Racialized Threat: Muslim Americans and Nationalistic Exclusion

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Islamophobia

Abstract

Investigations of racial threat typically rely on large datasets and quantitative analysis of population change over time or neighborhood context. These analyses yield much insight into how dominant, white populations respond to perceived economic and political threat in terms of relatively broad policy changes, but leave other questions about cultural threat and underlying perceptions of the threatening group unanswered. This analysis qualitatively considers Muslim Americans as a racialized group to extend theories of racial threat, and builds on the framework of "politicized places" to analyze how national and local contexts interact to produce perceived racial threat. Data for this analysis are ethnographic observations and interviews with white, lower-middle class, male members of the Michigan militia who see themselves as protecting the nation from a variety of threats, and who racialize Muslim Americans as a meaningful threat because of the large Arab population in the city of Dearborn, MI, in particular. I argue that racial threat from Muslims shows us that considerations of contemporary threat and racism need to be expanded to more explicitly include nationalistic constructs alongside place-specific local factors.

Author

• Amy Cooter, University of Michigan