For a large part of this country, and I would argue to some extent now, whiteness is a prerequisite for both human and civil rights. And it was offered explicitly to lower class Europeans in America. But even if you had really strong arguments like then did, whiteness could use this idea to say, actually, no, we don't think you should have rights, and it doesn't really matter why. We just don't see you as white, plain and simple.
The story of Bhagat Singh Thind, and also of Takao Ozawa – Asian immigrants who, in the 1920s, sought to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that they were white in order to gain American citizenship. Thind’s “bargain with white supremacy,” and the deeply revealing results.