Whiteness grants presumptive belonging that race-neutral legal status does not

Evidence

While bestowing myriad privileges upon those who possess it, whiteness disconnects its victims from their historical claims and grievances. In addition to erasing indigenous people from their land, it erases their legal stake in the land and asserts itself, and those who possess it, as the rightful owners of the land. … Therefore, white women and men, regardless of when they arrive in lands like New Zealand and Australia, are never branded “intruders” or even “immigrants,” even though an objective analysis of history affirms that they are the very essence of both. Whiteness grants them a freedom of movement, and a presumption of belonging, that is seldom extended to people of color. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 906

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reworks what ‘immigrant’ actually means versus who actually gets called one — a definitional reframing with causal force.
• XREF: Parallels the reader’s other material on how identity categories get weaponized; relates to Iftikhar’s global-synthesis view of Islamophobia. — connects to: Irish whiteness required excluding blacks from any shared occupation and erasing memory — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 400; Whiteness means partaking in skin privileges above any excluded person — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 29; Whiteness for the Irish meant labor, legal, and residential rights, not wealth or status — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 36