‘White’ raises Middle Eastern issues

Amir Marvasti

In “White-Washed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Minority,” John Tehranian tries to untangle the vexed questions surrounding the designation of people from the Middle East in the racial hierarchy of the United States.

The book is well written and surprisingly coherent, given the ambiguities inherent in the subject matter. Though he is a law professor by trade, Tehranian shows himself to be well versed in sociology and history. The book is further enhanced by personal stories that both authenticate and humanize what may have otherwise seemed like an esoteric legal debate.

The central mission of the book is to illustrate the peculiar circumstances under which Iranians and people from the Middle East and North Africa, in general, are officially defined as “white,” despite their appearance and ethnic origin.

For example, Tehranian offers a detailed historical account of how Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in the early 1900s petitioned the U.S. Congress to be recognized as whites rather than as Asiatics. This was critical to these early Middle Eastern immigrants because, under U.S. immigration laws of that period, only whites could become naturalized citizens. So, in some ways, our honorary designation as whites is a vestige of discriminatory immigration laws and Middle Eastern immigrants’ attempts to circumvent such barriers.

Incidentally, it was only after the civil rights movement of the 1960s that racial discrimination in the naturalization process laws officially ended.

Tehranian gradually brings us to contemporary struggles to reverse the “white” designation. For example, he notes that the Arab American Institute lobbied the Census Bureau to include a separate category for “Middle Eastern Americans” in the 2000 census.

The request was rejected on the grounds that the group is too small and not worthy of a distinct classification. Of course, the Census Bureau, according to Tehranian, was all too willing to provide the Department of Homeland Security with a customized listing of the place of residence of people from the Middle East (i.e., national origin, population size, and ancestry by zip code).

This contradiction in the way we are treated is essentially what Tehranian so aptly underlines. Middle Eastern Americans are at once legally invisible and socially visible. For the purpose of any governmental programs intended to address institutional discrimination in housing, employment or education, people from the Middle East are treated as white.

That is what Tehranian has in mind, more or less, when he uses the term “white-washed.” On the other hand, when it comes to ethnic profiling for the greater moral good of national security, we are very much visible.

Clearly, the story of racial struggle and dubious classification is not unique to people from the Middle East. For example, consider what it took to be defined as black at one point in American history under the “one-drop rule.” It didn’t matter what you looked like or what you called yourself; if your great, great, great grandfather was black, then you were considered black, and thus denied certain civil rights.

Conversely, some attribute the seeming growth of the Native American population in recent years to white self-identification — whites claiming Indian ancestry, no matter how remote or far back in their blood lines.

It may be a stretch to suggest that Middle Eastern Americans are in a unique position. Unfortunately, racial and ethnic discrimination is a prevalent social problem with some, like Native Americans or African Americans, having received considerably harsher treatment than more recent immigrants.

But, arguably, no other ethnic or racial group in the U.S. suffers quite the same dilemma as Middle Eastern Americans.

Amir Marvasti is assistant professor of sociology at Penn State Altoona. He was born in Tehran, Iran.