ABSTRACT
Advocacy organizations representing Muslim American communities have been operating near the center of civil rights efforts in the United States for several decades. This chapter considers how these organizations have developed strategic approaches for navigating racial politics. I argue that beginning around 2010 and continuing until at least 2016, some second-generation Muslim American advocates led renewed efforts to codify and co-opt a new racial identity category that would include Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. I argue that resistance to recognizing such a racial identity category, seen as insurmountable in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 2000s, began to wane in the 2010s. This came about, in large part, due to the work of second-generation Muslim American activists. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with advocates at several prominent advocacy organizations, I describe how discussions about racial politics among Muslim American advocates, frequently led by the second generation, have shaped recent approaches to confront Islamophobia.
