Racialized assumptions substitute for evidence in finding detainees non-credible

Evidence

Race, always waiting in the wings, provides the most accessible meaning to events, helping us to find the men not credible and their stories merely confirmations of their associations with terrorism. We do not need proof when we have a racial configuration of signs. The patterns discernable in Almrei are evident in the cases of the other four detainees, often with the same testimony from CSIS lending force to the state’s case of the profile as fact. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 127

Categorization

• XREF: ‘A racial configuration of signs’ resonates with Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding and with the semiotics of race the reader knows from cultural studies.