Arab and Muslim law students after 2001 experienced state criminalization paralleling Blackness

Evidence

The student I came to know initially in my “Race, Representation and the Law” seminar was on a mission to fill intellectual voids and connect analytical dots with his unique blend of a Detroit fighting spirit and a broadening worldview. Khaled found himself directly immersed in the fire during the earliest stages of the War on Terror, experiencing a unique analog of being criminalized for doing anything while Black. Both Arab and Muslim, Khaled studied and learned the law during those bleak formative years of the War on Terror from 2001 to 2004. His experience was formative in the ways that living in a discordant state of existence always is; the promises of formal equality under the law say one thing, but the exceptions allowed by a panoply of justifications for second-class treatment created something entirely different. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 20

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evokes the thesis of Things Fall Apart and colonial-era ‘discordant state of existence’ between promise and practice, and parallels W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness framing. — connects to: Economic crisis birthed twin racial projects criminalizing blacks and Arabs — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 237