Colorblind national-security pretexts let courts uphold racial bans they reject elsewhere

Evidence

Trump legal advisor (and former New York City mayor) Rudy Giuliani attempted to provide a legal cover for the ban; he argued that it was not a ban at all and that Muslims were not being targeted specifically because they were Muslim. According to Giuliani, “we focused on, instead of religion, danger—the areas of the world that create danger for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible.” Indeed, such logic has been deployed for decades. Thus, the Supreme Court upheld the final iteration in 2018 on these grounds, arguing that the president of the United States could limit entry to those seen as security threats. The Court also struck down the 1944 Korematsu case that upheld Japanese internment which was based on the notion that people of Japanese descent constituted a race that represented a threat to the United States. Yet they refused to apply the same logic to the Muslim ban. In the minority opinion, Judge Sotomayor argued that the two were the same and that discrimination was a work based on “a superficial claim of national security.” While she did not use the term race, Naber and Rana appropriately noted that “the racism of Japanese internment is the racism of the Muslim travel ban. Racism based on nationality is the racism based on religious group.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 640

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier chapters claim that color-blind security measures racialize Muslims (ch5, ch11) — the Korematsu/Muslim-ban asymmetry is a concrete legal instantiation. — connects to: Racialization operates through ostensibly colorblind security practices, not overt racism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 576; Courts judged racism by explicit racial language, not inequitable outcomes — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 639; Colorblind measures reinforce existing racial privilege despite egalitarian intent — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 117 (+7 more)
• SEED: The Sotomayor dissent and Naber/Rana equation of internment racism with travel-ban racism makes a crisp hook for an essay on how ‘national security’ functions as a racializing legal fiction across regimes.

Broader Connections

• Racialization operates through ostensibly colorblind security practices, not overt racism #expands (0.92) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 576
• Colorblind measures reinforce existing racial privilege despite egalitarian intent #expands (0.88) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 117
• Courts judged racism by explicit racial language, not inequitable outcomes #expands (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 639
• Color-blind security practices racialize without any actor believing they are racist #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 576
• Color-blindness rhetoric was used to preserve white privilege #expands (0.85)
• Whren v. United States legalized pretextual traffic stops enabling racial profiling #exemplifies (0.82) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 419
• The rule of law is selectively enforced on racial groups framed as threats #expands (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 914
• A court ruling allowed rounding up foreigners on race or religion #exemplifies (0.78)
• White resistance persisted via color-blind punitive policies replacing overt racial terrorism #expands (0.75) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 851
• Refusing to count by race masks ongoing structural racial restriction #expands (0.72)