Early US courts defined Middle Eastern whiteness by reference to Iranians.

Evidence

The whiteness of Syrian and Armenian claimants was made legible by being unlike “clearly non-white” Iranians. Yet the whiteness of “Parsee” Indian claimants around the same time was made legible by being like “clearly white” Iranians. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 58

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Farnia’s concept of “peripheral racialization” — a useful analytical term.
• XREF: The “racial hinges” image connects to constructionist accounts of race from social capital and identity scholarship. — connects to: Iranians functioned as a racial hinge in early naturalization cases. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 69; Iran functioned as a racial hinge deciding Asian whiteness in US courts — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 70

Related

• Early twentieth-century courts used Persians as a hinge to define Middle Easterners’ race (similarity 0.90)
• Iranians functioned as a racial hinge in early naturalization cases. (similarity 0.89)
• Iranians functioned as a racial hinge anchoring others’ claims to whiteness (similarity 0.89)
• Iran functioned as a racial hinge deciding Asian whiteness in US courts (similarity 0.88)
• Early twentieth-century courts positioned Iran as a borderland for whiteness (similarity 0.87)
• Iran functioned as a racial hinge in US citizenship law (similarity 0.86)
• Earlier immigrants argued their own whiteness by distancing from Iranians (similarity 0.84)
• Iran has functioned as a racial fencepost determining whiteness’s boundaries (similarity 0.82)
• Iranian Americans have been flexibly positioned inside and outside whiteness (similarity 0.82)
• Iranians have been positioned across the American color line for over a century. (similarity 0.79)
• Middle Easterners are too white for legal redress yet too non-white to escape racism (similarity 0.79)
• South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness (similarity 0.79)
• Iranian Americans arrived with legal whiteness and Aryan nationalist ideologies (similarity 0.79)
• Legally-white Middle Easterners lack recourse since law can’t grasp white-on-white bias (similarity 0.79)