When identified as Muslims, whether through the hijab or a Muslim name, the racial classification as white stops applying to Syrians, Lebanese, and Iraqi Americans. Whiteness comes with certain benefits, like being able to walk into a store without being stared at, monitored, or verbally harassed; boarding a flight in the airport without having your body searched several times, and not having to monitor what you say out of fear that someone will report you to law enforcement. It affords individuals these tangible material and social benefits (Harris 1993). … Arabs who are Muslim are being ejected from the racial classification of white because their religious identity marks them as the other, and South Asian Muslims are simultaneously losing their footing as honorary whites. The men and women I interviewed enjoyed class privilege, but in a society deeply invested in a war to combat and prevent terror, their socioeconomic status does not protect them from this differential treatment in society.

DEFINE: Shows how 'white' is a conditional social classification, not a fixed ethnic identity — religion can eject someone from it. XREF: Connects to scholarship on racial formation and how race is socially constructed rather than biological.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 473