Racialized groups are admitted to US culture only as patriots or victims

Evidence

There is indeed a process of rehabilitation taking place, but it is one in which images of acceptable Arab and Muslim Americans are produced through the figure of the Arab American patriot or victim of post-9/11 hate crimes. This process of rehabilitation is certainly not unique to Arab and Muslim Americans. Native American images in Hollywood, for example, shifted from savages to noble savages in the 1930s, best typified by the Lone Ranger’s Native American sidekick, Tonto. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 108

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: tracing the ‘acceptable minority’ archetype from noble savages to patriotic Muslims to model minorities — how inclusion is always conditional.
• SHARE: Worth sending to someone studying the noble savage trope in Hollywood westerns as the lineage for the ‘patriotic Muslim’ figure.