Cultural traits like language, clothing, and religious practice can racialize a group.

Evidence

Surveillance of culture is racialized when cultural practices are essentialized as innate to Muslims, subjecting them to intense scrutiny. For example, any abuse that Muslim women experience at the hands of Muslim men is reduced to religious cultural values perpetuated by Islam. The Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan is an example of this culturally fueled racism. Muslim women were constructed as in need of saving from Muslim men, which in turn justified the invasion of Afghanistan (Razack 2008 Abu-Lughod 2013). Another example of this is the misconception that Muslim women are forced to wear the hijab. Private citizens chastise Muslim American women who wear the hijab because for them it represents subservience to patriarchy, rather than being understood as a choice. Wearing the hijab is treated as a cultural aberration to American societal values and individuals who wear it are understood as antimodern and antifeminist. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 274 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

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

• XREF: connects to: For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity.; Sociological approaches insist race and ethnicity have autonomous, non-reducible effects; Cultural Studies evolved through critical engagements with Marxism, feminism, and race. (+34 more)

Related

• Racialization operates through cultural traits and social interactions, not only physical cues. (similarity 0.94)
• Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups. (similarity 0.92)
• Cultural and religious practices can racialize a body just as skin tone does (similarity 0.91)
• Cultural racism substitutes cultural difference for biological difference as a racial logic (similarity 0.90)
• Cultural racism targets Muslims’ beliefs and traditions as if they were inherited essence. (similarity 0.90)
• Muslim Americans are racialized even when visibly white, so racialization must include cultural traits (similarity 0.90)
• Cultural practices become racialized when they are essentialized as innate to Muslims (similarity 0.89)
• Cultural and religious practices become racialized markers treated as inherent traits. (similarity 0.87)
• Racialization assigns presumed negative traits to define a group. (similarity 0.87)
• Religious cultural practices get read as evidence of Muslim men’s misogyny rather than doctrine. (similarity 0.86)
• Racialization can proceed from cultural traits without any phenotypic difference (similarity 0.86)
• Muslim identity gets racialized through names and clothing, not only skin tone (similarity 0.86)
• Racialization mutates with the power interests that institutionalize it, not fixed phenotypes. (similarity 0.86)
• Muslim names alone can racialize phenotypically white people (similarity 0.86)
• South Asian racial classification has been fluid and contested in the US. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups. #corroborates (0.85)
• Cultural practices become racialized when they are essentialized as innate to Muslims #exemplifies (0.80) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 274
• Racialization can proceed from cultural traits without any phenotypic difference #expands (0.75) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88
• Religious identity can be racialized when signifiers trigger profiling #corroborates (0.70)
• Muslim names alone can racialize phenotypically white people #exemplifies (0.70) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 91
• Muslim religious identity becomes a racial category through surveillance. #exemplifies (0.60)