Forever Suspect

Saher Selod

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813588353
• eBook ISBN: 9780813588360
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

The declaration of a “War on Terror” in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks brought sweeping changes to the American criminal justice and national security systems, as well as a massive shift in the American public opinion of both individual Muslims and the Islamic religion generally. Since that time, sociologist Saher Selod argues, Muslim Americans have experienced higher levels of racism in their everyday lives. In Forever Suspect, Selod shows how a specific American religious identity has acquired racial meanings, resulting in the hyper surveillance of Muslim citizens. Drawing on forty-eight in-depth interviews with South Asian and Arab Muslim Americans, she investigates how Muslim Americans are subjected to racialized surveillance in both an institutional context by the state and a social context by their neighbors and co-workers. Forever Suspect underscores how this newly racialized religious identity changes the social location of Arabs and South Asians on the racial hierarchy further away from whiteness and compromises their status as American citizens.

1

Moving from South Asian and Arab Identities to a Muslim Identity

South Asians and Arabs in the United States share a long history that dates back as early as the eighteenth century. In this book, I show how Arab and South Asian Muslim experiences are beginning to mirror one another due to their religious identity, so it is important to note that their histories and experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the United States have never been uniform. By examining their unique patterns of migration within different time periods, I reveal how Arabs and South Asians have come to occupy different locations on the racial hierarchy. For example, Arab Christians who migrated to the United States in the late nineteenth century were treated in a similar fashion as white ethnics, whereas South Asian migrants were not afforded this status. An examination of the histories and experiences of South Asians and Arabs over time in the United States enables an understanding of where they currently exist on the racial hierarchy today and how religion guided their inclusion and exclusion from whiteness.

South Asians in the United States

South Asians are individuals from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Currently, Indians and Pakistanis make up the majority of South Asians living in the United States (Hoeffel et al. 2012). Most South Asian migrants that came to America in the early 1900s were Indians living under British colonial rule (Purkayastha 2005) and arrived between 1880 and the 1920s as unskilled laborers, including farm and industrial workers, who intended to go back to India (Prashad 2000; Bald 2015). The majority were Sikhs, but a small portion of these unskilled Indian laborers were Muslims who took up residence in port cities such as New York and New Orleans (Bald 2015). Both Arabs and South Asians have lived in the United States since the early twentieth century, but anti-Asian exclusionary immigration policies banned South Asians from entering the United States at various points in time. For example, as a result of rampant anti-Chinese sentiments, the Immigration Act of 1917 prevented anyone from Asia from migrating to the United States, including South Asian Indians. This policy created an “Asiatic Barred Zone” that prevented Asians, South Asians, and Southeast Asians from migrating to the United States. At the borders, South Asian migrants were denied entry based on undesirable characteristics, like being an “alcoholic” or having a mental or physical disability, or, for women, coming for “immoral” purposes (Bald 2013; Kibria, Bowman, and O’Leary 2014).

The Immigration Act of 1924 created quotas for migration into the United States, barring individuals who did not hail from Western and Northern Europe. According to Kibria et al., “The successful passage of the National Origins Act marked a great triumph for the forces of racist nativism” (2014: 30). This immigration policy limited the number of migrants from any country to 2 percent of people from a particular nationality living in the United States based on the 1890 census. Because there were so few South Asians in the United States at the time, only a small number were allowed entrance. Compared to Arabs, who were more likely to be treated like white ethnics such as Italians and Greeks, South Asians were residentially segregated due to their racialized status (Cainkar 2009). In cities like New York, many South Asian migrants, like Bengali peddlers, married Latinas and African American women in the late 1800s due to this residential racial segregation—they were in close proximity—as well as because South Asian women were denied entry into America due to the exclusionary immigration policies of the time (Prashad 2000; Bald 2015).

This early twentieth-century overview reveals how whiteness was constructed not only in opposition to blackness through legal regulations but also in relation to other immigrant groups like Asians, which often included South Asians. Excluding these groups and denying citizenship based on religious identity helped define what it meant to be white. But South Asians’ exclusion was not that straightforward. Haney Lopez documents several legal cases where South Asian Indians were determined to be white by the courts. For example, in the early twentieth century, the courts used “common knowledge” and “scientific evidence” to argue about whether Asian Indians were white or not white (Lopez 2006). Common knowledge referred to popularly held notions about race, while scientific knowledge relied on naturalistic studies of humans. In the United States v. Dolla (1910) and United States v. Balsara (1910), the courts ruled Asian Indians were white based on scientific evidence. But in 1923’s United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Bhagat Thind, an Indian immigrant, was denied citizenship because Hindus were seen as ineligible for naturalization—one that held even though Thind was actually Sikh. This ruling was based on common knowledge and set legal precedent for the cases that would follow by determining that Asian Indians who were Hindus could not become naturalized citizens because Hindus were not considered white. This case uncovered that a religious identity, being Hindu, distanced Asian Indians from whiteness.

