From white to what? MENA and Iranian American non-white reflected race

ABSTRACT

Whereas instruments like the US Census classify Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans as white, racial formation-informed research has established that this population holds an ambiguous relationship with whiteness. I draw on theories of the self and cognition to introduce reflected race as an underexplored dimension of MENA racialization. Interviews with 84 Iranian Americans demonstrate how group members perceive they are appraised as distinct from and, in some ways, subordinate to a hegemonic US white norm. Following initial illegibility (“what?”) in racial appraisal, respondents perceive a classificatory splitting from whiteness and/or lumping with similarly racialized others. In other words, they micro-interactionally move from “white” to “what?” and ultimately, to an uncertain but deeply felt sense non-white reflected race. By turning attention to social-psychological-informed phenomenon like reflected race, researchers can make more full use of racialization and racial formation as the dynamic, multi-level concepts they were originally theorized to be.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflected race
• racialization
• MENA
• Middle Eastern
• Iranian
• cognition

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Clayton Childress and reviewers for their helpful comments and to Shyon Baumann for suggesting a cognitive approach to Iranian and MENA ethno-racial ambiguity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ProQuest US Newsstream search, 9 February 2018.

2 The terms “white” and “non-white” are used throughout this article. I draw on the political, moral, and epistemological meaning of the terms from Mills (1997). The dynamic classification of people as white or non-white is a process reproduced through cognitive, moral, and cultural frames, and in Mills’ political-philosophical definition of race, index “full” versus “subordinate” personhood.

3 This figure is an estimate based on the Census Bureau 2015 American Community Survey (ACS), which historically undercounts Iranians and other MENA groups. See Appendix B in Maghbouleh (2017).