Sympathetic media portrayals can function as a new form of racism legitimizing exclusionary policy.

Evidence

These seemingly positive representations of Arabs and Muslims have helped to form a new kind of racism, one that projects antiracism and multiculturalism on the surface but simultaneously produces the logics and affects necessary to legitimize racist policies and practices. It is no longer the case that the Other is explicitly demonized to justify war or injustice. Now, the Other is portrayed sympathetically in order to project the United States as an enlightened country that has entered a postracial era. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 115

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The central thesis — that positive representation can itself be a racist technology — is paradigm-shifting and dense, resisting one-sentence summary. It reframes the entire relationship between media representation and policy.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The New Racisms’ — how surface antiracism in mainstream media (post-2000s) functions as legitimation for the carceral state, from post-9/11 Muslim portrayals to copaganda and diversity-washing in tech.
• XREF: Connects to critiques of postracialism and colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva), and to the reader’s work on quiet and silence — here in the register of representation-silencing dissent while appearing inclusive.