Even anti-racist writers inadvertently reproduce racist assumptions through unquestioned premises

Evidence

Stuart Hall has claimed that even those with the best intentions, liberal writers and producers who seek to subvert racial hierarchies, may inadvertently participate in inferential racism, that is, “apparently naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race, whether ‘factual’ or ‘fictional,’ which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions.” The persistent unquestioned assumption in these TV dramas is that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists, despite writers’ efforts to create a wider range of Arab and Muslim characters. … The results are some modifications to avoid being offensive while perpetuating core stereotypes that continue to have cultural capital. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 158

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hall’s concept of inferential racism — naturalized representations with racist premises inscribed as unquestioned assumptions — is the chapter’s core analytical frame.
• XREF: connects to: Anti-Muslim racism’s power lies in unexamined assumptions presented as fact. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 264