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

[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.