Black Christian conversion could not buy the citizenship rights that assimilation granted European immigrants

Evidence

Blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans, and Asians, whose differences were articulated in explicitly racial, as opposed to ethnic, terms remained permanently excluded from Whiteness and systematically subordinated. Notably, the Christianiziation of African Americans peaked after Emancipation as Black churches gained greater institutional visibility and influence. However, as Tisa Wenger’s work shows, attempts by Black churches to overcome racism by pointing to their Protestant beliefs proved futile. In the early 1900s, the predominantly Black American Methodist Church, for example, highlighted how conversion to Christianity civilized the former enslaved people. Many Black churches highlighted their congregants’ accomplishments as “civilized moderns” who abandoned their African heathenism, thereby making them worthy of full American citizenship rights. But converting to Christianity did not grant Blacks the legal and social equality they sought. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 414

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the logic that no degree of Muslim assimilation/patriotism buys acceptance from the racial-religious hierarchy; connects to the book’s core thesis about Racial Muslims.
• SEED: Article angle: the ‘model minority’ and ‘civilized convert’ traps as parallel proofs that assimilation cannot purchase racial acceptance when race is the exclusion criterion.