filipino sentiment that drove people primarily to grant
[00:23:05.120]sovereignty, you know, back to the Philippines.
[00:23:08.220]And I think it's one of the great questions for historians and,
[00:23:11.760]and all of us to think about is why, why that didn't
[00:23:15.380]happen in Puerto Rico, you know, these, these two cases followed very
[00:23:21.140]different paths, even though they started legally, you know, with that with those
[00:23:26.260]same designations of unincorporated and U.S. national.
[00:23:31.760]Absolutely, and this will tie into our, our future discussion about anti-
[00:23:36.340]Asian sentiment in the United States and so that's why I wanted
[00:23:39.180]to tease that out because there is tremendous anti-Asian sentiment that
[00:23:43.600]that we need to talk about that drives that idea that the
[00:23:47.400]Filipinos should be allowed to be self governing but we don't see
[00:23:51.280]that extended like you said to Guam, or even to Puerto Rico.
[00:23:55.640]So, I'm going to switch gears now because I do realize we
[00:23:59.100]it is about five minutes to 10 and we want to take
[00:24:01.740]some of the questions from the students, either from the reading some
[00:24:04.760]of the points that were that were raised in that reading, or just
[00:24:08.400]regular questions and so we have some in the chat but also we can.
[00:24:15.380]I think you can hear them if they stand up correct.
[00:24:18.620]Yeah, yeah, I think so. Absolutely. So does anybody want to start.
[00:24:26.240]Yeah, question. Yeah, yes. Okay, and tell them your
[00:24:30.360]name so he can know who you are. Yeah.
[00:24:32.820]Can, yeah, see if you can unmute can you unmute yourself
[00:24:38.080]and then unmute my.
[00:24:41.030]Oh, yeah.
[00:24:44.210]Yeah, come on.
[00:24:47.490]We're going to do it this way because we don't want the reverb. Yeah,
[00:24:51.410]yeah, good call. Um, so my name is Sebastian and I was curious about.
[00:24:56.770]What you think stands in the way of territories like Puerto Rico
[00:25:00.350]and Guam from voting today.
[00:25:02.990]So like, what kind of legislature what kind of policies would stop
[00:25:05.970]us from just saying hey you guys can vote in our elections.
[00:25:09.370]Mm hmm. Okay, that's a good question. So, Sebastian. Yeah, so I think
[00:25:18.990]the first thing to recognize it's very kind of idiosyncratic I mean Puerto
[00:25:23.910]Ricans today can vote in presidential primaries,
[00:25:27.770]but cannot vote in the presidential election.
[00:25:31.850]And so, back when Hillary Clinton was running, there was a lot of kind of
[00:25:36.330]buzz about the difference Puerto Ricans on the
[00:25:38.810]island might make in the in the primary.
[00:25:41.490]When it comes to the general election coming up next week.
[00:25:46.970]No one in Puerto Rico will have a voice in that election.
[00:25:50.990]The only voice is through the diaspora right and
[00:25:54.010]so all of the families living now in Florida,
[00:25:57.350]New York, New Jersey, Chicago.
[00:26:01.810]There are actually as many or more Puerto Rican families living
[00:26:05.770]in the mainland United States now, then in Puerto Rico itself.
[00:26:10.070]And there is a considerable, you know, voting
[00:26:14.230]power that, you know, pundits are kind of it seems constantly debating
[00:26:21.750]will Puerto Ricans in Florida like tip, you
[00:26:25.030]know, the decision next Tuesday.
[00:26:29.690]So, that's that's just one one piece of the picture here is
[00:26:35.310]to be aware that there was an early recognition going back more than
[00:26:40.010]100 years among Puerto Ricans that the only way to really achieve political
[00:26:45.030]power was to actually migrate to the mainland United
[00:26:48.650]States and build political
[00:26:51.150]coalitions and run candidates for office. And we see the
[00:26:56.130]first, Vito Marcantonio in the 1930s, is first to represent Puerto Ricans.
[00:27:05.750]And it's interesting because he's representing their
[00:27:08.430]interest not just in New York, but also in Puerto Rico.
