ABSTRACT
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been more than one thousand incidents of hate violence reported in the United States. How do we understand the emergence of this violence in a context of national tragedy? This Article suggests that September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear “Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim,” whereby members of this group are identified as terrorists and disidentified as citizens. While the stereotype of the “Arab terrorist” is not an unfamiliar one, the ferocity with which multiple communities have been interpellated into this identity category suggests there are particular dimensions converging in this racialization. The Article examines three: the fact and legitimacy of racial profiling; the redeployment of Orientalist tropes; and the relationship between citizenship, nation, and identity.
