This paper poses what seems like an answerable and descriptive question about a group’s characteristics: are Zanzibaris “Arabs” who count as “people of the Gulf”? We contend that this designation, like other racial identifiers, is not exclusively (or arguably even primarily) determined by the characteristics of the group in question. In other words, “Arab” and “people of the Gulf” are not simply categorical designations of group membership that are determined by a shared attribute such as language, religion, customs, territory, ethnicity, or nationality. Instead,“Arab” represents a claim to authenticity–one that has to be recognized by the political entities that have successfully monopolized the authority over a territory and its inhabitants. As state formation in the Gulf is consolidated in the late Twentieth century, ethnic minorities in the Arab side of the Persian Gulf are increasingly pressured to perform and prove their authenticity as Arabs in order to fit into the racial hierarchy that is crystalized and codified by new citizenship regimes. Our paper draws upon a corpus of documents that address the status of Zanzibaris in the UAE, including: the British Records of the Emirates (BRE), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) records, and an archive from the Dubai Ruler’s Court (diwan) about displaced persons arriving in the Dubai ports from 1967 to 2013. Our reading of the records is guided by our engagement in legal advocacy for stateless populations in the UAE. Through our analysis of these materials, we tie ethnic identifications to political allegiances and the shifting balance of power that accompanies state formation in the UAE. Instead of providing an answer to whether Zanzibaris are “Arabs,” we foreground the domestic and international politics that undergird racial hierarchies in the region. We show how racialized perceptions of competing political elites and external actors (empires and foreign states) influence the status of groups, as well as how international organizations, such as UNHCR, have wielded the language of racial similarity to advance their humanitarian agenda. We also highlight the role of the Zanzibar Association in Dubai, building upon studies that focus on the meso-level of analysis to show how civil society organizations act as brokers with the state, allowing immigrants to navigate racial hierarchies and make citizenship claims and political demands.