Sympathy functions as the primary device for positive media representation in the post-race era

Evidence

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 demonstrated how sympathy is an important representational device in our supposedly post-race era, because the emotion is central to depicting a group in a “positive” manner. Arabs and Muslims have been represented positively through the figures of the patriotic Arab American, the Arab American who is a victim of post-9/11 hate crimes, and the “oppressed Muslim woman.” Despite an abundance of fictional characters (and of a character “type,” in the case of journalistic accounts of the oppressed Muslim woman) who we are meant to feel sorry for, it is clear from government and media accounts that not all Arabs and Muslims are deserving of our sympathy. This chapter seeks to examine the parameters of sympathy. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 840

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the book’s core analytic frame: sympathy as regulating positive representation, with a limited ‘sympathy pool’ that the state also constrains.