[00:27:12.410]Okay, because his constituents are saying this is what matters to us.
[00:27:16.110]So I do think that one way forward is through the political
[00:27:20.330]power Puerto Ricans in the United States. You know, Ramos suggests in the
[00:27:26.310]piece that that we read for today that, you
[00:27:31.090]know, ultimately the solution Sebastian that you're you're asking about
[00:27:35.550]will need to come from the Congress.
[00:27:38.590]And I think that's very interesting to for us to just
[00:27:41.550]consider because for actually for many years I had hoped ever since
[00:27:45.070]Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court.
[00:27:48.530]I had hoped that and this was before the last three appointments
[00:27:52.850]but I had hoped that there would be she would be part
[00:27:55.510]of a majority that then could finally redress the Insular Cases have
[00:28:02.850]had such a devastating impact on Puerto Rico she's a Puerto Rican descent.
[00:28:10.210]But, you know, now of course looking at the composition of the
[00:28:13.910]court, I think Ramos would, you know, I think Ramos is right
[00:28:17.510]that the way forward is actually through the Congress.
[00:28:21.590]And so, you know, so it's all very connected like how how
[00:28:25.190]do Puerto Ricans find more representation in the U.S., you know, in Congress.
[00:28:31.990]Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for that answer.
[00:28:34.370]Um, other questions? Does anybody else... Oscar is going to come. Oscar?
[00:28:40.810]Oscar, sorry I told you, Oscar, I called you
[00:28:43.470]Oscar because somebody else is Oscar.
[00:28:45.250]Go ahead.
[00:28:48.070]Hi there. I'm Omar. Not Oscar.
[00:28:52.120]Oh my god.
[00:28:55.190]I'm so sorry.
[00:29:01.830]Está bien. Está bien.
[00:29:06.080]Sorry, he knows I'm devastated. Omar.
[00:29:08.870]You're fine. You're fine.
[00:29:11.900]All right. All right. So, with like all this talk about like
[00:29:14.710]that not enough representation.
[00:29:17.230]I'm going to try to build two ideas together.
[00:29:20.530]What is the process of a colony ever becoming
[00:29:23.930]a state, if it ever will be a state.
[00:29:27.390]Like why don't they just go through the process of
[00:29:29.310]making Puerto Rico, a state like, just like, what, yeah.
[00:29:37.590]So like why don't they just do what they did to Hawaii and just make Puerto
[00:29:40.470]Rico, one of the states, if they want more representation, because it
[00:29:44.470]would benefit them a lot.
[00:29:46.830]Unless it's a really nasty process.
[00:29:50.370]Yeah, that's Omar.
[00:29:53.570]Omar. Okay, yeah.
[00:29:55.290]Okay, so.
[00:29:57.270]So it's, it's interesting to think about this so first of all,
[00:30:02.050]Hawaii, actually, is annexed, you know, just just a few months before.
[00:30:10.270]Before Puerto Rico, and in Hawaii in case, this rule
[00:30:15.170]of incorporation still applied.
[00:30:18.330]Okay, so part of what's so fascinating about even just
[00:30:23.110]the single year of 1898 is that you have these
[00:30:26.550]two opposite examples right Hawaii was annexed as an incorporated
[00:30:32.950]territory with the expectation that it would eventually become a state.
[00:30:37.030]Within Hawaii there were, there were white American sugar
[00:30:41.810]interests that resisted statehood.
[00:30:46.890]You know, so we know that statehood doesn't come until
[00:30:48.870]after Pearl Harbor. Right. So, but statehood was part of that
[00:30:55.390]accepted path because of the designation of incorporated.
[00:31:00.070]Puerto Rico, because of the Downs-Bidwell decision 1901
[00:31:04.310]is now unincorporated. And so there is no legal path for
[00:31:09.930]an unincorporated territory to become a state.
[00:31:12.610]I mean that that's kind of the bottom line.
[00:31:15.270]Part of what Ramos is trying to say is Congress needs to change the
[00:31:21.150]unincorporated status of Puerto Rico.
