Racialized legal categories are contradictory yet persist as common sense

Evidence

The position that all Muslims and Arabs live outside of reason, and should therefore be cast outside of the law, is not one that is made once and for all. The story of race in the law is one that is full of internal contradictions: they are secretive and duplicitous yet it is we who rely on secret evidence; they are irrational yet it is we who depend on wild assertions about the Muslim fanatic and his counterpart in security hearings, the Anglo-Saxon man. The story of monster terrorists does not make sense yet is common sense. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 141

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counter-intuitive observation that the racist projection (‘they are secretive’ while we rely on secret evidence) is structurally maintained despite being self-contradictory — an insight about how race sustains incoherence as common sense.
• XREF: connects to: Reading judicial opinions as cultural productions exposes races’ contested origins — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 364; Commonsense racist assumptions make legal complicity in subordination seem logical — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 368; Reading law oppositionally reveals how contested ideas harden into normalized racial commonsense — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 364 (+3 more)