What is Whiteness in North Africa?

This entry sketches a matrix for conceptualizing race in/ and North Africa that takes Arabness, indigeneity, Islam, the Sahara, slavery as orienting keywords. It suggests an approach to geopolitically-grounded whiteness social currency aspiration is both based in specific regional economic history also reaches outward toward globally-circulating formations of racial hierarchy. Acknowledging distinct legal, colonial, state histories under through which racialization has proceeded Saharan since dissolution Ottoman Empire, this aims draw out ethical imaginaries bodies have been marked categorized region. These operated their attendant languages, memories, performances enable racisms colorisms with violent enduring material consequences. Under headings “Racialized Enslavement,” “Whiteness Arabness,” “Race Sahara,” African Popular Culture,” I offer brief introductions these discursive formations, histories, conceptual intersections suggested readings each.