[00:31:24.130]So, go ahead.
[00:31:27.050]No, that's clicking. That's me... just like the gears are clicking.
[00:31:30.630]Grinding.
[00:31:31.470]Yeah, so that. So that's part of, you know,
[00:31:34.290]for a long time I think a lot of us thought the Supreme
[00:31:36.610]Court could do that. But like I'm saying, I think
[00:31:39.150]now it's on the Congress.
[00:31:40.930]And, you know, the other complication is there are leaders in Washington
[00:31:46.430]who continually call for referendums, you know, so random in Puerto Rico.
[00:31:51.970]And so there have been several of these votes within Puerto Rico
[00:31:56.250]on the question of status, you know, should Puerto
[00:31:58.710]Rico become a state? Should it continue to be
[00:32:01.390]what is called a commonwealth?
[00:32:03.530]I would consider it a colony. I think a lot of people would. Or should
[00:32:06.870]it become independent? Those are kind of three
[00:32:10.490]options, you know, statehood, status quo or independence.
[00:32:17.170]And, you know, it's just fascinating. If you go to
[00:32:20.370]Puerto Rico, you will find people who support all three positions.
[00:32:25.570]You know, a lot of that comes down to class position.
[00:32:31.110]I mean, in my experience, if you talk to your taxi driver,
[00:32:35.190]they will support statehood. If you then go to the university, give
[00:32:38.630]a talk, the other professors are supporting independence.
[00:32:42.550]You know, so there's like it's not always that way, but I'm
[00:32:46.930]just giving you a sense of the different opinions
[00:32:50.330]on the island itself.
[00:32:52.510]One of the reasons that people I think especially people of higher
[00:32:57.090]incomes may resist statehood is because with statehood
[00:33:01.890]would come federal tax, federal income tax, which
[00:33:07.090]is not currently applied.
[00:33:08.890]But I think lower income people recognize, well, I
[00:33:13.630]wouldn't have to pay all that much in federal
[00:33:16.030]tax and I would get a lot in benefits, you know, in terms of
[00:33:19.750]better funding for public schools.
[00:33:22.330]The public school system is really struggling in
[00:33:27.010]Puerto Rico. The public system is struggling. The public
[00:33:31.010]archives and institutions do not get the kind of
[00:33:34.830]funding that they would if they were a state.
[00:33:37.550]So it just gives you a sense of it.
[00:33:41.570]Thank you so much. Thank you. We do have a question in the chat. Do
[00:33:45.970]you want to read it out? This is from, are we going to do Veronica's first?
[00:33:49.810]Okay, so we're going to read out Veronica's
[00:33:52.070]question. Let me, and then we'll do Camille's.
[00:34:01.110]Well, let me go with Veronica's. So Veronica's question is, as a country that
[00:34:06.950]used to be under colonial system, the colonial system, experienced second
[00:34:11.790]class citizenship from Great Britain, do you think there is a
[00:34:15.070]possibility that Puerto Rico will try to stage
[00:34:17.570]their own version of the revolutionary war to become completely independent
[00:34:22.270]from the United States?
[00:34:24.310]Yeah, okay.
[00:34:28.350]So this has been tried before. So I think it is possible.
[00:34:35.449]I mean, my quick answer is yes, I think it is possible
[00:34:38.449]because the, because history tells us that various groups of Independistas, you
[00:34:47.170]know, those who support independence have been able to
[00:34:49.590]mobilize significant resistance.
[00:34:53.130]It does not look the same as in the Philippines, you
[00:34:55.489]know, in the Philippines, you may be familiar, there was a
[00:34:58.150]four year war, you know, against U.S. occupation.
[00:35:01.710]But in Puerto Rico, we don't see that, but we do
[00:35:05.250]see, we do see, you know, some of the famous leaders of
[00:35:10.410]the independence movement like Albizu Campos'
[00:35:12.950]and others, including American allies, who staged a, you could call it
[00:35:24.050]a kind of revolution in 1950.
