Muslim American women volunteer to prove their worthiness as citizens

Evidence

Volunteering in American society is highly valued and viewed as a democratic value. It is a quintessentially American attribute or characteristic (Bellah et al. 2007). Maira (2009) argues that civic engagement and community service have come to define the neoliberal citizen who must demonstrate his or her “worthiness” as a citizen. Many of the Muslim women I interviewed told me they volunteered at a variety of places in order to counter the notion that Muslims were no good for American society. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 395

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reader’s map of surveillance racializing Muslim Americans — this passage shows the labor side: citizens performing worthiness to counter the suspect status.