The Selectee List turns airports into racialized surveillance terrain.

Evidence

The government maintains secrecy regarding the procedures for these lists, making it difficult to know how names are selected or why one actually appears on the lists. None of the Muslim American men interviewed exhibited travel behaviors that might raise suspicion of involvement in terrorism. They are ordinary American citizens who are routinely humiliated in airports on the basis of their Muslim identity. Muslim men are subjected to the Orientalist stereotype that they are incapable of loyalty to the United States (even when it is their country of origin), which strips them of the basic privileges associated with citizenship. The utilization of the Selectee List is one of the ways airports have become a racial terrain where some bodies are criminalized and scrutinized through hypersurveillance. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 207

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Selectee List as a mechanism producing a ‘racial terrain’ where Muslim identity triggers scrutiny regardless of behavior.
• XREF: Connects to Beydoun’s analysis of Islamophobia as a racial project and the reader’s sense that citizenship separates Muslims from full membership.