US empire excluded Arab Americans from their prior marginal whiteness

Evidence

According to the citizenship laws of the period (and until 1952), only “free white persons” could qualify for naturalization, and laws were passed explicitly to bar “Asiatics” from American citizenship. Confronted with this reality, the Arab-American community from across the nation mobilized to prove that they were indeed “free white people,” and a series of court rulings eventually affirmed that position. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 978 (#expands, via linked claim)

By 1943, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) determined that Arabs were white and eligible for citizenship due to having a shared culture and civilization with Western countries. INS relied on the case United States v. Thind (1923) to argue that Arabs were not like Asians, who were ineligible for naturalization. In other words, “the INS view was that Arabs were white and fully eligible for immigration and naturalization benefits (unlike most Asians at the time) and it issued an ‘instruction’ on the matter for INS offices across the nation” (Cainkar 2009: 77). At that point in time, Arabs were racially distinguished from Asians, with their perceived closeness to whiteness allowing them to access citizenship while distancing them from cultures and ethnicities marked as incapable of sharing white European cultural values. What this history reveals is that Muslims had difficulties becoming naturalized citizens because Islam was not associated with whiteness (Gualtieri 2009). — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US imperial wars abroad drive the racial exclusion of Arab Americans at home. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 236; Arab Americans’ racial exclusion from whiteness tracks the rise of US global empire — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 248; Arabs had to litigate their whiteness to gain US citizenship — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 978 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Arab Americans had to prove whiteness to naturalize before 1952 #expands (0.96)
• Arabs had to litigate their whiteness to gain US citizenship #expands (0.93) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 978
• Arabs gained whiteness-status in 1943 while Muslims generally remained excluded because Islam signified non-whiteness. #qualifies (0.92) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123
• Arabs became legally White only when US oil interests in Saudi Arabia demanded it #complicates (0.80)