[00:35:26.990]Let me, let me give you this, this book that I
[00:35:32.850]was recently reading some pretty across the Americas, just terrific study
[00:35:37.870]of the independence movement, anti imperialism, nationalist party,
[00:35:44.710]but Puerto Rico, you know, the leaders of
[00:35:48.410]independence recognized that they needed allies.
[00:35:50.670]This is going back to 30s, 40s, 1950s. And so they
[00:35:55.050]did build coalitions, you know, with leaders in Latin America, and
[00:36:01.470]leaders in New York and the United States. And so it was very much, you
[00:36:09.790]know, one of my one of my students, in fact, did a study of the
[00:36:14.410]U.S. attempts to suppress the rebellion in 1950
[00:36:19.570]that was staged in Juncos and parts of the interior of Puerto Rico.
[00:36:25.570]So there have been different attempts, you may have heard of gunshots fired
[00:36:29.710]in the Capitol, you know, I mean, there, there
[00:36:32.530]are significant efforts, both kind of, you know, violent and
[00:36:39.690]non violent to, to throw off U.S.
[00:36:46.710]rule. And I do think that it's possible, because things are not
[00:36:53.090]getting better, things are getting worse. I mean,
[00:36:56.490]imagine the next hurricane that was in Puerto Rico. And imagine that
[00:37:02.050]we still have in place, unincorporated status, no
[00:37:05.630]one can vote for the President of the United States, there's no
[00:37:07.910]senator, like for Florida or Texas when they're hit by a hurricane.
[00:37:13.150]You know, so I do really think that this,
[00:37:17.810]it's untenable, it's untenable the current situation. And so there
[00:37:24.230]will have to be a dramatic change.
[00:37:27.150]Thank you for that. And so Camille's
[00:37:39.510]question is, is there a way in order to whiten the population in
[00:37:41.810]an attempt to incorporate them?
[00:37:46.910]Yeah, that's, that's interesting because historically,
[00:37:51.390]you know, a lot of the colonial officials in the United States,
[00:37:55.050]debated exactly this question, you know.
[00:37:57.910]Yeah. So for example, in Hawaii, there was maybe
[00:38:00.970]a little bit more comfort on the part of like white supremacists, you
[00:38:05.850]could say, because the population of Indigenous people, people
[00:38:12.510]of color was relatively small.
[00:38:14.430]And there was an expectation that if enough white Americans move
[00:38:18.130]to Hawaii, as sugar planters, their families, their
[00:38:21.530]employees, they could, you know, kind of assimilate
[00:38:25.950]the population, so that it would still be like a white, a
[00:38:31.270]majority white American, you know, space.
[00:38:36.610]And I think, you know, colonial officials recognize that this was
[00:38:40.630]going to be impossible in the case of the Philippines, because
[00:38:43.990]the population was, you know, many millions of
[00:38:46.710]people. In the case of Puerto Rico, at the time of the initial U.S. invasion,
[00:38:53.810]the population was maybe around a million people
[00:38:56.770]when the U.S. mainland was about 80 million.
[00:38:59.610]So, so Puerto Rico is kind of this in between example in between Hawaii
[00:39:04.650]and the Philippines, and from the perspective of racial
[00:39:08.330]nativists, right, who primarily wanted to assimilate as you're implying,
[00:39:14.270]you know, non-white populations.
[00:39:17.510]Now, I'm glad you put white in quotes, because many in
[00:39:22.150]Puerto Rico would identify as white, as you may now. And in
[00:39:26.390]fact, when the U.S. Census Bureau went down to conduct the first census, they were
[00:39:33.190]just totally confounded by the racial categories that
[00:39:37.530]they saw, and didn't line up with what they were used to in the United States.
[00:39:43.150]They were used to a clean line between white and
[00:39:46.510]Black, and instead they were seeing a whole spectrum. So, I
[00:39:53.030]think that, let's see, if if Puerto Rico were to become
[00:39:57.070]a state, would there be a kind of attendant racial politics?
