Coulson's article focuses on an important subject. As he states in the article, Thind is a case that helped define race relations in the United States even as the outcome was partially dictated by the existing policy of segregation. Thind reflects the idea that rather than living in a world of black and white, in the United States, Americans live in a world that was then and still is white and not-white. While Thind is no longer good law, the issues of race and status in society remain relevant today. While the subject matter's importance is not in dispute, however, Coulson's treatment of it is. Both parties' Supreme Court briefs used competing British sources on race and caste to support their positions in Thind. Coulson uses this to support his argument that both parties were aware of Thind's naturalization as a political decision, based on the desire of the American government to appease the British. However, he does not mention any other possible explanation for the presence of these sources in the briefs, including the Court's conceptualization of" white"-ness based on the cultural perceptions of the founders, which would have been closely connected to British cultural perceptions of racial identity. Coulson overly focuses on much different definitions of Aryan, Caucasian, and" white," even though this is exactly what he criticizes the Court for doing.

Ultimately, the crux of Coulson's argument seems to be that the Court was in error because Thind was in fact Aryan, because he was a high-caste Hindu. This argument is shortsighted and hurts the article in several ways. The argument is excessively technical and does not address many of the concerns implicated by the decision in Thind. At the start of the paper, Coulson states that the decision was a political one. This idea is underdeveloped and overshadowed by the wealth of material devoted to arguing whether or not Thind was white instead of arguing that the Court did not care whether he was white, just that he was part of a violent political group.