Islam shaped African American racial identity formation throughout U.S. history

Evidence

It is impossible to ignore the enemy–friend binary. Attempts to move beyond it are always self-conscious; they produce a kind of double vision. In the very act of building their own communities and public identities, American Muslims must take into account the prejudices and expectations of an imagined, non-Muslim observer. As a result, new distinctions between Self and Other are constantly woven into Muslim American self-definitions. The irony of disciplinary inclusion is the extent to which it turns phobic and philic sentiments into the very architecture of identity formation. It constructs Muslim enemies even as (or precisely because) it stipulates the qualities of Muslim friends. Disciplinary inclusion encourages the Muslim friend to control and marginalize the Muslim enemy, a contest that unfolds in the Self, the family, the community, the nation-state, and the transregional diaspora. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 709 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The assimilation of racial minorities in America has had a different history from that of religious minorities. While religion has had a unifying role in the development of American national identity, race has not. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 286 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hip-hop and celebrity conversions cemented Islam’s association with Black American identity; Black American Islam functioned as post-Reconstruction resistance to white supremacy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 231; Immigrant Muslim missionaries personally bridged Indian and Black American Islam movements — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 179 (+21 more)

Broader Connections

• Muslim Americans occupy a liminal racial position above African Americans #complicates (0.76)
• Anti-Muslim prejudice shapes Muslim-American identity formation from within #complicates (0.72) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 709
• Religion unified American identity while race divided it #complicates (0.71) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 286