Assimilation theory fails to predict Iranian Americans’ exclusion from whiteness

Evidence

In short, a highly educated, high-income population of legally white immigrants who arrive already believing in their own racial whiteness should predict a relatively straightforward, easy path into whiteness, according to theories of assimilation. For these reasons, a focus on Iranians within the larger pan-geographic “Middle Eastern” category makes a particularly good test case. But as the poster at Nonmacher’s makes clear, a group’s high socio-economic status, legal whiteness, and belief in its own whiteness do not always make it white enough to escape browning. In fact, for youth like Roya, physical and socioeconomic proximity to hegemonic whiteness in the United States exacerbates social ostracization and exclusion. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to reader’s research: the gap between ‘belief in own whiteness’ (a form of inherited essentialism) and actual racial position echoes the irony-to-residence question, presaging the Aryan-to-brown reversal Maghbouleh documents. — connects to: Proximity to whiteness increases rather than reduces Iranian American racialization — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1388; Census whiteness contradicts the everyday social exclusion of Iranian Americans — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 554; Assimilation theory frames whiteness as the default outcome of immigrant incorporation — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 59 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Social whiteness on the ground remains elusive for Iranian Americans #exemplifies (0.92) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 550
• Census whiteness contradicts the everyday social exclusion of Iranian Americans #exemplifies (0.90) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 554
• Iranians are legally white yet socially non-white in America #exemplifies (0.90) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 90
• Proximity to whiteness increases rather than reduces Iranian American racialization #corroborates (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 1388
• Second-generation Iranian American youth reject predicted assimilation because they see through their legal whiteness #exemplifies (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 556
• Assimilation into whiteness fails where physical difference is perceived #expands (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 579
• Assimilation markers give Iranian Americans little protection from racist portrayal #corroborates (0.80) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 72
• Offering a MENA option shifts Iranian Americans’ racial self-identification away from white #corroborates (0.80) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 1404
• Whiteness confers presumed belonging while nonwhiteness signals perpetual foreignness #expands (0.78)
• Assimilation theory frames whiteness as the default outcome of immigrant incorporation #responds-to (0.75) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 59
• Assimilation theory cannot explain the permanent exclusion of Blacks from mainstream America #qualifies (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 377
• Assimilationism is a racist stance despite affirming biological racial equality #expands (0.70) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 15