Muslims escape racialized harm by paying a bribe of assimilation and silence

Evidence

Those most likely to escape the harms of racialization are Muslims willing to pay what Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres call the racial bribe. They adopt lifestyles, associations, and anglicized names that signal they are secular and nondissident. Consistent with two centuries of coercive assimilationist ideology, the Secular Racial Muslim is palatable in the workplace, the media, and the political system. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 892

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘racial bribe’ concept from Guinier and Torres — a framework for how racialized groups are offered partial acceptance in exchange for assimilation.
• XREF: The assimilationist tradeoff echoes Du Bois’s double consciousness and the model-minority concept; also parallels the im/migrant assimilation pressures described in Lahiri’s The Namesake.