The potential-threat rationale sustains racist targeting despite minimal real threat

Evidence

This ambivalence between embracing and distancing, between paternalistic rule and the segregative security state, is mirrored by the ambivalence towards racial profiling. Prior to 9/11, racial profiling in the US especially by the police was being rolled back in the face of widespread public consensus that it was unworkable and unjust. Post-9/11, public opinion has swung dramatically, 70 percent now supporting profiling as a means to effect security in the homeland. One-third of people polled in the US responded that all Arab Americans ought to be interned as a bulwark against potential terrorism. In December 2004, a Cornell University study found 44 percent of Americans polled support curtailing of Muslim and Arab-Americans’ civil rights. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 462 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Casting targeted actors as irrational masks their strategic rationality and motives — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 351; Doubting targets’ judgment about racism is itself a tool of domination; Racism recruits non-racists by framing out-group elimination as self-defense (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• National security threat perception can abruptly reverse public rejection of racial profiling #qualifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 462
• Racism recruits non-racists by framing out-group elimination as self-defense #corroborates (0.78)
• Doubting targets’ judgment about racism is itself a tool of domination #expands (0.75)