Moving beyond (and back to) the black-white binary: a study of black and white Muslims' racial positioning in the United States

Muslim racialization literature argues that a new racialized group emerged after 9/11, but does not examine how this group is positioned relative to US black-white binary racial logic. In fact, many argue that to understand Muslims, we must move our analysis beyond black and white. Literature on the black-white binary, on the other hand, offers valuable theory for analysis of racial structures, but does not often examine the role religion plays in these structures. My project employs and fills gaps in these two literatures by examining how black and white Muslims are positioned relative to US black-white racial logic. Analysing ethnographic data, I find that black and white Muslims are positioned as either black/white or as Muslim. This suggests that Muslimness, and religion more generally, shapes the construction and attribution of blackness and whiteness.