A model minority’s fall recasts her flaws as racial essence

Evidence

Hirsi Ali also demonstrated that it was possible for a person of Muslim background to become an admired and reliable Dutch citizen in a Netherlands ruled by a government that prided itself for taking a hard line on integration and immigration. But now, more and more people began to look at Hirsi Ali in a different way. She became a self-asserting ‘femme fatale of politics’, a ‘diva’ whose biography was ridden with lies. Although it was rarely expressed in so many words, it is my belief that her switching from one political party to another, her befriending of prominent and influential figures, the extravagant ways in which she dressed and her misrepresentations about her name were not seen as the traits of an exceptional Muslim, but were viewed as the embodiment of the shrewdness of the average Muslim immigrant. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1652

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the model minority myth literature and to how exceptional individuals are retroactively re-essentialized once they fail or disclose imperfections.