The flawed categorization of race: West vs Rest

[karla_stephan]

The way race is defined in the United States Census is very peculiar. There are skin colors mixed with countries of origin (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander) with no room for variety. Race is more than about skin color and it leaves Middle Eastern and South Asian people out from being properly represented when the only viable options are White or Asian. Rana explains this as the two options of the Syrian and the Hindu. There is a mass grouping of people that have completely different histories and racial breakdowns. I thought that the Rana reading was extremely interesting and I learned a lot about the history of the Muslim identity in the context of the modern systems of racism and oppression. It is especially interesting the way it intersects with my identity and my knowledge of the world. Rana explains how “the racial label “Muslim,” for example, was assigned to Arab Christians who, paradoxically, were racialized as the religious other of white European Christianity.” Growing up as an Arab Christian, the identity is one that is heavily debated in both the Arab world and the Christian world. European Christians do not align themselves with those that look different despite their religion being the main pillar of their identity. And as for the Arab world, Islam and the Middle East have become so interwoven that in most people's minds there is simply not any other viable religious option. They have become synonyms for each other and the identities are seen as one with the “Arab-Middle Eastern Muslim.” This completely ignores the not Middle Eastern Muslims the not Muslim Middle Easterners. Rana connects this back to the ways this played out in the legal system as the courts “view Arabs and Muslims ambiguously” which affected cases of naturalization. It is interesting now to circle this back to the current climate of the US Census where the MENA (Middle East North Africa) checkbox will be added as Arabs who used to beg to use whiteness for their benefit are now seeing the extreme negative effects of this misrepresentation. We cannot be white when whiteness is the very thing that harms us. Islamophobia has become a more expansive term in the way that “the Muslim” represents more than just the Muslim. Islamophobia will get anyone that looks like “the immigrant” and Rana says “perhaps ‘immigrant’ itself is a racial category in which xenophobia is expressed in perpetual scapegoating.” Categorization is just a tool to classify the “us vs them,” “the Other,” and the “West vs Rest.”