A Racialized Threat at the Margins: Muslim Students’ Experiences and Representation in High Schools

Anti-Muslim and Islamophobic racism often circulate undetected and unrecognized in and outside of school settings. New America’s (McKenzie, n.d.) interactive timelines and maps document an increase in anti-Muslim activities since 2015, mapping incidents across US states with the highest in California. Situated in this context, this dissertation examines the schooling experiences and curricular representation of Muslim students at their California high schools. Specifically, I focus on the racialization of Muslim identity in schools, and students’ interpretation of the messages they receive about Muslims and Islam. Chapter 1 shows that (1) dominant representations and rhetoric homogenize Muslims, constructing them as outsiders; (2) textbooks maintain Eurocentric narratives; and, (3) racialized, gendered, and nationalist discourses in schools render Muslims as incompatible to western traditions and values. Chapter 2 outlines the theoretical framework and research design for this study. Racialization and critical race scholarship provide an analytic framework to examine high school Muslim students’ experiences with overt and subtle anti-Muslim and nativist rhetoric. I use qualitative research methodologies for data collection and analysis to center the experiential narratives of the ten South Asian and West Asian/Middle Eastern student participants and capture textbook narratives about Muslims/Islam. Chapter 3 examines the curricular representation of Islam, Muslims, and related groups of people in 2006 versions of history/social studies textbooks. These textbooks reinforce orientalist perspectives that contribute to the racialization of Muslims, constructing them as foreign Others. Chapter 4 shares the focal students’ experiences with racialized rhetoric manifesting as gender and racial microaggressions framing their religious identities as security threats and oppositional to western norms. Their experiences highlight the underlying and often ignored dominance of what I call “racist religious nativism” that render Muslims violent and untrustworthy. Chapter 5 highlights students’ resistance to and resilience in navigating racialized hostility at their schools. The students’ “community cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005) helped them navigate school and fostered their resilience when faced with racialized hostility. For these youth, their religious identity emerged as a capital on its own. Finally, Chapter 6 presents implications of this dissertation for education research and practice