US cold-war policymakers racialized Arabs as inherently prone to extremism

Evidence

The post-World War II period saw the emergence of nationalized desegregating efforts – in the army, the courts, on the streets, in buses and schools – prompted not only by moral and internal political imperatives but also by geopolitical Cold War competition and assertive local mass mobilization. “National interest” and foreign policy demands strongly encouraged if not necessitated public commitment to race-neutral governmentality. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 376 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In 1944, Mohamed Mohriez, “an Arab born in Sanhy, Badan, Arabia,” who had been in the United States since 1921, succeeded in his case. Why the change? District Judge Charles E. Wyzanski explained. The “vital interest [of the United States] as a world power” required granting Mohriez’s petition, wrote the judge, because it was now necessary “to promote friendlier relations between the United States and other nations and so as to fulfill the promise that we shall treat all men as created equal.” … In other words, as the United States assumed its leadership role on the world stage, the domestic understandings of America’s racial-classification system and where Arabs fit within it altered alongside. The exigencies of international politics changed the supposedly immutable facts of the Arab “race,” all within the span of seventeen months. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 980 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postwar empire-building and the Israel partnership produced the racialized Arab terrorist category — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 91; US officials instrumentalized racist Arab caricatures to design torture regimes — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 194; Postwar modernization theory and the Israel partnership produced the Arab terrorist race — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 103 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Cold War competition pressured the US toward race-neutral governance. #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 376
• Geopolitical needs, not domestic racism alone, shifted Arabs’ legal racial classification in America. #complicates (0.74) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 980