American Social “Reminders” of Citizenship after September 11, 2001: Nativisms and the Retractability of American Identity

My discussion considers how crisis dramatically changes social relationships and interaction patterns within a multicultural context. Specifically, I note the inherent social asymmetry of multicultural configurations, thus rendering it vulnerable for the dominant ethnic/racial group, the ethnocracy, to exact symbolically and materialistically punitive measures against minorities during periods of national crisis. I situate my discussion of dramatically changed social interactions in the post- September 11, 2001 period, when the attacks on the World Trade Center towers triggered nativism against Arab Americans, or any group phenotypically similar to the construction of “Arab.” I note how this nativism is not new but is a historical and consistent articulation of the ethnocratic stratum that retracts the American identity and notions of citizenship away from minorities during times of national crisis. The discussion concludes with how American multiculturalism is still full of unresolved ethnic and racial symbolisms that hark back to nineteenth century attempts by the White power structure to idealize, culturally and phenotypically, the constitution of an “ideal” American.

Images of Our Dead Enemies

This chapter provides a comparative analysis of visual representations surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden. In the minutes and hours after the news of bin Laden's killing broke across social media and then through President Barack Obama's brief May 1 speech to the nation, news outlets across the world scrambled to cover the story of the decade. With no immediately forthcoming photos of bin Laden's corpse, mainstream news outlets were excused from the ethical as well as moral binary decision about whether to show or not show images of bin Laden's corpse. Instead, news outlets the world over had a set of decisions to make about what kind of image to select to accompany the announcement of bin Laden's death. The choice of which visual would lead the news became a complex, even political decision. Some news outlets chose to run archival photos of bin Laden; others used iconic images of al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. In essence, through their choices, news outlets decided how to visually “frame” the death of Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man.