Feeling sympathy for Arab Muslim victims became a marker of multicultural progress

Evidence

Arab and Muslim victims emerge as particularly important to simplified complex representations because they allow viewers to feel for a certain character type—a person who formerly was not seen as deserving of human feeling. The growth of this affect in turn comes to symbolize multicultural progress. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 514

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: Strong framing hook for fiction: a story set in a society where performing compassion toward a formerly-dehumanized group is itself the socially legible act — the feeling replaces the politics.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the politics of pity’ — when sympathy toward victims stands in for structural change, affect signals progress while power stays untouched.