I think that the idea of a national character, no matter what you say it is, is a fiction. I don't think nations have characters. It's like to say that a nation has a character is always a political project that we should be suspicious of. So, and another theme that we have talked about at several points in the project too is this shifting nature of whiteness and its arbitrariness. The definition of whiteness has evolved over time as well, not just one year apart but over decades.
The story of Bhagat Singh Thind, and also of Takao Ozawa – Asian immigrants who, in the 1920s, sought to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that they were white in order to gain American citizenship. Thind’s “bargain with white supremacy,” and the deeply revealing results.