Earlier immigrants argued their own whiteness by distancing from Iranians

Evidence

Middle Easterners such as Syrians and Armenians sometimes successful y argued in court that their similarity to Europeans and dissimilarity from dark, “fire-worshipping,” and inassimilable Iranians was proof of Arab and Armenian whiteness. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 33

Categorization

• SEED: Angles: how one ‘excluded’ group proves its inclusion by racializing another — a recurring logic in citizenship and naturalization law.
• XREF: Connects to prerequisite-cases scholarship on whiteness tests (e.g., Ozawa, Thind) and how immigrant groups weaponize each other’s racialization. — connects to: South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 151; Muslim immigrants preferred strained whiteness arguments over an easier Blackness claim; Iranians functioned as a racial hinge in early naturalization cases. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 69 (+1 more)

Related

• Iranians functioned as a racial hinge anchoring others’ claims to whiteness (similarity 0.89)
• Iranians functioned as a racial hinge in early naturalization cases. (similarity 0.88)
• South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness (similarity 0.86)
• Early US courts defined Middle Eastern whiteness by reference to Iranians. (similarity 0.84)
• Early twentieth-century courts positioned Iran as a borderland for whiteness (similarity 0.84)
• Iran functioned as a racial hinge deciding Asian whiteness in US courts (similarity 0.83)
• Iran functioned as a racial hinge in US citizenship law (similarity 0.83)
• Language difference between Persian and Arabic anchors Iranian claims to whiteness (similarity 0.82)
• Iranian Americans arrived with legal whiteness and Aryan nationalist ideologies (similarity 0.82)
• Early twentieth-century courts used Persians as a hinge to define Middle Easterners’ race (similarity 0.82)
• Muslim immigrants preferred strained whiteness arguments over an easier Blackness claim (similarity 0.81)
• Some Iranians arrive believing in an inherited racial whiteness (similarity 0.81)
• Socioeconomic success and legal whiteness do not guarantee protection from racial browning (similarity 0.81)
• First-generation Iranian parents teach their children that Iranians are Aryan whites (similarity 0.80)
• Immigration inspectors grouped Armenians with Persians and Afghans as racially nonwhite (similarity 0.79)