In this paper, Leti Vollp seeks to answer the question of identity and citizenship of the Middle-Eastern people.
She states that the September 11 attack on the United States brought about the creation of a new stereotype against the people who appear Middle-Eastern, Muslim, or Arab as terrorists and their status as citizens were devalued.
The Three Examples
Racial Profiling
Before the attack, the public was opposed to racial profiling but after the incident, it was viewed as a necessity for survival. The government enabled the intrusion of civil liberties in many ways such as empowering over one thousand incidences of hate violence since the September 11 attacks against Middle-Eastern-looking people. The government sanctioned these violations by the creation of the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security which investigates such matters with increased pettiness. The National Security Agency also collaborated with the main telecommunications companies in the country to intercept internet and telephone conversations of people. Additionally, the Department of Justice instructed that all judges should report any immigration violations including any minor visa anomalies and the subsequent deportation of selected individuals from nations that have al-Qaeda activity. In addition to these measures, the government also increased militarization of many aspects of national security such as the borders, the culture, and the police (Volpp).
Oriental Tropes
Leti Vollp notes that the nation witnessed an increase in the redistribution of the old oriental tropes, a situation which saw changed perspectives on the Asian and Middle-Eastern people as aliens or others. Increased polarization saw the creation of the West and the East, whereby the former was viewed as civilized while the latter was seen as barbaric and primitive. The individuals of Eastern origin like the North Africans, East Asians, Turkish and Middle Eastern were collectively used to sustain the Orientalist view in national identity discussions. The gender Orientalism view saw an increased opinion that brown women needed to be saved from brown men hence initiating President Bush's entry into Afghanistan to save women from Taliban oppression (Volpp).
The Relationship Between Citizenship, Identity, and Nation
The author continues to elucidate that the recent changes in racial profiling are motivated by the perception that the individuals facing racialization are others, or are "not part of us". However, these people are citizens of the United States through birth or naturalization, but the public fails to include them in the social and political perspectives, yet they feel a sense of membership or kinship. Thus, citizenship ceases to be a form of identity but a form of interpellation hence justifying ideology in excluding an individual from membership. This exclusion leads to the reduction in one's ability to exercise their citizenship freely because they are prone to violent attacks. According to popular ideology, the others are disruptors of the American way of life, yet this is an imagination because America is also their home. (Volpp)
Relationship to My Experiences
In 2005, I witnessed racial profiling of a Muslim family from the Middle-East. During the morning hours, a group of FBI agents barged into their house and handcuffed the father, the mother, and their eldest daughter and detained them in a cell. The daughter attended a Muslim school, where she learned matters relating to the Islamic religion, yet according to the police, she was part of a planned terror attack. Further investigation led to the deportation of her father back to Qatar, her sentencing to house arrest and subjection to increased scrutiny for one year.
Work Cited
Volpp, Leti. "The Citizen and the Terrorist." Immigration and Nationality Law Review (2002): 561-585. https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1514"context=facpubs.
