The hijab thus signals to non-Muslim Americans a foreign unwanted presence in the United States. These experiences also clearly demonstrate how the hijab mitigates the privileges that whiteness affords. White women lose their privilege of whiteness when they wear the hijab. The white women's experiences are no different from the Pakistani and Indian women who also wear the hijab. They too are marked as potentially Arab. The hijab becomes a racializing agent, and those who wear it are told to "go back home" by their fellow private citizens, which denies them the ability to claim their national identity.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 247