Upper-middle-class status drives mainstream Muslim groups to avoid race analysis

Evidence

Sheehi argues that Middle Eastern (both Arab and Iranian) and South Asian Muslims, who make up 45 percent of American Muslims, are overwhelmingly upper-middle class. This class position explains their assimilationist approach, which allows them to “maintain a sense of ethnic belonging while also benefiting from the class privileges that are firmly rooted in middle-class white America.” … Not surprisingly, he adds that even while some CAIR chapters and other groups have endorsed Black Lives Matter and taken anti-racist positions, they prefer to eschew talking about race and racism altogether. Thus, they engage Islamophobia in terms of religious tolerance rather than as the racism that enables empire. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 730

Categorization

• XREF: Class-based explanation of a minority group’s assimilationist, religion-not-race framing parallels literature on black and other immigrant middle classes’ respectability politics, and speaks to the reader’s ‘de-racializing moves’ thread. — connects to: Most Arab and South Asian American Muslims are upper-middle class, shaping their politics — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 718; Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslims’ upper-middle-class position drives their assimilationist religiosity-over-racism framing — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 718; Class position drives Muslim organizations’ assimilationist, race-averse strategy

Broader Connections

• Class position drives Muslim organizations’ assimilationist, race-averse strategy #corroborates (1.00)