Uncooperative arrestees were shackled and referred to as needing taming

Evidence

(Later Rasha learned why her eldest brother had already been not only handcuffed but shackled. Munir is a deep and stubborn sleeper, and when an agent went to his downstairs bedroom to wake him, Munir was uncooperative. “Why?” he kept asking. “Come on, get up,” the agent said. “Why?” “Just get up,” the man repeated, and Munir asked why again. “Get up!” the agent yelled. “Get up and put your hands together, like the way you pray!” Munir swore at him and told him to get the hell away. “So they shackled him,” Rasha told me, “you know, to tame him.”) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 87

Categorization

• SEED: The verb ‘tame’ — the agent demanding someone put hands together ‘like the way you pray,’ then shackling him for refusing — is a chilling micro-study in how racialized suspicion transforms everyday resistance into physical restraint. Worth an essay or a scene.
• XREF: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ thematically via the weaponization of Muslim bodily practice — here the prayer gesture — as a vector of humiliation and control, though the specific subject differs.