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MUSLIM AMERICAN DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2020

Inaash Islam
Inaash Islam*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg
*
Corresponding author: Inaash Islam, Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech, 560 McBryde Hall (0137), 225 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, VA 24061. E-mail: inaashi1@vt.edu
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Abstract

This article engages in a theoretical discussion and application of Du Boisian double consciousness to understand the formation of the Muslim American self. Du Boisian double consciousness, and its three elements (the Veil, Twoness, and Second Sight) are used to understand phenomenological processes of Muslim American self-formation as being situated within and conditioned by structural contexts of racialization. By drawing on critical scholarship that highlights the operation of the Muslim racial project in contemporary U.S. contexts, I show how double consciousness emerges through the Othering of Muslim Americans at the macro, meso, and micro levels of society, which then defines them as outside of the U.S. national imaginary, and denies them their equal civic status as citizens of the state. By utilizing double consciousness to understand the Muslim American self as it is embedded in racialized U.S. contexts, this article fills a crucial gap in the literature by theoretically expanding on racialized processes of Muslim American identity formation in the racialized contexts of the United States.

Keywords

Double ConsciousnessRacializationCivic StatusNationalismMuslim AmericanIdentity
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Fall 2020 , pp. 429 - 448
Copyright
© 2020 Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

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