Sociological literature has shown that America is obsessed with the concept of race. While low or high depending on politicoeconomic variables at different times, such obsession has never been absent. The Hostage Crisis (1979–81) and horrific attacks on several sites in the United States by al-Qaʿida in 2001 reinforced a more stringent fervor of negative feelings against Muslims, including Iranians. With the election of Donald Trump as president, this obsession and its outward manifestations have become salient. Racial prejudices are more openly expressed and discrimination and harassment of immigrants, especially those from Latin America and Muslim countries, have become widespread. In the case of second-generation Iranian-Americans, these discriminatory practices have caused them a unique identity crisis: though they are racially designated by the US government as “white,” their lived experiences resemble those of “non-whites.” The latest travel ban, initiated by the Trump Administration and approved by the US Supreme Court, will add further challenges for Iranian-Americans whose country of origin was included in the ban as a “national security threat.”
The Limits of Whiteness by Neda Maghbouleh presents two years of ethnographic research based on the structured and open-ended life history interviews and field observations of eighty-four young Iranian-Americans across the United States. The book contains seven chapters and two appendices reflecting the methodological and demographic challenges of studying this population. Theoretically, the book is focused on the social construction of “race,” racialization of Iranian-American immigrants, their racial designation as “white” by the US government, and the Iranians’ mythical belief in being of white Aryan race. Using the dynamic characterization of “white/”nonwhite” relationships posed by Charles Mills as a basis, Maghbouleh introduces two new concepts: “racial hinges” and “racial loopholes.” The former refers to various legal and extralegal measures used to “open or close the door to whiteness as necessary” (p. 5), and the latter reflects the contradictions experienced by immigrants as a result of an inconsistency between their legal statuses and lived experiences. For her, the history and subject of immigration should be understood in the context of racialization processes. The de jure designation of an immigrant group as “white” does not necessarily follow their de facto treatment as such.
Viewing the liminal status of her subjects in light of these contradictions, and utilizing their life histories, each chapter of the book explicates the cognitive and experiential contradictions of these racial constructions on various aspects of their lives in the United States. Historically, claim to whiteness has been a contested legal process for Iranian immigrants and involved not only the acceptance of the hegemonic “white” group, but also challenges of other immigrants with similar liminal status. While Chapter 1 delineates the above theoretical foundation of the work, Chapter 2 starts a discussion of the history of the contested racial classifications of several Syrian, Armenian, and Indian immigrants in which both similarity and dissimilarity to Iranians were used in courts by some to prove being “white” and by others being “not white.” The standardization of racial categories by the US government in 1978 ended the legal ambiguity regarding Iranians’ “whiteness.” However, with the large migration of Iranians to the United State after the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Hostage Crisis, and subsequent hostile US–Iran relationships, xenophobia in America grew stronger and “the pendulum of Iranian American racialization quickly and violently swung back again as legally white Iranians were socially brown” (p. 45) in their daily life. Further, the chapter offers a historical review of cases of Iranians’ struggles against racial discrimination and the establishment of a desirable settlement in places like Los Angeles. The unique contribution of this chapter is its demonstration of the changing ideological and religious grounds for the racial classification of Iranians, the contradictory treatment of their legal cases in the courts, and their racially based treatment by society at large—a history rarely exposed in a theoretically integrated manner in the diasporic studies of Iranians.
Chapters 3 through 7 discuss and delineate various features of the racial ambiguity and contradictions young Iranian-Americans experience in different areas of their lives and how they manage to locate themselves in the hierarchical nature of interactions in a predominantly white society averse to their parental national origin. It showcases cognitive dissonance young Iranian-Americans experience as a result of their socialization to their parental belief in the Aryan myth of “whiteness” at home and outside of home. The next chapter examines some of the discriminatory experiences of young Iranian-Americans in elementary, middle, and high schools. Further, the chapter describes cultural activities of some second-generation Iranian-Americans on college campuses in the United States, such as establishing cultural organizations, attending Persian classes, and organizing social and cultural events about Iran. These efforts have become a conduit for connecting with their cultural heritage and nurturing their unique hybrid identity. Chapter 5 starts with first-generation Iranian-Americans’ perceptions of Iranian history and people, as opposed to those offered in American media and Hollywood. Then it focuses on the impact of contradictory feelings and challenges experienced by these youth in understanding, relating, and traveling to their homeland: negotiating between the hype and expectations of the visit and navigating their homeland's restrictive gender regime, dress rules, government security and travel restrictions, safety concerns, and diverse family expectations—an adventure that leaves these youth with more questions about their inherited culture, in-between identity, and contradictory senses of belonging. Chapter 6 is about Camp Ayandeh (future) and the author's interviews and observations regarding its activities, functions for the Iranian-American community, and impact on the lives of young Iranian-Americans. In brief, the camp is a “educreational” community in which young Iranian-Americans engage in both recreational and educational activities. The camp not only exposes them to Iranian cultural traditions but also offers them opportunities for sharing and discussing the challenges related to their paradoxical status in American society. As a stigmatized group, these youth explore ways of neutralizing discrimination and challenging stereotypes through reliance on their own communities and alliance with other marginalized groups. In the concluding chapter, by connecting her own family's encounter with a police officer to the legal battles of an Armenian for naturalization in the 1920s, Maghbouleh shows the contradictory experiences of Iranians and other Middle Easterners who, despite their de jure status as whites, are often subjected to racial profiling, stigmatization, prejudice, and discrimination. In her view, while the first generation of Iranian immigrants take comfort in their legal inclusion in the demographic category of “white,” most of their children find such status incongruent with their daily lived experiences in America.
Although the issue of discrimination against Muslim immigrants in the United States has received a good deal of journalist attention, there have not been many academic studies of these with regard to particular nationalities, such as Iranians. In this regard, this book represents a major contribution to our broader understanding of the racialization of Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States. Moreover, at a time when “whiteness” has become a core element of politicoracial discourse in America, this book helps to better understand the sociopsychological impact of inherent contradictions between official racial designations and racialized treatment of immigrants in the United States.
As the first theoretically based ethnographic book researching second-generation Iranian-Americans, this book deftly weaves observations with theoretical insight and offers a clear understanding of the racial challenges experienced by the Iranian-American community in the United States. Given the ethnic, religious, and class diversity among Iranian immigrants in the United States, further quantitative research is needed to correlate such diverse variables with the racial ambiguities discussed in this book.
Maghbouleh's research is conceived well, conducted laboriously, based on appropriate sources, and written very well. It should serve as an excellent addition to class readings in sociology and anthropology of race, ethnicity, immigration, and diaspora.
