Immigrant Muslim petitioners chose whiteness claims over easier Black identification.

Evidence

Non-black Muslim Americans, who tend to be the gatekeepers in prominent Muslim advocacy, political, and religious institutions, are largely wed to community models bound to Arab or South Asian ethnocentrism and model minority status, and to an aspirational whiteness that too often is expressed in racism toward African Americans, including African American Muslims. Emulating and becoming more proximate to whiteness mandates expression of one of whiteness’s cornerstone traits, anti-black racism, which non-black Muslims have actively performed in order to claim, or attempt to claim, the coveted privileges of whiteness. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 442 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Black Muslims, already racialized through ideas about skin color and slavery, became an exceptional threat through their association with a racialized Islam. Indeed, Arab Americans and South Asian Americans are linked to African Americans through this shared racialization of Islam. Thus, it is to blackness that Muslims are racially assigned, yet it is to whiteness that immigrants generally aspire for citizenship rights and class mobility. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 211 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pressure to pass into whiteness acted on all racialized groups; Islamic identity rendered immigrants non-white in citizenship cases regardless of legal test — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 154; Bengali immigrants navigated citizenship by adopting Black identity after Thind (+3 more)

Related

• Muslim immigrants preferred strained whiteness arguments over an easier Blackness claim (similarity 0.92)
• Muslims are racially assigned to blackness while immigrants aspire to whiteness. (similarity 0.88)
• Bengali immigrants navigated citizenship by adopting Black identity after Thind (similarity 0.85)
• Islamic identity rendered immigrants non-white in citizenship cases regardless of legal test (similarity 0.83)
• Non-black Muslims perform anti-black racism to claim proximity to whiteness. (similarity 0.81)
• Courts constructed whiteness on shifting criteria including religion. (similarity 0.81)
• People who seem white can be raced non-white on the basis of Islam alone. (similarity 0.80)
• Islamic identity exceeded skin color in rendering Arabs non-white for citizenship (similarity 0.80)
• Assimilationist Muslims seek to expand US national identity from Judeo-Christian to Abrahamic (similarity 0.80)
• Whiteness by law was defined as Christian, excluding Muslims from citizenship (similarity 0.79)
• Islam functionally disqualified citizenship applicants from whiteness regardless of method (similarity 0.79)
• Islam was not associated with whiteness, blocking Muslim naturalization (similarity 0.79)
• Whiteness is a shifting construction that immigrants seek by excluding others (similarity 0.79)
• Early Levantine immigrants were deemed inassimilable non-Whites due to Muslim affiliation (similarity 0.79)
• Courts treated Islam, not skin color alone, as the disqualifying factor for citizenship (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Muslim immigrants preferred strained whiteness arguments over an easier Blackness claim #corroborates (0.97)
• Muslims are racially assigned to blackness while immigrants aspire to whiteness. #qualifies (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 211
• Non-black Muslims perform anti-black racism to claim proximity to whiteness. #responds-to (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 442