The barriers to naturalization were lifted with the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, which allowed Indians and Filipinos to become American citizens (Dhingra 2012). However, it was not until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that America saw a significant increase in South Asian migration. This incoming population differed significantly from the previous Indian migrants. Due to preferences for highly skilled migrants, the post-1965 South Asian migration to America brought an influx of highly educated, middle-class, professional immigrants, from India in particular. Because the borders also opened to Arabs, a large number of Muslims migrated at this time. Muslim immigrants quickly planted roots by building mosques and religious cultural centers across the country, thus diversifying the American religious landscape. Between the 1950s and 1970s, South Asian Indians once again experienced confusion about their racial status during this time. Due to their complicated history around their racial identity, many South Asian Indians chose “white” or “other” on the U.S. Census. It was not until 1980 that they were racially categorized under the Asian classification by the U.S. Census Bureau at the request of Asian Indian migrants.1 Some South Asians do not identify as “Asian” (Kibria 1998); their experiences are distinct from Chinese, Japanese, and other ethnic groups that have been lumped into this classification. For South Asians, their racial identification has been fluid from the moment they came to the United States, with a history of inclusion and exclusion in whiteness.

Arabs in the United States

In some ways, Arab migration to the United States was similar to South Asians’, but there were notable differences. According to the U.S. census (2010), Arabs are defined as individuals who claim an Arabic-speaking ancestry.2 There were three distinct waves of Arab resettlement in the United States. The first wave occurred from the 1880s to 1924, from what was once known as “Greater Syria,” which included modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and portions of Jordan that were part of the Ottoman Empire (Cainkar 2009). Most of the migrants at this time were unskilled laborers seeking economic opportunities abroad, and the majority were Christians as opposed to Muslims (Suleiman 1999). Arab Christian migrants’ patterns in terms of employment, intermarriage, and neighborhoods of residence were similar to those of other white ethnics, such as Italians, Slavs, and Greeks (Cainkar 2009). While there were certain geographic locations where Arabs experienced discrimination (including legal challenges to their rights to naturalization due to increased nativism of the early twentieth century), some were able to experience upward social mobility and participate more fully in American society.3 Some Syrian Christians were able to access citizenship by proving their whiteness at a time when Japanese and Indians were denied citizenship and/or denaturalized (Lopez 2006; Gualtieri 2009). But the courts were not consistent in granting citizenship to Syrians. Arabs like South Asians had a unique history of being classified or denied naturalization because the courts were unable to agree on whether they were white. In Ex parte Shahid (1913), Faras Shahid, a Syrian immigrant, was denied citizenship because common knowledge was used by the courts to argue he was not white because of his darker skin tone and his inability to speak English. George Dow, also a Syrian immigrant, was denied citizenship by several lower courts, but in United States v. Dow (1915), the courts ruled based on scientific evidence that he was white. This was based on the intelligence he displayed to the courts but also because the courts decided Syria was geographically associated with Judaism and Christianity, and therefore those from Syria could become citizens (Lopez 2006).

In 1942, a Michigan court ruled against naturalizing Ahmed Hassan because Arabs were not white, while in Massachusetts, a Syrian man was able to access citizenship because the court ruled in 1944 that Arabs were eligible for citizenship (Lopez 2006; Love 2017). 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). For some Arabs, such as Syrians, their Christian identity and lighter skin tones afforded them certain key privileges that South Asians—who had darker complexions and were typically either Hindu or Muslim—were unable to access.4

The next major phase of Arab migration to the United States occurred during the post–World War II era. This period saw an increase in Muslim migrants. While the first wave brought sojourners who came in search of work opportunities and intended to eventually move back to the Greater Syria area, the second wave brought political refugees to the United States due to war and turmoil in their home countries. At that time, global interests and shifting international relations were causing America to move toward more inclusive immigration policies. For example, because China aided the United States in World War II, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was repealed in 1942 (Cainkar 2009).

