Racialization defines the futures available to American Muslims and other marginalized groups.

Evidence

As chapters 1 through 5 show, what Muslims are experiencing today is a continuation of a long history of exclusion against groups of people racialized as inferior on account of religious beliefs deemed inconsistent with America’s ethnocultural White Christian identity. This begs the question whether racialization is American Muslims’ fate. That is, will Muslims be permanently racialized, joining Blacks and Native Americans? Will they become honorary Whites, alongside Asians and White-presenting Latinos? Or will Muslims attempt to become White, similar to Jews, Catholics, and Mormons, by advocating for a shift to an Abrahamic national identity? And if entrance into Whiteness is available and desirable for some Muslims, what is the price of deracialization for them as well as for faiths outside the Abrahamic tradition? What racial bribe will Muslims have to pay to avoid subordination? — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 962

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the framework of racial bribe/Whiteness as a positional good from scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois and David Roediger, and to the reader’s interest in how groups climb or stay outside the racial hierarchy.
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘racial bribe’ framing — what Muslims must pay to avoid subordination — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting way to pose the assimilation question across all marginalized groups.