High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The racial classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions and is presently Asian American. Originally, neither the courts nor the census bureau classified Indian Americans as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indians in the U.S. In 1923, the courts deemed Indians to not be white and be Asian instead which has continued to the present for the purposes of law. In 1980, the census bureau classified Indians as Asian, which has continued to the present for the purposes of demographics.