Abstract
This essay examines the incorporation of Muslim identities into the U.S. racial formation through the recent War on Terror campaign that has collapsed the boundaries of race, culture, and religion. The history of these categories of race-making are particularly vexing in the case of U.S. populations of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, broadly racialized as "Muslims." Used by the media, academics, and activists, the unwieldy categories of "Muslim," "Arab," and "South Asian" are collapsed to describe populations targeted for racial discrimination, violent hate crimes, and state policing. Although there is a slow awareness emerging of the differences in these categories, the process of merging them into the racialized figure of the Muslim is far more prevalent. As an example of this making of a Muslim racial formation in the United States, I argue that Pakistani migrants are simultaneously understood through the geographies of South Asia and the Middle East in the rubrics of U.S. popular culture that construct Muslims as Arabs and desis in a contiguous spatial and imagined history.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Between the Middle East and the Americas |
Subtitle of host publication | The Cultural Politics of Diaspora |
Editors | Evelyn Alsultany, Ella Shohat |
Publisher | University of Michigan Press |
Pages | 176-192 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780472069446 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780472099443 |
State | Published - 2013 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences
- General Arts and Humanities