{"id":14173,"date":"2018-01-10T16:41:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T00:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/?p=14173"},"modified":"2023-08-08T16:42:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T23:42:02","slug":"blog-neda-maghbouleh-book-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/2018\/01\/10\/blog-neda-maghbouleh-book-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Limits of Whiteness?&#8221; A Q&amp;A with Dr. Neda Maghbouleh on Iranian American Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-hero \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-hero\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--image\">\n\n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n              \n      <img\n                            data-src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2023\/08\/limits-of-whiteness-768x432.png\"\n          data-srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2023\/08\/limits-of-whiteness-1920x1080.png 1920w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2023\/08\/limits-of-whiteness-1280x720.png 1280w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2023\/08\/limits-of-whiteness-768x432.png 768w\"          data-sizes=\"(min-width:1200px) 75vw, (min-width:768px) 83vw, 100vw\"          class=\"lazyload\"\n        \n                  alt=\"Book cover of Limits of Whiteness by Neda Maghbouleh with a stark white background and black dashed lines.\"\n        \n        \n                                      \/>\n\n    \n    \n  \n  \n\n<\/div>\n  \n  \n  <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n    \n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--page-title\">\n\n    \n  <h1>&#8220;The Limits of Whiteness?&#8221; A Q&amp;A with Dr. Neda Maghbouleh on Iranian American Identity<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n          <div class=\"subtitle\">\n            \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  The Immigrant Integration Wire had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Neda Maghbouleh, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and author of the new book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and Everyday Politics of Race, published by Stanford University Press.\n\n\n<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    \n          <strong class=\"author-field\"><span >By<\/span>Neda Maghbouleh, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University of Toronto (Interview conducted by Hajar Yazdiha, Assistant Professor of Sociology at USC)<\/strong>\n    \n          <span class=\"post-date-field\">January 10, 2018<\/span>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--social-share \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component 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Maghbouleh:<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0 The book is about how Iranian Americans live a racial paradox. They are counted as white by the Federal Government. And they also sometimes experience everyday interactions that are closer to those experienced by communities of color.<\/p>\n<p>One intervention of my book is to suggest that this paradox has a way longer history than we usually acknowledge. This started decades before any Iranians had even immigrated to the United States. Another intervention is to bring together literature on the sociology of race with the sociology of immigration to make better sense of the in-between status of Iranians and other groups from the MENA region.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Q:\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><strong>Your research really unpacks the social and historical forces that shape Iranian American identity. I\u2019m wondering what you think this case tells us about immigrant immigration processes more broadly?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Dr. Maghbouleh:<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0 In scholarship about ethnicity and race as experienced by immigrant generations\u2014or specifically an immigrant group that\u2019s been thought to be assimilating on a kind of straight-line or an upward path\u2014I think some second generation kids are either being misread in the literature or ignored in some frames.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s interesting about the case of Iranian Americans relative to the work on ethnicity and race across immigrant generations is you have a first generation who arrive to the U.S. being really quite sure of their racial ID as white. And this goes back into the history of Iran, which I write about in Chapter 3 of my book.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a very complicated relationship that Iran has had with foreign powers like Britain, Russia, and the United States. I draw here from historian Reza Zia-Ebrahimi who has outlined how the \u201cAryan Myth\u201d as it circulates in Iran\u2014a myth that bolsters a supposedly ancient, glorious, pre-Islamic Iran claim to cultural and racial superiority&#8211; is actually a nationalist narrative developed in much more recent Iranian history.<\/p>\n<p>So, in my book, I take up what happens when this myth is ported over into diaspora by Iranian immigrants. Some, not all, but some first generation parents coming to the U.S. bring with them a sense of racial identity that then gets really complicated or even contradicted by the experiences that their families have. And it\u2019s the second generation kids who speak up or speak back or, in some cases, don\u2019t to this myth in diaspora. The second-generation kids are actually the first in their families to be fully socialized into American racial logics and hierarchies. This kind of conflict gets staged in the household, and I think is something that can stand to be analyzed even further in the literature on immigrant incorporation.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Q:<\/i><\/strong><strong>\u00a0In thinking about this current political moment where Trump has moved to decertify the\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/13\/us\/politics\/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html\"><strong>Iran Nuclear Deal<\/strong><\/a><strong>,\u00a0the series of travel bans, what do you think that all of these sorts of moments are saying about the shape of Iranian identity and Middle Eastern identity more broadly for the years to come? Can you weigh in on the current political moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Dr. Maghbouleh<\/i><\/strong><i>:<\/i>\u00a0Yes, absolutely. Given that the Iranian Revolution in 1979 launched the first major wave of <i>permanent<\/i> Iranian migration to the U.S., the community from its very inception has had to navigate a highly stigmatized identity. Since 1979, Iran and Iranians have been constructed and misrepresented in many ways as a kind of polar opposite or binary to who Americans are, or what the United States is.