Whitewashed: ‘Whiteness' in American History, with a Special Focus on Middle-Easterners

Last December, John Tehranian, a law professor and author on racial issues at Chapman University’s School of Law, gave a lecture at the Arpa Institute entitled Whitewashed: ‘Whiteness' in American History, with a Special Focus on Middle-Easterners (the title of his latest book is also called Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Identity). Below is a description of some of the issues Prof. Tehranian covered in his lecture:

Throughout American history, racial classifications have wielded exceptional influence. For example, until 1952, federal law provided naturalization rights only to individuals who were white or black, but nothing "in between."

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of new immigrants from non-Anglo-Saxon countries arrived on American shores. As a result, the American legal system confronted the task of defining what or who constituted the white race for the purposes of naturalization.
"Litigation over the concept of whiteness resulted, yielding life-altering consequences," the lecture's abstract states. "While the trials often grew senseless, with judges delving into the depths of antiquity, reconstructing history, and spouting rigid ideologies in order to justify their rulings, the reification of whiteness had a profound impact on shaping the immigrant experience in the United States."

Prof. Tehranian writes that Armenians played a central role in these cases, and that the Armenian struggle for naturalization rights and "white" recognition is critical to understanding the processes at play in the social construction of race.

By drawing on these cases, Prof. Tehranian's talk will assess the historical and contemporary relevance of whiteness in American society, with a particular eye toward the war on terrorism and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and national identity, especially after September 11, 2001. Specifically, Prof. Tehranian will discuss ongoing and peculiar problems of race and how they affect Armenian and Middle-Eastern Americans. He will also address "the unusual catch-22 facing Middle-Eastern Americans: although considered white by law, and therefore ineligible for any policies benefiting minorities, they have faced rising degrees of discrimination over time - a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime."