With reading these news and article The Citizen and the Terrorist , find one aspect and give the responses in critical race theory. Require more than 380 words, the responds can from any aspect.J.M. Berger, The Trump Administration is Showing White Nationalists it Won’t Fight them At All, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2… (Links to an external site.)
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The Citizen and the Terrorist
Leti Volpp
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THE CITIZEN AND THE TERRORIST
Leti Volpp*
Since the terrorist attacks of September fl, 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 Mus,
lim,” whereby members of this group are identified as terrorists and disidentifiedas
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.
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………….
I.
II.
III.
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ON RACIAL PROFILING …………………………………….
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ON ORIENTALIST TROPES ………………………………….
1586
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ON CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY …………………………….
CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………
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INTRODUCTION
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September l1, 2001, there have
been more than one thousand incidents of hate violence reported in the
United States.i How do we understand this violence, and in particular, its
*
Leti Volpp, © 2002. Associate Professor, American University, Washington College of
Law. Earlier versions of this Article were presented at the AALS Annual Meeting Section on
Immigration Law: Antiterrorism Policy, Immigration Law, and Civil Liberties; the Second Bay
Area APALSA Conference; and the UCLA Law School Symposium, “Leaming from the Internment in a Post 9-11 World.” Deep appreciation to Devon Carbado for inviting me to take part in
this symposium in commemoration of Critical Race Studies at the UCLA School of Law, and for
his extremely helpful comments. I am grateful to the U.C. San Diego Ethnic Studies Department,
the U.C. Riverside Center for Ideas and Society, and the Rockefeller Foundation for generous
fellowship support. Warm thanks are also due to Kevin Johnson and Teemu Ruskola for their
important suggestions. This piece is greatly indebted to conversations with Muneer Ahmad and
Donald Moore.
1. As of February 8, 2002, 1717 cases of “Anti-Muslim incidents” had been reported to the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) since September 11, 2001, http://www.cair-net.
org (last updated Feb. 8, 2001). CAIR reports the following: 289 reports of physical assault or
property damage; 11 deaths; 166 incidents of discrimination in the workplace; 19t incidents of
Originally published in 49 UCLA L. REv. 1575 (2002).
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emergence in a context of national tragedy? What are the seeds of this vio-
lence, and how has the political climate following September 11 allowed
them to grow? Of course, there are no easy answers to these questions. I
would suggest that September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear “Middle Eastern,
Arab, or Muslim.”2 This consolidation reflects a racialization wherein mem-
bers of this group are identified as terrorists, and are disidentified as citizens.
The stereotype of the “Arab terrorist” is not an unfamiliar one. But the
ferocity with which multiple communities have been interpellated as respon-
sible for the events of September suggests there are particular dimensions
that have converged in this racialization. I offer three: the fact and legitimacy of racial profiling; the redeployment of old Orientalist tropes; and the
relationship between citizenship, nation, and identity.
1.
ON RACIAL PROFILING
Before September 11, national polls showed such overwhelming public
opposition to racial profiling that both U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and President George W. Bush felt compelled to condemn the practice.3 There was a strong belief that racial profiling was inefficient,
ineffective, and unfair.4 This all seems a distant memory. There is now
airport profiling; 224 incidents of intimidation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the
police, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); 74 incidents of discrimination in
school; 315 reports of hate mail; 56 death threats; 16 bomb threats; and 372 incidents of public
harassment. See id.
My figure of one thousand incidents in all likelihood vastly underestimates the violence. Between September 11, 2001, and January 31, 2002, in six jurisdictions in the state of California
alone, the state attorney general reported 294 incidents of anti-Arab hate crimes (defined as reported hate crimes against Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, Afghan Americans, Sikhs, South
Asians, and others mistaken for Arabs or Muslims) under investigation. See Press Release, Office
of the Atty. Gen., State of Cal, Dep’t of Justice, Attorney General Releases Interim Report on
Anti-Arab Hate Crimes, http://caag.state.ca.us/newsalerts/2002/02-014.htm (Feb. 28, 2002).
2. The category of those who appear “Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim,” is socially constructed, like all racial categories, and heterogeneous. Persons of many different races and religions
have been attacked as presumably appearing “Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim.” South Asians, in
particular, along with Arabs and persons of Middle Eastern descent, have been subject to attack,
although Latinos and African Americans have also been so identified. The category uses the religious identification, “Muslim,” as a racial signifier. Persons have been attacked since they “appear
Muslim,” which, of course, makes no sense, since Muslims can be of any race. For a discussion of
the equation of “Muslim” with “Middle Eastern” or “Arab,” and the use of “Muslim” as if it were a
racial category see Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?, AMERASIA J. 2001-02, at
69, 72-73.
3. See Attorney General Seeks End to Racial Profiling, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 2, 2001, at A20;
Steve Miller, ‘Profile’ Directive Rallies Two Sides: Bush Seeks Data on Police Stops, WASH. TIMES,
Mar. 12, 2001, at Al.
4. See, e.g., Reginald T. Shuford, Civil Rights in the Next Millenium: Any Way You Slice It:
Why Racial Profiling is Wrong, 18 St. Louis U. PUB. L. Rgv. 371 (1999). For a sampling of the
extensive literature on racial profiling, see generally DAVID COLE, No EQUAL JUSTICE: RACE AND
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public consensus that racial profiling is a good thing, and in fact necessary
for survival.’ There are at least five ways in which this racial profiling has
been practiced against persons who appear “Middle Eastern, Arab, or
Muslim.”
Subsequent to September 11, over twelve hundred noncitizens have
been swept up into detention. The purported basis for this sweep is to investigate and prevent terrorist attacks, yet none of the persons arrested and
detained have been identified as engaged in terrorist activity. 6 While the
CLASS IN THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (1999); DAVID A. HARRIS, PROFILES IN INJUSTICE: WHY RACIAL PROFILING CANNOT WORK
(2002);
RANDALL KENNEDY, RACE, CRIME AND
THE LAW (1997); R. Richard Banks, Race-Based Suspect Selection and Colorblind Equal Protection
Doctrine and Discourse, 48 UCLA L. REV. 1075 (2001); Devon W. Carbado, E-Racing the Fourth
Amendment, 100 MICH. L. REv. (forthcoming 2002); Angela J. Davis, Race, Cops, and Traffic Stops,
51 U. MIAMI L. REV. 425 (1997); Neil Gotanda, ComparativeRacialization: Racial Profiling and the
Case of Wen Ho Lee, 47 UCLA L. REV. 1689 (2000); Kevin R. Johnson, The Case Against Race
Profiling in Immigration Enforcement, 78 WASH. U. L.Q. 675 (2000).
5. See Sam Howe Verhovek, Americans Give in to Race Profiling, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 23,
2001, at Al; see also Nicole Davis, The Slippery Slope of Racial Profiling: From the War on Drugs to the
War on Terrorism, COLORLINES, Dec. 2001, at 2 (noting that 80 percent of Americans were opposed
to racial profiling before September 11, but that polls now show that 70 percent believe some form
of racial profiling is necessary to ensure public safety).
6. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot Act) Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, § 412, 115
Stat. 272, 274 (2001) grants the U.S. Attorney General the power to take into custody any alien
who is certified, on his reasonable belief, as a terrorist or person engaged in other activity that
threatens the national security of the United States. In its first report to Congress, required by the
Patriot Act, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that it has not invoked these powers to certify
or detain any noncitzens as terrorists. See Tom Brune, U.S. Evades Curbs in Terror Law, NEWSDAY,
Apr. 26, 2002, at A17. Instead, the Department of Justice has detained these noncitzens under
previously existing immigration law, primarily section 236 of the Immigration and Nationality Act,
which gives the Attorney General the power to arrest and detain aliens in removal proceedings.
See e-mail from David Cole to Let Volpp, Associate Professor, American University, Washington
College of Law (Apr. 23, 2002, 1:40 p.m. EST) (on file with author).