<\/p>\n<p>When I was doing my research with young people from about 2009 through 2013 when I pulled out of the field and began to write the book, these young Iranian Americans were very aware of this binary. They were navigating and sometimes felt trapped by this binary, they were very attuned to it. They were picking up on all these signals that were perhaps more subtle in a pre-Trump era. They were born into a historical moment from 1979 forward where the United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relationship. These kids can\u2019t even travel to Iran directly from the United States; they need a third party country that they first fly to. So\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-middle-east-33521655\">Obama\u2019s Iran Deal<\/a>\u00a0in 2015 was this signal that there could potentially be\u2014for the first time in their lives&#8211; \u00a0a normalization of relations between the United States and Iran, of this bifurcated relationship.<\/p>\n<p>But now you look at 2017 and the decertification of the Iran Nuclear Deal, this deal that the young people in my book were so enthusiastic about. Now we have of course, the multiple travel or \u201cMuslim\u201d bans, which are elaborations on the exact processes I write about in the book. These were stakes that young Iranian Americans had been aware of, they felt them in their bones. They spoke about them with great passion before Trump. But these issues were often less perceptible to non-Iranians at that time. But now the stakes are very legible to a broader audience.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Q:<\/i><\/strong><strong>\u00a0In a related question, I wonder about your thoughts on this census move to add the\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/census-bureau-calls-for-new-middle-eastern-hispanic-categories-1488330270\"><strong>Middle Eastern and North African \u201cMENA\u201d<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0category to the census in 2020. A lot of critics say it\u2019s a little bit of a double-edged sword, where on the one hand this sort of invisible group gains visibility for the first time and by extension some political power. But then on the flip side, perhaps they become more of a target. So I wonder, based on your research, if you could weigh in on how you see that playing out and sort of reshaping the political landscape?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Dr. Maghbouleh:\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>Absolutely\u2026It\u2019s interesting to point out that in 2015 with the most recent MENA tests that the Census Bureau has accomplished, they have evidence now that when MENA individuals \u2013 MENA meaning Middle Eastern and North African &#8211; when MENA individuals are offered a \u201cracial or ethnic box\u201d choice, they overwhelmingly choose to self-identify as MENA over white.<\/p>\n<p>This is true across all of the subgroups. So even anecdotally in sociology, sometimes people who in the subfield will say to me, \u201cWell, you know, this makes sense from a racialization perspective. But from the self-ID of individuals within these groups, I have a hard time seeing that Iranians would choose the same category as Yemenis, as Moroccans.\u201d And so on.<\/p>\n<p>But the Census Bureau\u2019s job has been to empirically test this. Their 2015 reports show that proportionally across all of these different ethno-national subdivisions, the majority of folks in all sub-groups are choosing MENA over white. I think that\u2019s an absolutely crucial phenomenon that we now have data on, that we can put into mainstream public and sociological discourse.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, you raise an important issue about how collecting ethno-racial classification data on MENA folks could be used for more nefarious reasons to further surveil a group that\u2019s already very vulnerable. So would the MENA category just make it that much easier for the government to use that data to damage or undermine the goals of the community?<\/p>\n<p>I would say that we have enough evidence that this was <i>already<\/i> happening despite the fact that MENA groups have been\u2014from an equity and resource allocation perspective&#8211; absorbed or made invisible in the white category. I think that the costs have already been bared. For example, the New York Police Department (NYPD) had a so-called \u201cDemographics Unit.\u201d This was immediately after 9\/11, when they were actually able to drill down and get data from federal reporting groups to be able to identify by zip code where people with names that were coded as Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern\u2014from the region more broadly\u2014and where they lived.<\/p>\n<p>So they had zip code level data on everyone. This is despite the fact that this ethno-racially heterogonous group, subgroups like Arabs and Iranians, are subsumed in the white category. Then, when the NYPD was call out on this, they said things like, \u201cWell, you know, we\u2019re not using this for nefarious reasons. This is about making sure we have, for example, Arabic language signs in airports like La Guardia or JFK. We just want to know where these speakers live so we can better support them with communications material or signage.<\/p>\n<p>I think most people, when they hear that, are very skeptical that that\u2019s actually the reason. I think we have evidence that MENA people want this category and we also have evidence that despite the lack of the category, these individuals and groups have been able to become legible for surveillance reasons and policing reasons.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Q:\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><strong>\u00a0Is there one big takeaway that you want your readers to draw from your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Dr. Maghbouleh:<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0 In my book, even in the archival and historical sections, I really center the stories of teenagers. I think teenagers are a complex and fascinating group to do sociological research with. They\u2019re going through so many changes in their own identity development. They are being forced to question the messages that they\u2019re getting, both in the family and in their schools, among peers.