A Racialized Threat: Religious Nativism and K–12 Textbook and Popular Representations of Muslims

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Responding to the Shifting Features of Racism: Intersectional Extensions of Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose:
Textbooks play a central role in k-12 education and are considered a trusted source of knowledge (Abukhattala, 2004; Eisenstein & Clarke, 2013). Yet, within these texts, narratives of “American exceptionalism” instill ideas of United States’ superiority and uniqueness by defining the US as a “peacekeeper” and a “beacon of hope” (Loewen, 2007). Islamic history and peoples are framed through violence and terrorism, and presented as a monolithic group, ignoring their racial, ethnic, cultural, lingustic, and political diversity (Jackson, 2010). These representations further the notion of Muslims as incompatible (also, inferior) to Western ideologies and democracy (Jackson, 2007). This paper examines and analyzes the represenation of Muslims and Islam within high school history textbooks and popular discourses, and explores the types of messages high school Muslim students receive about their racial, ethnic, religious, and American identities.

Theoretical Framework(s):
Informed by Orientalism (Said, 1978), Ideological Hegemony (Willis, 2013), my analysis is primarily guided by Critical Race Theory (CRT). Within CRT, I draw from “whiteness as property,” which frames Whiteness as a material benefit to those who can ascribe to it (Harris, 1993), and “racist nativism,” the notion that Whites are entitled to U.S. land (Perez-Huber, Lopez, Malagon, Velez & Solorzano, 2008), to theorize the racialization of religion (Joshi, 2006) and religious nativism as a process embedded in the ‘othering’ and racializing of Muslims by normalizing a Western and white relationship to Christianity.

Methods & Data sources:
This paper employs critical discourse analysis (van Leeuwen, 2008) to examine both high school textbooks and interviews with Muslim students enrolled in Southern California schools that use those textbooks. I analyze each reference related to Muslims (-Americans), Muslim-majority nations, or related issues (policies and events) in Magruder’s American Government and The American Vision (2006 California editions). I also explore popular discourses from when the textbooks were published and the context in which they are used to examine the (re)production of power relations, the overt messages, the “hidden curriculum” (Apple, 1971) that communicate “official knowledge” (Apple, 1993).

Findings:
In my analysis of textbook discourses and interviews with research participants’ I found narratives that construct Muslims as incompatible to the democracy of U.S. life. Textbook and media narratives position the US as epitomizing freedom and democracy, while defining the Muslim world as violent and unstable, furthering the terrorism discourse. Simultaneously, violence against and the impact of wars on Muslim-dominant regions/nations is omitted to further the notions of Muslims as the monolithic, violent other, leaving students feeling their complexity and reality was misrepresented or ommitted from their and their peers’ learning.

Scholarly Significance:
Textbooks and popular media both function as tools to protect whiteness by (re)constructing Eurocentric (and Christian) narratives. While there are studies that examine the ideological hegemony pushed forth by textbooks and media, this study interrogates the normalcy of Islamic racialization and its impact on students. This study contributes to literature on the racialization of religion and expands on how Muslim high schoolers may perceive and internalize messages of religious nativism.

Author

• Rabea Qamar, University of California - Riverside