Whiteness is a shifting construction that immigrants seek by excluding others

Evidence

As I have demonstrated in this book, racial difference is not neutral. Nor is it stable. Rather, race is a dialectic process of construction that creates an “other” who is inferior. Meanwhile, what constitutes “White” changes over time to secure Eurocentric Christian power. As legal scholar Cheryl Harris highlights, “The possessors of whiteness were granted the legal right to exclude others from the privileges inhering in whiteness.” Consequently, each wave of new immigrants attempted to escape subordination by claiming inclusion in Whiteness and supporting exclusion of Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and Mexicans. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1066

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines race as a dialectic construction rather than a stable category; introduces Cheryl Harris’s concept of whiteness as property.
• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s prior knowledge of whiteness-as-property scholarship (Cheryl Harris), and to racial triangulation literature on immigrant groups positioning against Blacks. — connects to: America’s real prize for immigrants was winning whiteness, not wealth. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 66; Muslim immigrants preferred strained whiteness arguments over an easier Blackness claim; Whiteness is a privilege gained by excluding blacks from one’s occupations — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1221 (+1 more)