<\/p>\n<p>Because my book takes very seriously that identity is constantly in flux, I think that something really gratifying for me to do in the book (and in the research leading up to the book), was to really follow young people as they tried to forge a sense of identity for themselves in different stages of life.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes in sociology, we keep these areas quite separate, and often for good reason: We have sociology of the family. We have sociology of education. We have transnationalism. But in my book, these all coalesce through the narratives of young people growing up. I\u2019m with them in their homes, looking at how they interact with their families, how they decorate their bedrooms. I follow them through high school, and in some cases, into college. I\u2019m looking at who their roommates are, what organizations they are joining, who they are facing bullying from. And is it always peers? Because I think when we hear \u201cbullying\u201d we think about peer to peer oppression. But in fact, one of the findings from the school chapter of my book is that often it\u2019s authority figures like administrators and teachers that are not only complicit in allowing bullying to happen, but they themselves set the tone and are actually the bullies themselves.<\/p>\n<p>I follow some of the young people, the ones we can think of as \u201ccasual\u201d travelers versus truly transnational subjects, when they go back to Iran in visits with their families, and describe the displacement that they sense there, where they feel too American in Iran, but they\u2019re too Iranian in America. As I mentioned earlier, their transnational flights are infused by a more general, Islamophobic and racist way in which all international travel is now organized. I make the case that young Iranian American men in particular are facing a certain kind of racialization as they move through international airports. Then, for young Iranian American women, the expectation of keeping hijab once they arrive in Iran adds another layer. For both boys and girls, these trips to Iran fundamentally require a change in one\u2019s bodily comportment and this activates a slightly different sense of ethno-racial identity.<\/p>\n<p>Then finally, I travel with some of the young people in my study to a progressive summer camp that some of them attended as campers or as counselors. That\u2019s a really unique place where there is an explicitly anti-racist, progressive agenda where second generation Iranian American kids forge alliances directly with communities of color or other MENA-adjacent groups from whom they\u2019ve been told to stay away; like Arabs or Afghans. That\u2019s a whole complicated other story, but this summer camp does this a fascinating job of creating an almost-utopian space where Iranian American raciality is dealt with, warts and all.<\/p>\n<p>So that would be my biggest takeaway. If you\u2019re into the history of race and immigration in the United States, I have some of that for you in the book. If you\u2019re curious about where Iranians and other Middle Eastern immigrants fit in the American racial landscape, this book provides some answers. And if you\u2019re more generally intrigued by how to use the stories of young people as a vehicle to observe a multitude of social institutions we typically study separate from one another, my book offers one possible path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--rich-text \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--rich-text\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n      \n<div class=\"f--field f--wysiwyg\">\n\n    \n  <hr \/>\n<p><strong>About the interviewee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nedamaghbouleh.com\/\">Neda Maghbouleh<\/a> is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and author of\u00a0<em>The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race\u00a0<\/em>(2017, Stanford University Press). Born in New York City and raised in Portland, Oregon, she holds an MA\/PhD in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and a BA from Smith College. Through two new research projects on the go, she is extending her work on racialization, inclusion\/exclusion, and the relationship between them. The first (with UofT colleagues Melissa Milkie and Ito Peng, funded by Canada\u2019s SSHRC and Ministry of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship) examines integration and discrimination challenges faced by Syrian refugee parents and children in Toronto. The second project, with Ariela Schachter and Ren\u00e9 Flores, uses experimental survey design to uncover the current \u201drules\u201d of everyday racial classification in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n  \n        \n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-related-stories \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-related-stories\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--section-title\">\n\n    \n  <h2>\n          Explore other articles\n      <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n                  <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/2026\/03\/04\/case-for-continuity-disability-support-services\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >The Case for Continuity: Geographic Fragmentation in Publicly Funded Disability Support Services<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n              <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/2026\/02\/19\/celebrating-solidarity-weaving-together-struggles-for-justice\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >Watch Recording Now &#8211; Celebrating Solidarity: Weaving Together Struggles for Justice<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n              <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/eri\/2026\/02\/11\/annual-report-2025\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >ERI 2025 Annual Interactive Report<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n            <\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":14174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[27,66,95,68],"class_list":["post-14173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-csii","tag-book","tag-interview","tag-politics","tag-race"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;The Limits of Whiteness?&quot; 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