we think this word does not mean what it, er, means.

[rmd]

I had not previously heard of US v Bhagat Singh Thind, where the US court system found that, in fact, a guy from Punjab who is pretty clearly an *actual* fucking Aryan, wasn't Aryan and that the racial classification of "aryan" as in "white" had nothing to do with, you know, actual Aryans. Folks from the Indian subcontinent were then labeled as officially "Asian", so that they were prohibited from becoming citizens (because OMG YELLOW PERIL WE CANNOT LET THEM BE CITIZENS EVAR).

And then they stripped citizenship from some naturalized American citizens.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I am probably more relieved than I should be that this case was in 1923; history is much more recent and relevant than we like to think.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

To be fair, language use does change, and when people talk about Aryan they are not talking about Indians. Just like when people talk about anti-Semitism, they're not talking about the anti-Arab movements, even though the term Semitic includes Arabic.

The law itself was reprehensible, but the court's interpretation was clearly correct.

[wrog]

actually I like the whole line of reasoning that basically goes, "Well yes, they really are Aryan in the sense of the original 1790 law, and the caste system was clearly designed to preserve the purity of the bloodlines, but they didn't totally succeed since there was clearly still a teentsy bit of interbreeding with the lesser races, so NO CITIZENSHIP FOR J00!!!!"