Routine racial violence reflects ordinary participation, not aberrant soldiers

Evidence

If what we saw at Abu Ghraib was neither the aberrant behaviour of a few soldiers nor an overly aggressive approach to terrorism gone awry, explanations much favoured in the media and by the current American administration, then it is the public participation of ordinary people in racial violence that requires the most explanation. How do race, class, gender, and sexuality underwrite each other in these moments of public racial violence and how do these practices of violence enable men and women to achieve a profound sense of (gendered) racial superiority? These are questions that require an interlocking approach for understanding the violence at Abu Ghraib – an approach that tracks how multiple systems of oppression come into existence through each other. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 148

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the ‘banality of evil’ scholarship tradition (Arendt) and parallels the book’s broader claim that empire thrives on ordinary people’s participation rather than exceptional leaders. — connects to: Race remains a routine, current shaper of modern state violence — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1843