Court condemnation of polygamy treated Christianity and whiteness as joint markers of civilization.

Evidence

In Mormon Church v. United States, a similar sentiment is expressed in dicta, reinforcing the notion that civilization consisted of the two indispensable ingredients of Christianity and Whiteness/Europeanness: … The organization of a community for the spread and practice of polygamy is, in a measure, a return to barbarism. It is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the western world. The question, therefore, is whether the promotion of such a nefarious system and practice, so repugnant to our laws and to the principles of our civilization, is to be allowed to continue by the sanction of the government itself, and whether the funds accumulated for that purpose shall be restored to the same unlawful uses as heretofore, to the detriment of the true interests of civil society. As a result of relentless legal action against polygamy by the federal government, the Mormon Church eventually abolished plural marriages. The public campaign against it was replete with the kind of racist caricaturing one would expect depicting polygamists as foreign, woman-enslaving, dark-skinned barbarians. Most definitely not respectable, enlightened Europeans with a paternal duty of care to one wife. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 147

Categorization

• XREF: Directly continues the polygamy jurisprudence thread from earlier chapter summaries; connects to how ‘immodest’ or deviant family norms get racialized, echoing the immodesty moral-panic article. — connects to: Christians and Muslims from the same region received opposite citizenship outcomes; Federal courts treated polygamous family norms as racial threats to democratic society; Courts constructed whiteness on shifting criteria including religion. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 183 (+10 more)
• DEFINE: Shows the legal equation civilization = Christianity + Whiteness that Bourdieu-style legal rhetoric enforces.

Broader Connections

• Citizenship in America has historically been tied to whiteness and Christianity #expands (0.85)
• Supreme Court racialized Mormons by associating polygamy with Asian and African peoples #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 328
• Courts constructed whiteness on shifting criteria including religion. #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 183
• Whiteness by law was defined as Christian, excluding Muslims from citizenship #exemplifies (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 150
• Denying citizenship on religious grounds helped construct American whiteness. #expands (0.80) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 117
• Theology justified slavery and genocide by marking whiteness as Christian #expands (0.78) — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 145
• US government has used religion to justify racial subordination throughout history #expands (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1068
• Culture served as a racializing mode that displaced politics onto religion #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 256