The US repeatedly brands whole groups as problems with state sanction

Evidence

America has an unfortunate history of singling out large groups of people and branding them as, quite literally, personae non gratae. The scourge of slavery, abuse of Native Americans, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II are just a few instances in which racism and cultural biases were accepted by fellow citizens and even sanctioned by the government. In How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?, Bayoumi introduces us to a selection of young men and women who have found themselves part of the newest suspect class in the United States, a group that—following the 2001 terror attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—went from simply invisible to being regarded with suspicion and even actively pursued. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 1199

Categorization

• XREF: The pattern of state-sanctioned suspicion of whole groups connects to the reader’s work on institutional shutdowns of whole categories of people; also parallels the ‘suspect class’ logic in other histories of surveillance.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ and ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ insofar as both treat state-sanctioned distrust of entire groups as a recurring cultural mechanism.