Previous
Nuremberg Laws
The word “Aryan” was initially used to define a group of ancient Indo-European people who invaded modern-day India and conquered its indigenous people many millennia ago. But by the early 20th century, some scholars and eugenicists seized upon the idea of a pure, Nordic-adjacent “Aryan race” defined by fair skin and hair and light eyes. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis devoted their political agenda to the purification and preservation of this Aryan race, instituting labor and extermination camps to rid European society of “non-Aryans”—Jews, Sinti, Roma, and other ethnic and sexual minorities (as well as disabled people) who did not fit with the Nazis’ ideal.
Aryan Quotes in Caste
The Caste quotes below are all either spoken by Aryan or refer to Aryan. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
The Nazis needed no outsiders to plant the seeds of hatred within them. But in the early years of the regime, when they still had a stake in the appearance of legitimacy and the hope of foreign investment, they were seeking legal prototypes for the caste system they were building. They were looking to move quickly with their plans for racial separation and purity, and knew that the United States was centuries ahead of them with its anti-miscegenation statutes and race-based immigration bans.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Caste LitChart as a printable PDF.
Aryan Term Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the term Aryan appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue: The Man in the Crowd
...connected to the scapegoated caste, Landmesser could see past the lies that the dominant caste—the Aryans—embraced.
(full context)
Chapter Eight: The Nazis and the Acceleration of Caste
...a committee of Nazi bureaucrats met to draft the Nuremberg Laws—a legal framework for the Aryan nation they hoped to create. In order to do so, the Nazis turned to the...
(full context)
...studied the U.S. from afar—and he believed it was a successful nation because of its “Aryan stock.” He admired how the U.S. had decimated its indigenous population, and the country subjugated...
(full context)
The Nazis proceeded with creating legal definitions for Jews and Aryans and preventing intermarriage between the two groups. Some in attendance at the drafting of the...
(full context)
Chapter Fifteen: The Urgent Necessity of a Bottom Rung
...to exclude Jewish people from any position in which they might match or even outshine Aryans, white Americans purposefully underfunded and even sabotaged Black schools and businesses.
(full context)
Chapter Twenty-One: The German Girl with the Dark, Wavy Hair
...scapegoat caste, Germans became fixated on ranking one another, trying to determine how pure, how Aryan, their friends and neighbors were. Wilkerson relays an anecdote about a young German girl with...
(full context)
