Faith in Whiteness: Free Exercise of Religion as Racial Expression

• Author: Khaled A. Beydoun
• Position: Associate Professor of Law, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of Law; Senior Affiliated Faculty, University of California at Berkeley, Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project ('IRDP'); and author of the book American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear (2018)
• Pages: 1475-1536

1475

Faith in Whiteness: Free Exercise of

Religion as Racial Expression

Khaled A. Beydoun*

ABSTRACT: Faith in whiteness is the affirmation that religion remains

forceful in shaping race and racial division. It is also the observation, born

from formative contestations of racial exclusion and today’s rising white

populism, that central to the American experience is the conditioned belief that

whiteness stands at the pinnacle of social citizenship. Whereby adhering to its

tenets and conforming one’s identity to it, maximizes enjoyment of rights and

protection from private animus. Most saliently, and per the focus of this

Article, faith in whiteness is a form of strategic identity performance. It is a

daily ritual whereby adherents of stigmatized religions outwardly perform their

religious identities against negative racial meanings ascribed to their faiths

and re-perform it in the image of whiteness.

Rising white populism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia have made this

phenomenon particularly pervasive today, and raised its stakes for adherents

of stigmatized religions. As illustrated by the murders of the three Muslim

students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in February of 2015, and more

recently, the horrific shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue on October 27,

2018, Free Exercise of Muslim and Jewish identity clashes with populist

conceptions of whiteness, and in an increasingly polarized nation, expose

those who outwardly express their religious identity to suspicion, animus and

violence. In turn, incentivizing adherents of stigmatized religions to

outwardly underperform their faith in order to stave off stigma, and enhance

perceptions that they are white—or proximate to white—in order to attain the

presumptions and privileges ascribed to whiteness.

This Article examines the intimate interplay between race and religion during

a moment of emergent white populism and religious intolerance. By building

off foundational social psychology and legal literatures examining identity

performance, this Article also contributes a new framework theorizing how

religious identity is negotiated and performed against racism, religious

*

Associate Professor of Law, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of Law; Senior

Affiliated Faculty, University of California at Berkeley, Islamophobia Research & Documentation

Project (“IRDP”); and author of the book American Islamophobia: Understandi ng the Roots and Rise

of Fear (2018).

1476 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 105:1475

animus, and threats that blur them together. It then applies this framework

to six contemporary case studies, illustrating the Free Exercise tradeoffs and

racial stakes of faith in whiteness in action.

I.INTRODU CTION ........................................................................... 1477

II.VALUING WHITENESS .................................................................. 1482

A.FORMAL WHITENESS.............................................................. 1483

1.Whiteness As Citizenship ............................................ 1483

2.Modern Racial Order .................................................. 1484

B.SUBSTANTIVE WHITENESS ...................................................... 1487

1.In the Political Imagination ....................................... 1488

2.In the Popular Imagination ........................................ 1491

III.RELIGION AND RACIAL STIGMA ................................................... 1494

A.BETWEEN STIGMA AND SELF ................................................... 1495

1. On Stigma .................................................................... 1496

2. Stigmatizing Religion .................................................. 1496

B.REGULATING RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION ..................................... 1498

1.By Law .......................................................................... 1499

2.By Political Discourse .................................................. 1500

3.By Popular Discourse .................................................. 1502

C.RACIALIZATION OF RELIGION ................................................. 1504

1.Christianity and Whiteness ......................................... 1505

i.Protestantism as Whiteness ....................................... 1505

ii. Christianity as a Proxy ............................................ 1506

2.Stigmatized Religions .................................................. 1508

i. Islam and Orientalism ............................................. 1509

ii.Judaism and Anti-Semitism...................................... 1512

IV. RELIGIOUS IDENTITY PERFORMANCE .......................................... 1515

A. A THEORY ............................................................................ 1515

1.Beyond Chilling Effect ................................................ 1516

2.Strategic Performance ................................................ 1516

B.A TYPOLOGY ......................................................................... 1517

1.Confirming Religion ................................................... 1518

2.Conforming Religion .................................................. 1519

3.Covering Religion ....................................................... 1520

4.Concealing Religion .................................................... 1520

V.WORSHIP AND WHITENESS .......................................................... 1521

A.AFFIRMING WHITENESS .......................................................... 1522

1.Uncovering Whiteness ................................................ 1523

2.Exercising Islamophobia ............................................ 1525

2020] FAITH IN WHITENESS 1477

B.RETRENCHING WHITENESS .................................................... 1527

1.Not Quite White .......................................................... 1527

2.Ivy League Anti-Semitism ........................................... 1529

C.VEILING WHITENESS .............................................................. 1531

1.I’m Not White, I’m Jewish .......................................... 1531

2.Not Your Average Joe .................................................. 1533

VI. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 1535

I. INTRODUCTION

“I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvers to bring about

a legal ascendancy of one sect over another . . . .” -Thomas Jefferson1

“America is a nation that lies to itself about who and what it is. It is a

nation of minorities ruled by a minority of one—it thinks and acts as

if it were a nation of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” -Harold Cruse 2

Whiteness, in the American experience, is worshipped as if a religion. Since

the opening acts of American history, immigrants and settlers petitioning for

citizenship were tasked with performing whiteness—as if their lives were on the

line—in civil courtrooms.3 They staged every dimension of their identity, most

notably their religious expression, into forms that would win over presiding,

predominantly Protestant, judges. These immigrants knew exactly what the

law ordained from 1790 until 1952: that whiteness stood as the exclusive

passageway to naturalized citizenship.4 Citizenship was the greatest prize of

them all, and whiteness unlocked the gates to the benefits and bounty of the

land.

These performances of whiteness continue today. They not only unfold

within courtrooms and before judges but are acted out on every stage and

sphere of American life. Particularly among members of “stigmatized faiths,”

1. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, FOUNDERS ONLINE (Jan. 26, 1799),

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0451 [https://perma.cc/4VKL-

EFR6].

2. HAROLD CRUSE, THE CRISIS OF THE NEGRO INTELLECTUAL: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF

THE FAILURE OF BLACK LEADERSHIP 456 (1967).

3. See generally IAN HANEY LÓPEZ, WHITE BY LAW: THE LEGAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE

(Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 2d ed. 2006) [hereinafter LÓPEZ, WHITE BY LAW]

(analyzing the 52 naturalization cases during the “Naturalization Era,” the period from 1790

through 1952 when the law mandated whiteness as a prerequisite for naturalized citizenship).

4. See Naturalization Act of 1790, ch. 3, § 1, 1 Stat. 103, 103–04 (repealed 1795). The

Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person.” Id. § 1, 1

Stat. at 103.