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The Rules of Forced Engagement

Race, Gender, and the Culture of Fear among Arab Immigrants in San Francisco Post-9/11

University of Michigan, USA

Based on ethnographic research on the impact of the aftermath of 11 September 2001 on Arab immigrant communities in San Francisco, this essay explores the ways that the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ has taken on local form in everyday life. I argue that the post-9/11 backlash is not a historical anomaly, but represents a recurring process of the construction of the Other within liberal polities in which long-term trends of racial exclusion become intensifi ed within moments of crisis within the body politic. I further argue that class, gender, sexuality, religion, and citizenship simultaneously operated intersectionally to produce a variety of engagements with anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism. Finally, I argue that, together, state policies and everyday forms of harassment have produced an ‘internment of the psyche’, or an emotive form of internment that engenders multiple forms of power and control in the realm of the psyche.

Key Words: 11 September • Arab Americans • immigration • Muslim Americans • racism

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