Ambivalence and regret in media can legitimize racism while disavowing it.

Evidence

This episode of The Practice embodies the formation of ambivalence Agamben identifies as necessary to the state of exception and sovereign rule. The judge’s words, “If not safe, one can never be free,” evoke President Bush’s rhetoric of freedom—“they hate us because we are free”—and thus extends the logic to “we must discriminate in order to be free.” Ultimately, despite representative sympathy, which comes in the judge’s regret, remorse, and even disgust at his own verdict, racism is legitimized: sacrifices to Arab and Muslim American civil rights must be made in the interim. This is not a verdict to celebrate. Ms. Dole is not proud, the judge is filled with disgust, and the Arab American man holds his wife as she cries. Within this apologetic moment, hatred toward Arabs is rendered “understandable,” even as the roots of terrorism are “beyond our imaginations.” — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 385

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that regret, disgust, and apology actually legitimize rather than undermine racism is a dense paradox worth sitting with — media’s self-critique recycles the very power it critiques.
• XREF: Connects to Agamben’s state of exception and Guantanamo-era debates; also parallels the ‘Immodesty’ moral panic piece’s logic of disavowal.