You Are Not American

October 12, 2020
American University law professor Frost debuts with an impressively researched survey of the U.S. government revoking, or failing to recognize, the citizenship of native-born and naturalized citizens. “Citizenship stripping,” Frost writes, “embodies the view that society can cast out its unwanted and use that process to redefine itself and all those allowed to remain.” She contends that millions of people—including American women who married noncitizens, and Japanese Americans interned during WWII—have been denied their citizenship rights over the past two centuries, and delves into the legal and political issues behind those rulings. She points out that the 1857 Supreme Court decision denying citizenship to African Americans began as a case over whether Dred Scott’s family were slaves or free; reveals how the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act threatened birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment; and explains how an Obama administration effort to correct a technical error in the government’s immigration database has become a “mass denaturalization campaign” during the Trump presidency. Frost enlivens her case histories with vivid sketches of key litigants, and makes a convincing case that citizenship stripping has “serv as a proxy for overt discrimination” based on race and ethnicity. This troubling investigation of American exclusionism hits the mark.

Starred review from December 1, 2020

From the Dred Scott decision in 1857 to the present day, what it means to be an American--and, most important, who gets to be a citizen--has been debated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. That debate, which continues today, also influences political and cultural dynamics in the United States, especially when considering who has the power to decide questions of citizenship. Frost (law, American Univ.) thoroughly explores these issues and more in this incisive work. As Frost reminds readers, challenges to race and citizenship often overlap, and race-based citizenship and laws and practices, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Jim Crow segregation laws, had a lasting impact on American society. Frost succinctly notes that the idea of citizenship stripping runs counter to the idea of the United States as an open democracy, yet denaturalization still continues. Illustrating cases of people were who denaturalized and deported, sometimes mistakenly, the narrative depicts how history often repeats itself. Frost's accessible writing will draw in a variety of readers, from high school and college students to scholars looking to learn more about this complex history. VERDICT A highly informative work that gives depth and humanity to an often-overlooked issue.--Jacob Sherman, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2020
A sharp history that shows the precarious nature of American citizenship. As law professor Frost demonstrates in this crisp, concise book, the revocation of citizenship from native-born or naturalized individuals often stems from the desire to deprive individuals and/or groups of their political and civil rights, with an eye toward deportation. The overarching intention is to shape society to the prevailing ideological moment, to ensure that anti-establishment forces don't "taint" the nation's "purity" or challenge the hegemony of White leadership. Frost uses the stories of individual actors, from Emma Goldman to Robert E. Lee to Dred and Harriet Scott, to fill out the bigger picture of the government's assault upon--or at least selective reading of--the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It's a sorry tale that Frost narrates engagingly, digging into the ever shifting racial boundaries of citizenship as well as the unconstitutional deployment of denaturalization initiatives. Frost explores how a wide range of factors, including race, ethnicity, and religious and political preferences, have sparked the state to intervene to maintain the status quo. "Denaturalization is most often associated with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union," writes the author. "But by the end of the twentieth century, the US government had denaturalized at least twenty-two thousand people--more than any other democracy before or since. The effect of the denaturalization campaign was to silence those who might otherwise have taken on leadership positions in politics, journalism, and the labor movement. By publicly targeting [certain] men and women...the government hoped to intimidate into silence tens of thousands of foreign-born citizens who were similarly vulnerable." In the 21st century, the citizenship debate continues to be heated and controversial--but still revolves around the state's power to deny the rights of "undesirables." The takeaway is that citizenship is conditional, a fact that is hardly news for Dreamers across the U.S. Significant legal history with lessons for all citizens.

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