Civil rights history is deployed to legitimate new racism against Arabs

Evidence

In this episode of The Practice, African Americans are invoked to establish that racism is wrong and passé. The airline CEO explicitly states that discriminating against African Americans would be unreasonable or illogical; thus the logic of ambivalence allows him to reason that racism is both wrong and necessary against Arabs and Muslims. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 366

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ pattern where a past moral panic is used to legitimate a current one — history serving as a contrast that validates the present. — connects to: Racist framing of Arabs spans both hardline and liberal camps.