Shared ancestry did not protect Mormons from racialization as foreigners

Evidence

Mormons were racialized as animalistic or devilish, with cloven feet and horns, mirroring the racialization of Jews and Native Americans. In the late 1800s, political cartoons compared Mormons to Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, and Irish Catholics as a pressing political problem for America. That Mormons were equated with other groups deemed national security threats speaks to the powerful role of religion in racially distinguishing between Protestants and Mormons, notwithstanding their common Anglo-Saxon origins. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 322

Categorization

• XREF: Shows racialization overriding shared Anglo-Saxon origin — parallels themes from the reader’s work on how group boundaries are drawn regardless of biological similarity. — connects to: US immigration law excluded Muslim Indians on polygamy grounds even when they claimed whiteness — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 179