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23 Immigr. & Nat'lity L. Rev. 561 (2002)
The Citizen and the Terrorist

handle is hein.journals/inlr23 and id is 573 raw text is: 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 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 redeploy- ment of Orientalist tropes; and the relationship between citizenship, nation, and identity. INTRODUCTION .......................................................... 1575 I. ON RACIAL PROFILING ........................................... 1576 II. ON ORIENTALIST TROPES ........................................ 1586 III. ON CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY .................................. 1592 CONCLUSION ............................................................ 1598 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 Intern- ment 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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