Final answer:
The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark confirmed birthright citizenship for all born in the U.S., while exclusionists used laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to deny rights to and discriminate against Chinese Americans.
Step-by-step explanation:
In reference to the question on the cases of Look Ting Sing and Wong Kim Ark and the challenges to the citizenship of Chinese Americans by exclusionists:
The case of Wong Kim Ark in 1898 was a landmark decision where the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot deny citizenship to anyone born within the United States, affirming the principle of birthright citizenship which is a part of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. This principle overshadowed the concept of jus sanguinis ('law of the blood'), where a child inherits the citizenship of its parents, indicating that birth within the territory of the U.S. grants citizenship regardless of parental origin.
Exclusionists sought to challenge the citizenship status of Chinese Americans through various means such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was the first law in U.S. history to bar a group of immigrants explicitly because of their race or ethnicity. This Act illustrated how legal measures were used to institutionalize racial discrimination and deny the Chinese community the rights afforded to them by birth, seeking to delegitimize their presence and contributions to American society.