Racialization as a Strategic Orientation: Arab Organizations and the Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Cold War Era

Abstract

Arab Americans are fertile ground for scholars interested in studying processes of racialization and race-making. The ambiguous, or “in-between,” racial status of this population has caused some obstacles for scholars attempting to theorize the source and persistence of discrimination against this group. This article attempts to address these paradoxes by examining the history of Arab ethnic and racial activism in the civil rights/Cold War period and uses this empirical case to argue for an historical interpretation of Arab racialization. Specifically, this article asks two questions: “What international and historical contexts shaped the development of Arab ethnic identity in the United States?” and “How do these historical mechanisms inform and amend current theories of Arab racialization?” To answer these, the article employs a “theoretical frontier” analytic architecture to analyze archival sources documenting Arab ethnic advocacy and organizing strategies during the critical civil rights/Cold War period. The article finds that prominent Arab organizations and their leaders navigated a hostile American public that levied both politically and ethnically motivated attacks against their advocacy, and argues that this historical context in turn shaped later Arab organizations’ approach to formal recognition as an ethnic and racial group. Ultimately, the article argues that racialization—in this case, the decision by Arab organizations beginning in the mid-1970s to pursue a project of Arab ethnic advocacy disarticulated from its political origins—was an historical development that requires reckoning with within the theoretical literature on Arab ethnic formation.