Foreign wars redraw internal racial borders that target domestic civilians of enemy descent

Evidence

US wars abroad have dire consequences for those seen as domestic representatives of the foreign enemy. Race scholar Nikhil Pal Singh argues that “frontier wars, the wars of the early U.S. empire, and the twentieth century’s world wars all illuminated affinities between war making and race making, activating or reaffirming distinctions between friend and enemy along an internal racial border.” Perhaps the most significant example of this process in the twentieth century involved the treatment of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. More than 100,000 people of Japanese descent were rounded up and put into detention camps. Young and old were incarcerated simply for having a Japanese ancestor and forced into harsh conditions in makeshift camps, often without cooking or even plumbing facilities. Of those incarcerated, nearly three-quarters were US citizens. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 548

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to book_so_far ch11 claims about three-quarters of interned Japanese Americans being US citizens and NJA plans for Arab internment — this supplies the Pearl Harbor precedent that structures the whole domestic-securitization argument. — connects to: US imperial wars abroad drive the racial exclusion of Arab Americans at home. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 236; US wars abroad activate racial borders that target domestic minorities — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 536; US wars abroad activate an internal racial border against domestic enemy-representatives — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 548 (+14 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘The Enemy-Making Machine’ closing gap: the home-front roundup is the flagship instance of how localizing a foreign war fails to contain the enemy, so the reader can use it to specify what an anti-coupling politics must prevent.

Broader Connections

• Foreign wars drive domestic racialization of perceived enemy populations #corroborates (0.96)
• Domestic populations representing foreign enemies were interned in US wars #exemplifies (0.92)
• US imperialism abroad and domestic counterterrorism form one interconnected racial system #corroborates (0.88) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 22
• Domestic War on Terror policing targets immigrants through racialized geography and profiles #exemplifies (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 844
• The War on Terror created deportable subjects racialized as illegal and criminal #exemplifies (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 647
• Both domestic immigration and international conflict shape American racialization #corroborates (0.82) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 351
• War on Terror security measures enable greater domestic police repression against minorities #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1125
• International racisms cross-pollinate and transform their targets across borders #expands (0.80)
• Contemporary state violence redraws Muslim-majority borders much as colonial agreements once did #exemplifies (0.78) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 333
• Manufactured external enemies alternately take domestic and foreign forms #expands (0.78)
• Racialization technologies are deployed on internal class others before foreign enemies #complicates (0.75)
• Racial and radical anti-foreign attacks coexisted, not supplanted one another #complicates (0.74) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 818
• Generalized anti-foreign attacks historically precede targeting a group as a unique racial menace #complicates (0.72) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 518
• National racial histories exceed their borders to shape global configurations #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 354