Religion serves as a surrogate for racial threat identification in American institutions

Evidence

The ways in which religious groups are racialized in the United States vary according to the particular religion’s relationship with Protestantism and Whiteness. Whether before the courts in citizenship proceedings, legislatures in segregation laws, or the executive branch in national security policy, religion has long been a surrogate for identifying threats to the colonists’ and Founders’ vision of a free White Protestant nation. That is, a religion’s interaction with the dominant Christian ideology at a particular historical moment shapes the racialization process and its material consequences for adherents of a minority faith. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 163

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s core analytical framework: religious racialization is historically contingent on each faith’s relationship to Protestant Whiteness — the lens through which the rest of the chapter’s detail is read.
• XREF: Connects to scholarship on racialized religion elsewhere, e.g. Karen Brodkin’s ‘How Jews Became White Folks’ — same historical mechanism, different faith. — connects to: Personal religiosity correlates with progressive views on police violence once Christian nationalism is controlled — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 359; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: Ours, True, and the Identity That Defends Both”