In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

16 Suad Joseph Against the Grain of the NationThe ArabTo Be Free to Be a Citizen In I9I4, an immigrant by the name of George Dow was denied U.S. citizenship. The denial was justified on the basis of the statute approved on March 26, I790 defining citizens as "free white persons." Based on his ancestry as a "Syrian of Asiatic birth," George Dow (most likely what today would be a Lebanese Christian) was judged as not a "free white person." The decision was reversed on appeal. The decision notes, "The appellant, George Dow, a Syrian, was denied naturalization on the sole ground that a Syrian of Asiatic birth is not a free white person within the meaning of the naturalization statute. After the first decision of the matter a rehearing was granted at the instance of other Syrians interested. In his two opinions the District Judge reached the conclusion, which he supported with remarkable force and learning, that the 'free white persons' made eligible to naturalization by the statute included aliens of European nativity or descent, and no others."l The I790 statute was reviewed and repealed and reinstated numerous times in the I9th century. As late as I875, Congress reinserted the words "free white persons" in the naturalization law. Later the term "free" was dropped, but "white" was retained. The George Dow appeal was granted solely on the basis of the argument that Syrians were of mixed Syrian, Arabian, and even Jewish blood, belonging to the Semitic branch of the Caucasian race and were to be considered white persons.2 Immigrants of what we now call Arab origin were again allowed citizenship as they had been since the I9th century, based on their whiteness. Although the George Dow case is indicative of the exclusionary practices toward nonEuropean immigrants of that period, the story also captures a recurrent dilemma of immigrants of Arab origin. Immigrants of Arab origin are eligible for citizenship, gain citizenship, and yet often are experienced as against the grain of the nation. There is an enduring representation of "Arab-" as not quite American-not quite free, not quite white, not quite male, not quite persons in the civil body of the nation. Arabs- therefore are seen as not quite citizens, despite their possession of formal papers and 258 SUAD JOSEPH passports. The hyphen after Arab- is not firmly attached to American, not yet embedded in the body politic of this nation. In this chapter, I explore the delimiting marker of "free" as a criterion for citizenship and the representations of the "not free" Arab- as a basis for exclusion from discourses and, at times, practices of citizenship in the United States. I argue that, through a variety of discourses, the Arab- is represented as essentially different from the Western , the American. Although difference is often constructed and understood in racial or color terms, I argue a more subtle and in some ways damning designation of difference is also affixed to the Arab- as a not-independent, not-autonomous, not-individual , not-free person. Such representations are woven into many scholarly and popular discourses on Arab religion, politics, and social order. Citizenship and the Yearning for National Identity If, as Sami Zubaida argues, the nation-state has become compulsory, then the idea of citizenship, the essential foundation for nationhood or statehood, must be interrogated for the conditions to membership in the national community.3 What criteria must a person fulfill to be fully a citizen? What kind of person does one have to be to be a citizen of this nation-state, the United States of America? Gauri Viswanathan argues that "the yearning for a condition of hybridity-the happy merging of discrete identities" into a unity is "a precondition of national identity."4 She adds, "the idea of syncretism as existing in nature-innate to peoples everywhere, anterior to regulated definitions of selfhood, and recoverable by a will to see sameness in place of difference-is a purposeful fiction constitutive of the will to nationhood."5 The state, she contends, is the "instrument for such incorporations: disinterestedness is the stance that invites the service of individuals, the merging of differences in one overarching social unity."6 Full citizenship entails a sameness. Differences may be tolerated, but become irrelevant to the nation and national identityJ If the condition for full citizenship is that one is shaped to conform with a social unity, as Viswanathan implies, the persistent representation of Arabs as essentially different and not comprehensible...

Share