How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?

Redefining `Race' in North America

“…In addition to their impact on patterns of racial stratification, recent immigration flows have complicated the distinctions that have historically defined race in North America. For example, although Arab migrant populations are categorized as white by the US Census, popular stereotypes often portray Arabs as a non-white minority (Bayoumi, 2002). The assumption that non-white necessarily means black has also been complicated by a relatively new field of multiracial activism and the growth of the Latino-Hispanic population, which has recently exceeded the size of the African American population.…”

Colorblind Islam: The Racial Hinges of Immigrant Muslims in the United States

“…Rather, it is because anyone perceived as "brown" can sometimes be assumed to be Muslim and, therefore, a threat of Islamist terrorism (Silva, 2016), a finding consistently discovered in work on both Muslim Americans and those assumed to be Muslim Americans (Bayoumi, 2009;Mahalingam, 2012). For example, in his interviews with Egyptian Americans, Zopf (2017) found that even his respondents who identified as white were often not recognized as white by other Americans, a finding paralleled by Maghbouleh in her study of Iranian Americans.…”

“…In Jamal and Naber's 2008 edited volume, Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11, various scholars describe how the experience of Arabs after 2001 has been a particularly difficult one (see also Bayoumi, 2009Bayoumi, , 2015Cainkar, 2009;Peek, 2011), though that difficulty is inexplicable without acknowledging the link between being Arab and being Muslim. Indeed, despite the volume being a book about Arab Americans, the phrases "Arabs and Muslims" or "Muslims and Arabs" show up 19 times, and in six of the 12 chapters.…”

Review of Race Scholarship and the War on Terror

“…Jasbir Puar’s (2007) book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times examines how nationalism, sexuality, race, and ethnicity work together to produce homonationalism, which incorporates some queer bodies into the national identity through their participation in racializing Muslims, Sikhs, and Arabs as others who do not belong and who also threaten white queer bodies. Moustafa Bayoumi’s (2008, 2015) work chronicles how religion is racialized via policies and laws passed after 9/11. He argued that the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) is a perfect example of a policy that targeted Muslims, racialized as a threat to national security.…”