A NEW AMERICAN APARTHEID Racialized, religious minorities in the post-9/11 era

Abstract

In recent years, portions of an irrationally unsettled Christian supermajority have utilized unsavory public displays to reassert dominance, and demand the restoration of previously normalized exceptional privileges. This threatens the religious freedom of non-Christian communities of color, most obvious during sacred site construction. Unprincipled white Christian religious leaders, media figures, and politicians have deployed xenophobic rhetoric and fictitious issues to mobilize anxious white Christians for their own political and financial gain, while dangerously fanning the flames of societal bigotry. The deep, often open racism against those perceived as Muslim, and various other non-Christian non-whites, has deeply scarred the lives of numerous communities of color, leading to ongoing, innumerable hate crimes against their bodies, property, and sacred sites. The xenophobic cores of the nation's white and Christian supremacist streams of thought have melded, resulting in a condition in which minority faith traditions have accrued negative associations that have historically been coupled with race, the racialization of religious identity. The paper traces the manner in which religious identity has been racialized by both the state and powerful leaders in the post-9/11 era, examining a new American apartheid for members of a distinct new class in our nation: the Men of Profile.

Notes

1 ‘American grace: How religion divides and unites us’, http://pewforum.org/American-Grace–How-Religion-Divides-and-Unites-Us.aspx#1.

2 This term was borrowed from Bill Ong Hing.

3 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).

4 See a useful critique of the poll's accuracy at: http://www.examiner.com/obama-administration-in-new-york/new-york-times-poll-reveals-tea-party-ignorance-dishonesty-and-hypocrisy.