U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind
261 U.S. 204 Supreme Court 1923It … of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well thatthere … between them today, and itis not impossible, … his descendants to preclude his racial classification with either.
Thequestion … mind that they have the same origin, but whether we can satisfy the common understandingthatthey are … by unscientific men -- in classifying them together in the statutory category aswhite persons. In 1790, the Adamite … and it is not at all probable that it wasintended … submit the question ofthe application of the words "white persons" … test of anindefinitely … of the subsequent divergence ofthevarious … or from one another.
Theeligibility … applicantfor citizenship … by certain scientific authorities as of the Caucasian or Aryan race. The Aryan theory,as a … races living in proximity to one another. Our own history has witnessed the adoption of the English tongue by millions of negroes, whose descendants can never be classified racially with the descendants of white persons, notwithstanding both may speak a common root language.
The word "Caucasian" is in scarcely better repute. \[Footnote 1] It is, at best, a conventional term, with an altogether fortuitous origin, \[Footnote 2] which, under scientificmanipulation, … of such uncertainty that common agreement is practically impossible.
It may be, therefore, that a given group cannot be properly assigned to any of the enumerated grand racial divisions. The type may have been so changed by intermixture of blood as to justify an intermediate classification. Something very like this has actually taken place in India. Thus, in Hindustan and Berar, there was such an intermixture of the "Aryan" invader with the dark-skinned Dravidian. \[Footnote 7]
In the Punjab and Rajputana, while the invaders seem to have met with more success in the effortto preserve their racial purity, … rules of caste, while calculated to prevent this intermixture, seem not to have been entirely