We in fact do not know the cumulative total of persons that have been put in detention,
because the government has refused to release this figure to the public since November 2001. See
Kate Martin, Civil Liberties Since September 11, 2001, Statement to Committee of the Judiciary,
House of Representatives (Jan. 24, 2002) (transcript available at http://cnss.gwu.edu/-cnss/arrests/
kmtestimony012402.doc) (noting that as of November 5, 2001, the Department of Justice announced that 1147 persons had been detained and subsequently stopped giving out the total number of detainees, but that “it is clear there have been hundreds more arrests since early
November”). There may be as many as fifteen hundred to two thousand persons who have been
detained, virtually all of whom are Arab and Muslim immigrants. David Cole, Presentation at the
Third Annual Peter M. Cicchino Symposium, American University, Washington College of Law
(Apr. 18, 2002), in AM. U. J.GENDER Soc. PoL’Y & L. (forthcoming 2002). The administration
defended this policy of secrecy through claiming concern for the privacy rights of the detainees.
See Dan Eggen, Ashcroft Defends Not Listing Detainees: Privacy Rights At Issue, He Says, WASH.
POST, Nov. 27, 2001, at A4. Lucas Guttentag, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
(ACLU’s) Immigrants’ Rights Project responded as follows: “‘It is ironic that the government is
now concerned about rights when it has arrested and jailed hundreds of people without giving the
American public any proof that the detainees are being treated fairly.”‘ Id. (quoting Lucas
Guttentag).
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government has refused to release the most basic information about these
individuals-their names, where they are held, and the immigration or criminal charges filed against them-we know that the vast majority of those
detained appear to be Middle Eastern, Muslim, or South Asian.7 We know,
too, that the majority were identified to the government through suspicions
and tips based solely upon perceptions of their racial, religious, or ethnic
identity.a
The U.S. Department of Justice has also engaged in racial profiling in
what has been described as a dragnet-seeking to conduct more than five
thousand investigatory interviews of male noncitizens between the ages of
eighteen and thirty-three from “Middle Eastern” or “Islamic” countries or
countries with some suspected tie to Al Qaeda, who sought entry into the
country since January 1, 2000, on tourist, student, and business visas. These
are called voluntary interviews, yet they are not free of coercion or consequences. 9 The Department of Justice has directed the U.S. Attorneys to
7. See, e g., Dan Eggen & Susan Schmidt, Count of Released Detainees Is Hard to Pin Down,
WASH. POST, Nov. 6, 2001, at A1O (“Since Sept. 11, hundreds of people-many of them Middle
Eastern men-have been detained in connection with the probe into the suicide hijackings …. );
see also Susan Akram & Kevin Johnson, The Civil Rights and Immigration Aftermath of September 11,
2001: The Targeting of Arab Americans, ANN. SURV. AM. L. 9 (forthcoming 2002) (manuscript at
9, on file with author) (asserting the largest numbers of detainees are from Pakistan and Egypt, and
pointing out that the detentions have apparently failed to produce any direct links to the terrorist
acts).
8.
MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE-NYU IMMIGRANT RIGHTS CLINIC, THE ROLE OF ETH-
NIC PROFILING IN LAw ENFORCEMENT AFTER SEPTEMBER 11TH 1, at http://www.nlg.org/post911/
resources/NYU-project-descript.pdf (last visited Mar. 18, 2002) (stating that “media reports and
anecdotal evidence strongly suggest that suspicions and anonymous tips-based purely on ethnic
and/or racial stereotypes-have motivated the bulk of arrests made”). The case of Rafiq Butt, who
died in October 2001 while in INS detention, suggests the role that identity has played in generating suspicion. He was picked up after a call from the pastor of St. Anthony’s Church to report that
two vans had stopped outside the apartment Mr. Butt shared with three Pakistani men in Queens,
New York. As one document obtained from the INS stated: “When the doors of these vans were
opened, at least six (6) Middle Eastern males exited from each vehicle and immediately went into
the residence.” Somini Sengupta, Ill-Fated Path to America, Jail and Death, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 5,
2001, at Al. Since Mr. Butt had overstayed his visitor visa, he was removable and accepted voluntary departure. He died in the Hudson County Correctional Center, one of the many jails and
prisons in the country that the INS uses for detention purposes. See id. at BS. See also Sameer M.
