Tuesday, August 19, 2008

We are all Georgians if we are White Americans? :-)

For the longest time I have kidded around with friends and family that despite being from India, I qualify as a white guy in America because of my Caucasian connection--particularly because I was born in a brahmin family (though an atheist for quite some time now, after a long stint as an agnostic, who was hesitant to come out of the religious closet!). Well, the joke apparently needs to be killed because of Slate's explanation that brings on some serious Supreme Court decision:

Americans still use the word Caucasian to mean "white" despite the fact that they haven't always been synonyms in the eyes of the law. In U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme Court argued that although Asian Indians were technically Caucasian, they couldn't be U.S. citizens because they weren't "white."

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