Syrian immigrants’ whiteness was legally constructed, creating the ‘Middle East’ as a category

Evidence

As Syrians’ ties to the United States strengthened, they sought citizenship because it bestowed multiple benefits, including the ability to travel easily between the United States and Syria and the right to purchase property, own businesses, and vote. However, the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to free White persons, of good character, and living in the United States for two years. After the Bureau of Immigration legally categorized Syrians and Palestinians as Caucasian in its 1899 racial classifications, they had little difficulty naturalizing. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 533 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

When immigrants from the Levant slowly began to arrive at the turn of the twentieth century in pursuit of economic opportunity, their affiliation with Islam (either as Muslims or as Christians governed by Muslim rulers) deemed them inassimilable non-Whites. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 484 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Arguments in cases regarding access to citizenship rights for Syrians in the early twentieth century depended on racial classification and ethnology to define religious di√erence based on an opposition between Muslim foreigners and white Christian citizens. The racial label ”Muslim,” for example, was assigned to Arab Christians who, paradoxically, were racialized as the religious other of white European Christianity. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 205 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Syrian immigrants won citizenship by proving their whiteness through Christian faith; Legal whiteness construction created the Middle East category by separating Syrians from Asia — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 241; Exemption from the Asiatic barred zone consolidated Syrian legal whiteness (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• A bureaucratic 1899 racial label unlocked citizenship for Syrians under the White-only naturalization law #exemplifies (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 533
• Early Levantine immigrants were deemed inassimilable non-Whites due to Muslim affiliation #complicates (0.86) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 484
• Early-twentieth-century US citizenship cases racialized Syrians as Muslim foreign threats. #complicates (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 205
• Muslim identity ejects Arabs from whiteness and strips them of its material benefits #complicates (0.80) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 662