Media diversity gestures enabled denial of institutionalized racism during the War on Terror

Evidence

While these representational strategies that challenge the stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims were being broadcast, circulated, and consumed, real Arabs and Muslims were being detained, deported, held without due process, and tortured. Certainly not all Arabs and Muslims were subject to post-9/11 harassment. Nonetheless, what I am arguing is that simplified complex racial representations—a new representational mode collectively constructed by these multiple representational strategies—performs the ideological work of producing a post-race moment in which denying the severity of the persistence of institutionalized racism becomes possible. These TV dramas produce reassurance that racial sensitivity is the norm in U.S. society while simultaneously perpetuating the dominant perception of Arabs and Muslims as threats to U.S. national security. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 164

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s prior work on how representational surface-level fixes (like the ‘postracial casting’ arguments in One Square Inch / other media commentary) can mask structural harm.