Deracializing Iranian discrimination as ‘Islamophobia’ obscures its racial character

Evidence

To derace Nonmacher’s poster is to ignore its central reference to white vigilantism and the lynching of African Americans. To derace Nonmacher’s poster is also to omit the poster’s caption, which appropriates the cowboys-and-Indians trope to amalgamate indigeneity and Iranianness in the service of shorthand for a racial battle between the “civilized” and the “barbaric.” To explain a poster of a fantasized American lynching as ethnic bigotry, religious intolerance, or nativist hatred is to tell twenty-eight-year-old Husein Hadi, the Iranian American organizer who said, “There’s no reason why there should be racism around,” that at Nonmacher’s Bar-B-Que there is in fact no racism around. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 34

Categorization

• XREF: The argument that Islamophobia-as-catchall ‘erroneously flattens’ and obscures the racial valence directly feeds the reader’s Foucauldian tracing of race-talk versus ethnicity/religion/nationality discourse. — connects to: Ethnicity, nationality, and religion cannot fully explain anti-Iranian bias — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 39; Iran has functioned as a racial fencepost determining whiteness’s boundaries — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 34; Islamophobia is increasingly theorized as a form of racism rather than mere religious prejudice (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Ethnicity, nationality, and religion cannot fully explain anti-Iranian bias #corroborates (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 39
• Islamophobia is increasingly theorized as a form of racism rather than mere religious prejudice #complicates (0.78)
• Iran has functioned as a racial fencepost determining whiteness’s boundaries #expands (0.75) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 34
• Anti-Muslim discrimination can target ideology and affiliation rather than phenotype #qualifies (0.72)