Wearing the hijab strips Arab women of their perceived whiteness

Evidence

Maryam, a Syrian American, told me she passed for white before she decided to wear the hijab. She grew up in a small Midwestern town where hers was one of only a few Muslim and Arab families. Growing up, she said her family was never overtly religious. They used to celebrate the major Muslim holidays, but other than that, culture played a more prominent role in her family’s everyday life than religion. Maryam did not have Muslim friends in high school, but at college in Chicago, she began to meet other Muslims, and this strengthened her interest in Islam. As a result, she started to wear the hijab, which is when she recognized her status as white beginning to change. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 145

Maryam’s statement clearly highlights the impact the hijab has on one’s racial identity: “Before I started wearing the hijab, I never felt like a minority. It wasn’t until after I started to wear the hijab that I realized what it was like to be a minority in this country.” The hijab stripped her of her whiteness. It is important to realize that Arab and South Asian Americans’ experiences with race are not uniform but diverse because of their differential histories of exclusion and inclusion in the United States. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 458

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete interview evidence of the racialization mechanism; echoes the ADDENDUM on immodesty moral panics where dress codes carry identity-signaling weight. — connects to: White victims receive instant humanity denied to Arab and Muslim victims; Arabs gained whiteness-status in 1943 while Muslims generally remained excluded because Islam signified non-whiteness. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123; The hijab signals foreignness so strongly it overrides ethnicity and skin tone — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 349 (+19 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 145; Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 458

Broader Connections

• Arabs classified as white lose that status upon wearing the hijab #expands (0.90) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 201