Categorical whiteness excludes Arabs and Muslims from the benefits of racial remedy in America

Evidence

When identified as Muslims, whether through the hijab or a Muslim name, the racial classification as white stops applying to Syrians, Lebanese, and Iraqi Americans. Whiteness comes with certain benefits, like being able to walk into a store without being stared at, monitored, or verbally harassed; boarding a flight in the airport without having your body searched several times, and not having to monitor what you say out of fear that someone will report you to law enforcement. It affords individuals these tangible material and social benefits (Harris 1993). Arabs who are Muslim are being ejected from the racial classification of white because their religious identity marks them as the other, and South Asian Muslims are simultaneously losing their footing as honorary whites. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 662 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

These experiences also clearly demonstrate how the hijab mitigates the privileges that whiteness affords. White women lose their privilege of whiteness when they wear the hijab. The white women’s experiences are no different from the Pakistani and Indian women who also wear the hijab. They too are marked as potentially Arab. The hijab becomes a racializing agent, and those who wear it are told to “go back home” by their fellow private citizens, which denies them the ability to claim their national identity. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 261 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

This understanding of race and racialization is unduly dependent on physical cues. While the visual dimension does indeed inspire racialization, I found Muslim American experience it even when they are racially visible as white. Therefore, for me to use the concept of racialization to understand how Muslim bodies acquire racial meanings, I provide a newer, updated definition of the term employing other factors that allow for bodies to be understood as racial. I define it as “the process by which bodies become racial in their lived realities because of biological and/or cultural traits as a result of the inter­ section and cooperation between ideologies, policies, laws, and social interactions that results in the denial of equal treatment in society.” This definition allows scholars to examine racialization as interactional—­between societal institutions and individuals. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Muslim Americans are racialized even when visibly white, so racialization must include cultural traits — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88; Muslim American experiences refute the postracial Obama-era claim of colorblindness; Muslim identity ejects Arabs from whiteness and strips them of its material benefits — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 662 (+14 more)

Related

• Muslim identity ejects Arabs from whiteness and strips them of its material benefits (similarity 0.92)
• Invisible minority describes Arabs marginalized though classified as white by the census (similarity 0.89)
• Muslim identity ejects Arab Americans from legal whiteness and its social benefits. (similarity 0.89)
• Arabs were classified white for citizenship so they could be distinguished from ineligible Asians (similarity 0.88)
• Arabs gained whiteness-status in 1943 while Muslims generally remained excluded because Islam signified non-whiteness. (similarity 0.88)
• The hijab overrides whiteness as a racializing agent on any wearer. (similarity 0.88)
• Muslim Arabs move away from whiteness regardless of actual skin tone (similarity 0.87)
• Converting to Islam or wearing the hijab causes loss of whiteness privileges (similarity 0.87)
• Wearing the hijab is read as surrendering whiteness and citizenship standing (similarity 0.87)
• Muslim Americans are racialized even when visibly white, so racialization must include cultural traits (similarity 0.87)
• Lighter skin and Westernized names let some Muslims pass as white (similarity 0.87)
• Cultural and religious practices can racialize a body just as skin tone does (similarity 0.86)
• Wearing the hijab strips Arab women of their perceived whiteness (similarity 0.86)
• Racialization operates through cultural traits and social interactions, not only physical cues. (similarity 0.86)
• Arabs classified as white lose that status upon wearing the hijab (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Muslim identity ejects Arabs from whiteness and strips them of its material benefits #exemplifies (0.85) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 662
• Converting to Islam or wearing the hijab causes loss of whiteness privileges #exemplifies (0.80) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 261
• Muslim Americans are racialized even when visibly white, so racialization must include cultural traits #expands (0.75) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88
• Muslim names alone can racialize phenotypically white people #expands (0.70) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 91
• Cultural practices become racialized when they are essentialized as innate to Muslims #expands (0.65) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 274
• Muslim American experiences refute the postracial Obama-era claim of colorblindness #expands (0.60)
• Whiteness was defined through exclusion of non-black immigrant groups too. #expands (0.60)
• Anti-Muslim crisis periods simultaneously empower and marginalize Arab American communities #expands (0.55)