Do I really need to check that box?' Ethnoracial ambiguity among Indigenous North Africans in the United States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3621017 |
|---|---|
| Authors | H Castaneda (0000-0001-5892-3279, University of South Florida, corresponding author), Amine Bit (0000-0003-4738-8324, Columbia University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 1963-1980 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-21 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2024.2388825 |
| OpenAlex | W4401501700 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This article examines the experiences of Amazigh people (plural: Imazighen) and how they negotiate ethnoracial hierarchies in the United States. Imazighen are Indigenous peoples from North Africa; upon arrival to the U.S., they are confronted with ethnoracial categories into which they don’t fit neatly, particularly due to their Indigenous status. Drawing on interviews with 75 Imazighen, we explore how they navigate ethnoracial identity through five themes: (1) illegibility in racial appraisal through everyday interactions; (2) navigating pre-existing ethnoracial hierarchies; (3) discourses about being ‘African (American), but not Black,’ which results in ‘lumping’ by geography, but ‘splitting’ by race; (4) discourses about being ‘not Arab,’ which results in ‘splitting’ processes to highlight Indigeneity; and (5) being appraised as Latine and ‘lumped’ through perceived proximity to other racialized groups. This article explores how a categorically ambiguous population grapples with everyday moments of racial appraisal and how they arrive at a sense of reflected race. Because the labels they are accustomed to (e.g. Amazigh or Berber) are illegible in the U.S., they become open to racialization processes, usually in conversation with notions of Arabness and Africanness. Simultaneously, they challenge norms of racial classification, particularly by introducing an Indigenous dimension
Ambiguity · Diaspora · Genealogy · Geography · Indigenous · Linguistics · Plural · Population · Racialization · Sociology · Demography · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · History · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Multilingual Education and Policy
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Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century
Racial Formation in the United States
Black Identities
Black versus Black
Changing Boundaries of Whiteness? Demographic and Social Determinants of Middle Eastern and North African Marriage Trends in the United States
Reflections on Migration, Community, and Place
Lumping and splitting
The Role of Reflected Appraisals in Racial Identity
Complexities of belonging
From bi-racial to tri-racial
The inferior white
Where is Amazigh Studies
Rethinking Whiteness
The Story of Islamophobia
Imazighen of France; articulations of an indigenous diaspora
Returns
I'm Not Spanish, I'm from Spain
Ontologies of Indigeneity
Looking Mexican
From white to what? Mena and Iranian American non-white reflected race
Unsettled identities amid settled classifications? Toward a sociology of racial appraisals
Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia
| Highly cited | No |
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