[00:40:03.790]Absolutely, but it's, but I would say it's already there, you know,
[00:40:07.530]it's already there. There's already, you know, I think a whole context
[00:40:15.390]of race and racism that helps explain why we're here, you know,
[00:40:21.070]why, why these legal decisions were even made in the first place.
[00:40:25.890]When I, those decisions, I see over and over again
[00:40:29.910]examples of, you know, racial ideologies, racial hierarchies and racism.
[00:40:37.090]Thank you for that answer. I'm trying to figure out why I
[00:40:39.210]see another question. Oh, do we have another question?
[00:40:43.830]Nathan, you might have to come up. Nathan's gonna
[00:40:47.090]come and ask a question.
[00:40:52.570]Hi, I'm Nathan. Nice to meet you.
[00:40:59.720]I've got a bit of a stickier question I guess. I want to touch
[00:41:03.700]a bit about how earlier you described like parallels between
[00:41:06.860]the application of national status between both people of Puerto
[00:41:10.840]Rico, and then Indigenous people.
[00:41:13.840]But if you look at current issues of international sovereignty in
[00:41:18.660]the approach of the United States specifically
[00:41:20.240]like at Ukraine, and more importantly, like the
[00:41:23.220]U.S. stance on Gaza.
[00:41:25.040]Do you think that such a geopolitical mindset shift
[00:41:27.520]is possible? And like, what opposition exists
[00:41:30.380]in the United States aside, like from just like racism alone?
[00:41:37.490]Okay, Nathan. Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, no,
[00:41:45.670]that's a really, I'm glad you asked that because we should consider the moment
[00:41:51.130]we're in and the connections we can draw.
[00:41:55.910]I mean, there is a lot of sympathy between the Palestinian cause
[00:42:02.910]and the Puerto Rican cause.
[00:42:04.090]I mean, I'll just start with that. Right. And I think there's a
[00:42:07.530]lot of historically there's a lot of sympathy between the Irish and the
[00:42:14.010]Puerto Ricans, as well as the Palestinians right so
[00:42:17.670]groups that understand their history within a
[00:42:21.470]colonial framework have found ways to kind of make common cause.
[00:42:25.830]In fact, there's some good scholarship on how these movements have
[00:42:31.590]coalesced, you know, the movement to free
[00:42:34.150]Palestine and the movement to win independence for
[00:42:38.190]Puerto Rico, for example.
[00:42:40.550]So, but I think Nathan, I think your question, you know,
[00:42:43.910]about this current moment and what would it take for there
[00:42:46.770]to be a shift in thinking, well, just, you know, pause
[00:42:50.710]and think for a moment about U. .foreign policy toward Israel.
[00:42:55.370]And how does that square with, you know, US policy towards
[00:42:59.610]Puerto Rico? You know, I mean, just interesting to think about.
[00:43:04.170]So, you know, there's such strong, as we know, strong support for Israel
[00:43:09.070]in the United States and there are lots of historical reasons for that.
[00:43:13.510]And then there is maybe less support, you know, broadly speaking, among
[00:43:19.690]the political class for sovereignty for Palestinians, you
[00:43:26.790]know, and so there's also less support for
[00:43:29.350]sovereignty for Puerto Rico.
[00:43:31.490]You know, I mean, I think the political class in
[00:43:33.950]the United States largely supports the status quo in Puerto Rico,
[00:43:40.890]which I've already described as a colonial relationship.
[00:43:44.950]And that same kind of dominant political class also supports
[00:43:50.770]the status quo with regard to Israel and Palestine, right?
[00:43:55.410]So in many ways, those two things are consistent.
[00:44:00.690]Nathan, I hope you're with me.
[00:44:03.730]Yeah, he said yes.
[00:44:05.650]Okay, so I think, you know, what is it, so your question is really
[00:44:09.910]like, what does it take then to get to a
[00:44:13.030]different politics, a different foreign policy with Israel, a different
[00:44:17.250]foreign policy with Puerto Rico?
[00:44:21.950]And I think that the first thing, and Professor Jones, I know you're going
[00:44:27.130]to agree with me, the first thing is we've got to
[00:44:29.470]build our historical consciousness.
