Multiculturalist representations of Arabs actually legitimize racism and torture

Evidence

These terrorist dramas are built on a basic paradox, between representational strategies that project a postracial, multicultural United States and the logics that legitimize racism and torture. These processes are simultaneous and interlinked. Simplified complex representations enable logics that justify torture; or more specifically, they make a successful case for torture, because the suspension of Arab and Muslim American civil rights relies on them as evidence that racism is no longer a factor in the decisions most Americans make. Therefore, if the actions of the government, or the military, are not racist, then the people the United States fights must be the bad guys. TV dramas, by co-opting multiculturalism and standardizing these seemingly humanistic representations of the Other, produce a post-race illusion of good if problematic intentions. This illusion makes logics that legitimize racism appear as though they are not racist. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 305

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Bonilla-Silva’s colorblind racism framework and ‘new racism’ studies; also echoes the ‘good Muslim/bad Muslim’ binary discourse Mahmood Mamdani describes. — connects to: American Orientalism justifies therapeutic violence against Arabs as civilizing mission — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235; US officials instrumentalized racist Arab caricatures to design torture regimes — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 194; Sympathetic multicultural portrayals can still legitimate racist policies — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 374 (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how ‘woke’ casting and diversity in security dramas does ideological work for the surveillance state — the ‘diversity washing’ of the War on Terror.
• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradox — multiculturalism as the vehicle for racism’s legitimation — is dense and paradigm-shifting: representation strategies that appear anti-racist are functionally pro-racist.