Ashar, Immigration Enforcement and Subordination: The Consequences of Racial Profiling After September 11, 34 CONN. L. REV. (forthcoming 2002) (draft on file with the author) (describing case of
client who was arrested for being “brown-skinned and Muslim, and therefore at the Brooklyn
mosque” on the morning of an INS sweep). See also Hanna Rosin, Snapshot of an Immigrant’s
Dream Fading, WASH. POST, Mar. 24, 2002, at Al (describing a case where a police officer stopped
for gas and called the INS because of the attendant’s “horrible English,” and the attendant is being
deported for overstaying a student visa).
9.
See Chisun Lee, Why People of All Colors Should (Still) Resist Racial Profiling: “Let Us Not
Be Suckers for Anybody,” VILLAGE VOICE, Dec. 26, 2001 (describing the coercion involved in inter-
views); CNN, INS Memo Cites Possible Detention for Those Questioned in Terror Probe (Nov. 29,
2001), available at http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/29/inv.terrorism.interviews/ (describing an
INS memo stating that interviewees could be held without bond if an immigration violation is
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The Citizen and the Terrorist
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have investigators report all immigration status violations to the Immigra-
tion and Naturalization Service (INS), which includes minor visa violations.
As a result, one student in Cleveland, Ohio has been criminally charged and
indefinitely detained for telling the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
that he worked twenty hours per week, when he actually worked twentyseven.’ 0
Most recently, U.S. officials have announced the “Absconder Apprehension Initiative,” whereby the Department of Justice will target for removal those noncitizens who have already received final orders of
deportation but have not yet left the country and who “come from countries
in which there has been Al Qaeda terrorist presence or activity.”” Thus,
the government has moved to the head of the list of an estimated 320,000
suspected). Attorney General John Ashcroft recently proffered as an inducement for noncitizens
the possibility of legal immigration status in the United States. See Neil A. Lewis, The Informants:
Immigrants Offered Incentives to Give Evidence on Terrorists, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 30, 2001, at B7. This
potential legalization was through the S visa, which can be granted for critical reliable information
essential to the success of an authorized criminal investigation or prosecution and can be converted
after three years into a green card. See 22 C.F.R. § 41.83 (2002). Represented by Ashcroft as a
new program, which the S visa is not, the proffer of potential legalization contains no guarantee
that those noncitizens who made their identity known to the government to share information that
did not turn out to be helpful, would not be removed from the country. See Dan Eggen, U.S.
Dangles Citizenship to Entice “Cooperators,”WASH. POST, Nov. 30, 2001, at Al.
See e-mail from Reginald Shuford to Leti Volpp, Associate Professor, American Univer10.
sity,
Washington College of Law (Jan. 3, 2002 3:15 p.m. EST) (describing the case of the student)
(on file with the author). Students here on nonimnigrant F-1 visas may only work up to twenty
hours per week or are considered to be in violation of the terms of their visa. See 8 CFR § 214.2
(0(9). The Department of Justice is detaining and removing many noncitizens through the use of
laws that were previously largely unenforced, or through applying laws differently than in the past.
See Rosin, supra note 8, at A10. See also Akram & Johnson, supra note 7, at 10 (pointing out that
no evidence that any of the five thousand interviewees were involved in terrorist activities has
emerged). Importantly, a number of local law enforcement agencies resisted the federal request to
assist in these interviews, suggesting tensions between state and federal agencies on the issue of race
profiling. Id. at 26.
Criticism of these interviews as targeting Muslims and Arabs with little payoff has not deterred the Department of Justice from recently announcing a plan to pursue an additional three
thousand interviews with men who entered the United States more recently than those sought in
on Terrorism,
the first round. See Jonathan Peterson, U.S. Will Interview More Foreigners in Fight
L.A. TIMES, Mar. 21, 2001, at A20.
See GUIDANCE FOR AtsSCONDER APPREHENSION INITIATIVE (Jan. 25, 2002), http://
11.
news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/terrorism/documents/ (last visited Feb. 28, 20C2); Jonathan Peterson, Deportation Sweep Targets Middle Easterners, L.A. TIMES, Jan. 9, 2002, at A5. This appears to
be an expansion of a similar program upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
during the Iran Hostage Crisis, when the attorney general promulgated a regulation requiring all
Iranian citizens on nonimmigrant student visas to report to local INS offices to provide information
as to their resid …
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