Description
In this particular historical moment, understanding the origins and evolution of Islamophobia in the United States is imperative in the pursuit of global justice. The study of racial politics in the U.S. has historically ignored the role Islamophobia in the construction of racial categories. This became exponentially more apparent after 9/11 with the substantial increase in surveillance, unlawful detentions, hate crimes, and media rhetoric targeting Muslims and those perceived to be so. This paper seeks to understand the racialisation of a category of people that had hitherto been mostly absent from racial politics literature. I argue that predominantly Christian Arab immigrants enjoyed a relatively benign position within the US racial system in the first half of the twentieth century. While this position was not uncontested, the Christian Arab was granted legal status as white on the basis of a shared Christian heritage. It was not until the 1960s that the Arab, while still officially white in legal instruments such as the Census, lost the protections that such whiteness had granted them. This shift is linked to the U.S.’s increased involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War, which shaped its relationship with its own Arab population. I will show how the coincidence of a series of international conjunctures, from the establishment of the state of Israel, Johnson’s 1965’s Immigration Act, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Iranian Revolution, and the 1970 oil embargo drastically changed American perceptions about Arab Americans. While significant, 9/11 intensified and systematised existing patterns, but it by no means instigated them.