The shifts between inclusion and exclusion of Arab migrants to the United States continued in the middle of the twentieth century. Due to political turmoil in Palestine in the early 1940s, there was an upswing in Palestinian migration to the United States. As a part of family reunification policies, women and children from the region began to migrate in large numbers. Congress passed two Palestinian refugee acts in 1953 and 1957, opening American borders to those who were being expelled after the creation of the state of Israel.5 The 1950s also saw an increase in highly educated Arab professionals immigrating from Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt to the United States. Unlike the previous generation of Arab migrants, this second wave was politically motivated and formed national organizations with the intent to influence American policies toward the Middle East (Suleiman 1999). The third wave of Arab immigrants arrived after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which came on the tail end of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that provided the momentum to create more inclusive immigration policies. The 1965 act eliminated the quotas that had prevented migration from non-Western European countries, including those from Arab and South Asian countries. Consequently, professionals, unskilled laborers, and political refugees from Palestine, Iran, and Iraq were able to relocate to the United States in large numbers (Suleiman 1999). Between 1965 and 2000, more than six hundred thousand Arab migrants arrived in the United States. According to the Migration Policy Institute, by 2010, the immigrant population from Middle Eastern and North African countries living on American soil totaled more than eight hundred thousand individuals, who were largely Muslim (Batalova and Zong 2018).

As more Arabs migrated to the United States, negative stereotypes about them also began to flourish. The American media increasingly covered the Arab-Israeli conflict and the occupation of Palestine in the late 1960s, which led to racialized representations of Arabs in general. While the vilification of Arabs dates back to the eighteenth century, it is important to note that representations are fluid and fluctuate based on the sociohistorical context. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Arabs were portrayed as barbaric, greedy and dishonest—a characterization that was rooted in America’s global interest in the Middle East and particularly Israel (Naber 2000; Cainkar 2009; Alsultany 2012; Shaheen 2014). For example, Jack Shaheen (2014) traces the media-based vilification of Arabs by examining their representations in nine hundred films over a twenty-year period. Through a content analysis of these films, Shaheen describes how the stereotype of Arab men as barbaric and greedy keepers of women in harems emerged, one that has morphed over time into the stereotype of the Muslim man as a terrorist, thus reflecting recent global concerns and changing political contexts.

While Arabs have had to contend with stereotypes, they are still faring well in some ways in the United States. According to the 2000 census, Arabs living in the United States had a median income similar to the national average and were more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than the overall American population. But even with this success, they have always contended with a racialized identity that has been tied directly to America’s foreign policy. The association of Arabs, and now Muslims, with terrorism, has justified U.S. military intervention in Arab countries. Once able to access some of the privileges of whiteness such as naturalization due to being seen as culturally similar to Western Europeans, the racialization of this group has grown exponentially over the past four decades. I show how Arabs who are Muslim are seen as incompatible culturally with Western values.

Arabs have experienced periods of both exclusion and inclusion since they first migrated to the United States. Although immigration laws were once more lenient toward Muslim migrants, the Trump era is likely to become hyperexclusionary toward this group.6 In a political era that is marked by hypersurveillance and the costly War on Terror, Arabs who are also Muslim continue to move away from whiteness, regardless of their actual skin tone or pigmentation.

Shifting from an Ethnic Identity to “Muslim First” in America

Religion as a marker of identity started to grow as a result of the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Immigrant Muslims began to carve out Muslim spaces in the American landscape by doing things like building mosques, motivated by the desire to teach their children Islamic values. These mosques have varied in size and architecture; furthermore, the racial and ethnic makeup of congregations has differed depending on geographic location (Smith 1999). Their establishment reflects the importance of a Muslim identity for South Asian and Arab migrants who feared losing it after migration.

In large metropolitan cities like Chicago, the Muslim community is less integrated with each other; South Asian Muslims and Arab Muslims tend instead to live in different, racially and economically segregated, neighborhoods. Cultural barriers, such as language and even religious practices, prevent these two populations from forming one larger Muslim community. One key example that demonstrates both differences in the practice of Islam as well as unique cultural practices based on ethnic identity is in how Muslim women cover their hair. Some women cover their hair fully, so that not even one strand is visible, while others cover their hair more loosely. In addition to cultural practices, Muslim communities are not completely integrated with one another due to their different reasons for migration to the United States. Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian immigrants who fled their countries as a result of war generally arrived without the resources of middle-class Pakistani and Indian professionals who migrated willingly to...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Racialized Surveillance in the War on Terror
• Chapter 1. Moving from South Asian and Arab Identities to a Muslim Identity
• Chapter 2. Flying while Muslim: State Surveillance of Muslim Americans in U.S. Airports
• Chapter 3. Citizen Surveillance
• Chapter 4. Self-Discipline or Resistance?: Muslim American Men and Women’s Responses to Their Hypersurveillance
• Chapter 5. Shifting Racial Terrain for Muslim Americans: The Impact of Racialized Surveillance
• Conclusion: The Future for Muslims in the United States
• Appendix: Methodology
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author