Racism persists while its targets shift from black to brown and Jew to Muslim

Evidence

The most significant lesson in the current recodification of racism in America is that racism as a phenomenon stays constant while its signifiers change visual and affective registers—from black to brown, from Jew to Muslim, at the center of which bifurcations remains a fictive white Christian interlocutor who demands and exacts racialized superiority. Islam is the new Judaism, Muslims the new Jews, Islamophobia the new anti-Semitism, and brown the new black—all in the racialized imagination of a white-identified supremacy that must first alienate (both in itself and of itself) in order to rule. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 633

In making this machinery, I wish to argue, brown has become the new black and the Muslim has emerged as the new Jew. White stays the same, but it has lost its iconic power to name, color, and designate. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 118

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s theme of how class/identity/political signaling gets re-targeted across eras and cultures. — connects to: Racism’s modes persist after being severed from their categories of meaning — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1867; Islam’s racial function shifts with changing Muslim demographics. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 246; Parallel racialization logics target Jews and Muslims across eras. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 40 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that racism is a constant whose signifiers rotate (brown for black, Muslim for Jew) while a fictive white center stays put is a dense and original reframing of the color line.
• CANDY: “Brown has become the new black, the Muslim the new Jew” is a punchy provocation sharable as a one-liner.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 633; Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 118

Related

• Shifting racism’s targets exposes the social construction of race itself (similarity 0.84)
• American racism has recently recoded blacks and Jews into Arabs and Muslims (similarity 0.84)
• Racialization is a changing process where context shapes anti-racism too (similarity 0.84)
• Capital constantly recodifies racist power relations, so oppression shifts targets (similarity 0.81)
• Shifting racist targets from black to brown defetishizes Du Bois’s color line (similarity 0.81)
• Distinct racist systems fuse by cross-codifying their targets. (similarity 0.81)
• Islam’s racial function shifts with changing Muslim demographics. (similarity 0.80)
• Racialization of Muslims is historically discontinuous and empire-contingent. (similarity 0.80)
• The shared underlying logic of racialization persists across Jew and Muslim targets (similarity 0.79)
• Cultural and political shifts can racialize religious identity (similarity 0.79)
• Racializing Muslims holds race as both fixed and fluid (similarity 0.79)
• The racialized content of the Muslim category persisted across changing labels (similarity 0.79)
• The American Muslim-as-public-enemy image shifted from black to brown (similarity 0.79)
• Shared connection to Islam, not color, now anchors Muslim racialization (similarity 0.79)
• Racism operates as a changing process rather than a fixed project (similarity 0.79)