Religious assimilation granted Whiteness, but phenotype permanently blocked non-White converts

Evidence

After World War II, with the expansion of American national identity to a Judeo-Christian one, Jews were granted full cultural citizenship, as opposed to only legal citizenship. With the inclusion of Jews and Catholics in the national identity came their transformation from inferior non-Anglo-Saxon “races” to culturally assimilable ethnic Whites. This path to first-class citizenship, however, was not available to African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Their phenotype and skin color permanently exclude them from legal and social Whiteness—even if they convert to Christianity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 165

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Parallels the Noor Tagouri and ‘Racial Muslim’ thesis from earlier chapters — religious conversion cannot grant Whiteness to non-White phenotypes. Also connects to Brodkin’s account of postwar Jewish Whiteness.

Related

• Phenotypic non-Whites are barred from Whiteness even when Christian (similarity 0.95)
• Religious expansion to Judeo-Christian framing was a precondition for immigrant Whiteness (similarity 0.86)
• Legal whiteness did not confer social privileges of whiteness (similarity 0.84)
• Assimilation lets some ethnic groups become White but never Blacks (similarity 0.84)
• Catholics and Jews gained Whiteness only by adopting Anglo-Protestant norms (similarity 0.83)
• Postwar redefinition of Whiteness shifted European differences from racial to ethnic (similarity 0.82)
• The Abrahamic expansion of Whiteness still excludes phenotypically and religiously marked members (similarity 0.82)
• Black Christian conversion could not buy the citizenship rights that assimilation granted European immigrants (similarity 0.82)
• Religious beliefs once darkened the perceived skin color of Catholics and Jews (similarity 0.82)
• Religious identity, once racialized, bars citizens from full dignitary benefits (similarity 0.81)
• Religious identity functions as a racial marker conferring privilege in America. (similarity 0.81)
• Converting to Islam causes white people to be reracialized as non-white (similarity 0.80)
• Religious identity can become racialized by imputing biological and cultural inferiority (similarity 0.80)
• Courts constructed whiteness on shifting criteria including religion. (similarity 0.80)
• Ethnic assimilation granted whiteness privileges regardless of class (similarity 0.80)