Renewed Muslim immigration shifted Islam’s racialization from Black radicals to Brown aliens

Evidence

American Orientalism weaves in the particularities of Islam into the shifting definitions of race as applied to Arabs at different times. Thus, alienating Islam and Muslims is achieved not only by constructing them only as racially different but also rendering their religion as part of that difference just as the Reynolds Court recognized over a century ago. Islam is, once again, the racializing means, the religion and identity of non-white people. With the resumption of immigration from majority Muslim lands, Islam once again becomes a religion of Brown and Black aliens who must be assimilated and not just of U.S. born, inner-city Black radicals. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 246

Categorization

• XREF: Directly bears on the MOC thread’s core question: the inversion anchor shifts when the racialized constituency changes from shared domestic Black history to fragmented immigrant pathways. — connects to: Islam’s racial function shifts with changing Muslim demographics.; Terrorism racialization evolved from Arabs to Iranians and South Asians from the late 1960s — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 215; The FBI surveilled black Muslims as seditious threats more than white Arab immigrants (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how the demographic substrate of a racial formation determines which groups can mount identity inversion, comparing Black and immigrant Muslim formations.

Broader Connections

• The American Muslim-as-public-enemy image shifted from black to brown #corroborates (0.95) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 414
• Colonial-era differentiation of Muslims preceded and enabled present-day racialization. #complicates (0.78) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 112