My point is that race is not a real biological construct. It’s not fixed or essential. In the American and European context racism and white supremacy are synonymous. Race is really about creating two broad categories of white and non-white, i.e. Self and Other. Race is more than just those obsolete typologies—Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, etc. Racialization is a dynamic, ongoing process in which new classifications of the Other are rising and falling, constantly being defined and redefined in opposition to whiteness or being co-opted by it.

Religion plays a huge role in this. The category “white” in the US is married to Protestantism, hence White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Irish and Italians weren’t always considered “white.” They were Catholic and they were conceptualized as a different race, or a missing link between the “lower races” and whites.

Ex.

As I pointed out in the article, religious Othering was a precursor to the race concept. The Limpieza de Sangre laws of Spain foreshadowed the Nuremberg laws. Both racialized religious groups.

The bottom line is, yes, a white person can become a Muslim, but in general Islam is practiced by people who are not white, and a lot of the animosity, towards Muslims as a group is motivated by a racist fear of the Other rather than any specific problem with beliefs or culture.