Skin color alone can trigger terrorist suspicion independently of known Muslim identity

Evidence

Jamil told me he grew up in a predominantly white community in the Midwest where there was a very small Muslim community. Like Nabeel, he was one of only a few Muslims in the school, and most of his friends were white and non-Muslim. Even though Jamil claimed these jokes did not bother him, when he found more Muslim friends in college, he chose to avoid spending time with people who made these types of jokes to him, indicating they did make him uncomfortable. Having Muslim friends did not completely protect Jamil from these unwarranted accusations. He was in an elevator of a dormitory with an Indian American friend when a college student, a white male, asked them, “You two aren’t terrorists, are you?” Jamil and his friend were shocked at this question, and Jamil responded “No,” accompanied by an awkward laugh. In this case, Jamil felt it was their skin tone that incited this interaction. The student did not know Jamil was a Muslim, but his ethnicity triggered the assumption that he might be a terrorist. Jamil’s experience was somewhat unusual. The majority of the Muslim men I talked to told me they were usually targeted as a terrorist after they revealed their Muslim names. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 319

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the racialization mechanism (brown skin = suspect, name not needed), anchoring the religion-vs-race distinction the reader is mapping against Beydoun.