Iranians functioned as a racial hinge anchoring others’ claims to whiteness

Evidence

In this chapter, I draw on foundational historical and legal research by scholars like Sarah Gualtieri and John Tehranian to sketch out the earliest presence of Iranians at the turn of the twentieth-century in American racial prerequisite cases. Before Iranians were even physically present in the United States as immigrants, they were in the margins of cases featuring Arab, Armenian, and South Asian claimants. Arab and Armenian claimants presented evidence of their dissimilarity from ­Iranians as proof of their whiteness, while at the same time claimants from the region known today as South Asia presented evidence of their similarity to Iranians as proof of their whiteness. In either scenario, Iranians were “racial hinges” on which claims to whiteness swung. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 117

Categorization

• DEFINE: Maghbouleh introduces the ‘racial hinge’ concept: Iranians served as the comparison point on which Arab, Armenian, and South Asian claims to whiteness swung, prior to Iranian immigration itself.
• XREF: This ‘racial hinge’ concept directly serves the reader’s strategic-essentialism research: it is an externally-imposed essentialist identity position onto which other groups project their own identity claims, paralleling how counter-history positions subjects. — connects to: Iranians functioned as a racial hinge in early naturalization cases. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 69; Iranian experience reveals what official whiteness can and cannot protect. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 66; Iranians have been positioned across the American color line for over a century. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 64 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Iran has functioned as a racial fencepost determining whiteness’s boundaries #epitomizes (0.95) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 34
• Earlier immigrants argued their own whiteness by distancing from Iranians #expands (0.90) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 33
• South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness #exemplifies (0.85) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 151