Whitewashed

I’ve just finished reading John Tehranian’s recent book, Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Minority. Although known better as an intellectual property and entertainment lawyer, Tehranian has put together a really interesting book about the fate of Americans of middle Eastern descent who are counted as “white” for most purposes as a matter of law, but suffer significant discrimination, particularly since 9/11. The book is somewhat anecdotal and also contains much in the way of historical and case law analysis. There is little in the way of empirical work, but, as Tehranian notes, it is hard to do empirical work in this area because it is very difficult to collect accurate statistics.

It’s really impressive that Tehranian put this book together while simultaneously producing a book on digital copyright infringement for OUP.

Anyone interested in critical race theory and the status of Americans of middle Eastern descent (and indeed the difficulties inherent in defining a meaningful concept of “middle Eastern”) might find this book a particularly interesting read.