[00:44:31.950]Most Americans, you know, most citizens in this
[00:44:35.150]country, and here we are, you know, with the
[00:44:38.470]most powerful military in the world, we see that
[00:44:41.330]we see the money that's going to Israel, right?
[00:44:44.770]We see the dome that has been built with U.S.
[00:44:47.570]funds and technology that protects Israel from the Iranian missiles.
[00:44:53.010]So we are in a very powerful position as citizens of the United
[00:44:58.550]States, and yet most of us know very little,
[00:45:02.130]you know, present company excluded, most Americans know very
[00:45:05.050]little about U.S. power overseas.
[00:45:08.530]And so, you know, so there's certain narratives that are kind of
[00:45:16.030]dominant, you know, the narrative around Israel centers the story of the
[00:45:21.410]Holocaust, rather than the experience of Palestinians, you know, the narrative of
[00:45:26.430]around Puerto Rico does not center, you know, Puerto Rican people, right?
[00:45:32.990]Puerto Rican history has not usually been included in American
[00:45:37.350]history classes. And, and there's a lot of pressure, I
[00:45:43.390]think you'll understand this, there's a lot of pressure to
[00:45:45.430]not study the history of Israel in certain
[00:45:49.170]academic settings, right?
[00:45:51.330]Because it's considered too controversial.
[00:45:54.790]So, the first step is we've got to kind of recognize our
[00:45:59.150]blind spots, you know, what are the histories we're
[00:46:01.190]not studying, we don't know a lot about what are we not teaching.
[00:46:06.930]And then we've got to really explore that, you know, as a
[00:46:11.270]core part of our curriculum.
[00:46:14.070]Absolutely.
[00:46:14.830]So, in the last two minutes I just want to give some closing
[00:46:19.950]thoughts. Number one, just to come for this class so you can, you
[00:46:27.210]know these things, but again, a couple of things that he, that Professor
[00:46:30.530]McGreevey emphasized, the connections between U.S. policy
[00:46:36.590]towards Native Americans and towards Puerto Ricans,
[00:46:44.590]understanding white nativism and the status of Puerto Rico, vis-a-vis
[00:46:49.850]Philippines, and then how he explained what it means to be
[00:46:54.050]a U.S. national, how that operated, what's the
[00:46:57.550]difference between why Hawaii was the next right
[00:47:01.150]before the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico.
[00:47:04.590]So what are, so again as we've been talking
[00:47:06.450]about race and the law and the kind of social
[00:47:09.730]and political context, how do we see race operating in
[00:47:14.390]1898, and then going forward looking at those 23 cases.
[00:47:18.750]Of course he only talked about two today, but
[00:47:20.970]you had the reading from Ramos where he kind
[00:47:22.950]of breaks it out. And again, what are some of the things, what are
[00:47:26.190]the legacies of those decisions.
[00:47:27.670]So how is he trying to grapple with present day political
[00:47:31.450]questions which we will return to because remember this class is going
[00:47:34.770]up to the present but we want to think about that and
[00:47:37.770]some of the, a lot of the questions today from the students
[00:47:40.750]really tease out what are the legacies of that,
[00:47:43.630]how do we think about that in this moment. And
[00:47:45.950]so I really want to thank you for coming out
[00:47:47.990]today and joining us via zoom Professor McGreevey, and for
[00:47:54.690]I'm going to share these with the students so they can
[00:47:57.350]actually have access to it so they can see the pictures there.
[00:48:01.210]Yes.
[00:48:03.370]But this is a great thing so thank you so much. Thank you for your
[00:48:07.370]patience as we work through the technological difficulties
[00:48:10.750]and we wish you a great day everybody.
[00:48:18.630]And we are actually going to be featured in a book soon so hopefully and
[00:48:23.590]read that it's also about raising the law. So have a good day everyone. Thank you.
[00:48:28.530]I really thank you. Thank you, Jeannette. It was a pleasure being
[00:48:32.610]with you and some great questions from your students. Thank you so much.

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The Insular Cases and Contested Citizenship

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