Iranian Americans have been flexibly positioned inside and outside whiteness

Evidence

Neda Maghbouleh takes a long view of the Iranian American experience; she notes that the “specter of Iran was a racial hinge between white Europe and non-white Asia: a face, a body, a culture, and a concept that could open or close the door to whiteness as needed. Excavating Iranians out of the margins of these cases reveals how they have been rhetorically positioned both inside and outside white citizenship in the United States for over a century.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 1256

Categorization

• DEFINE: “Racial hinge” is a vivid concept: a group whose racial status is held open or shut to suit political need.
• XREF: Connects to the mutable-racialization theme also present in work on Arab Americans and on Iranian American identity. — connects to: Proximity to whiteness increases rather than reduces Iranian American racialization — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1388; Offering a MENA option shifts Iranian Americans’ racial self-identification away from white — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1404; Iranian Americans arrived with legal whiteness and Aryan nationalist ideologies — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 548 (+13 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: where do the historical legal cases positioning Iranians inside/outside whiteness actually sit (naturalization-era litigation)?

Broader Connections

• Iranians are legally white yet socially non-white in America #expands (0.95) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 90
• Iranians are legally white yet visibly raced in daily life #expands (0.95) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 13
• Iranian Americans arrived with legal whiteness and Aryan nationalist ideologies #corroborates (0.92) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 548
• Iranian Americans are legally white but are routinely racialized as non-white in schools #expands (0.90) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 255
• Social whiteness on the ground remains elusive for Iranian Americans #corroborates (0.88) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 550
• Iranian Americans are legally white yet can claim minority status in discrimination suits #expands (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 98
• The first generation inherited Aryan whiteness from Iranian state socialization #corroborates (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 379
• Iranian Americans equate being American with being white #complicates (0.80) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 715
• Arabs and Iranians experience racism while being officially classified as white #corroborates (0.80) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 472