Critical Theory and Social Justice Journal, Vol. 11

Front Matter:

Critical Theory & Social Justice

Undergraduate Research Journal

Volume No. 11, 2022

Editorial Board:

Faculty Advisor Malek Moazzam-Doulat

Emily Williams

Ezgi Koc

Gieselle Gatewood

Hunter Isenstein

Isabel Mascuch

Jenna Beales

Lulu Maxfield

Maylene Hughes

Mira Tarabeine

Talia Weinreb

The Critical Theory and Social Justice: Journal of Undergraduate Research offers a transformative space for undergraduate students to engage critical theory in the pursuit of social justice. This journal serves as a peer-reviewed platform for practical interventions that draw upon the various discourses and approaches with which our authors and artists work.

The Journal uniquely publishes original undergraduate articles and artwork in its field. It reflects Occidental College’s Department of Critical Theory & Social Justice (CTSJ), the only undergraduate academic department of its kind.

Since publishing its first volume in 2010, CTSJ’s Undergraduate Research Journal has become a robust and respected institution at its home campus of Occidental College and at peer institutions such as Middlebury College, Brown University, Stanford University, Scripps College, Tufts University, and Yale University. CTSJ is dedicated to providing a forum for undergraduate students to develop and share critical research and writing on the intersections of power dynamics and inequalities as they relate to problems of social justice. The Journal seeks to foster an exchange of ideas across disciplines and to deepen understandings of systems of injustice; in this way, the Journal advances the mission of Occidental College: to develop critical, thoughtful, and active participation in an increasingly pluralistic and conflict-ridden global culture.

Cover: Grayson Cassels, “Digital 2”

Table of Contents:

Writing:

After-Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Zombie’s Declaration of Black Independence

Boatemaa Agyeman-Mensah

“A better, more positive Tumblr”: The Repression of Online Sexuality and the Erasure of a Heterotopian Archive

Lucy Allen

The Transformative Possibility of Canadian Law and Indigenous Rights: Promising in Concept, Improbable in Practice

Aidan Sneyd

Community Land Trusts are the Necessary Future of Black Reparations

Sydni Scott

Foucault on Border and Migration

Robin Ehl

The Means to Match Their Hatred: An Examination of Islamophobic Rhetoric in State of the Union Addresses

Daisy

10.

Media: Top of the List! a film-to-book adaptation of footage from Leslie Cohcran’s 2000 campaign for the Mayor of Austin, TX

48.

56.

74.

Luis Quintanilla St. Quarantine Crowned with Anxiety Mint Zekoll Altar, Feed, Church Exploring Femininity, Sexuality, and Cyberspace in Painting & Digital Art Grayson Cassels a prayer for my yoni

Esther Karpilow

After-Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Zombie’s Declaration of Black Independence

Abstract: The archetype of zombies as undead, mindless, flesh-eating monsters is only partially accurate to its historical roots. While it is true that zombies are reanimated corpses, the Western appropriation of the monster has diluted one of the most important factors in its original definition: slavery. The zombies we see in mainstream media today were born from the religious beliefs of enslaved Black peoples on Hispaniola (the 17th century French colony that preceded the creation of Haiti). There, Black spirituality served to reflect horrors of slavery. One way such horrors manifested was in the depiction of the afterlife. Through a process of extricating an individual’s motor functions from their bodily autonomy, a Black corpse could be reanimated for enslavement, even after death. Thus, the word, zonbi, was born to describe these undead, free laborers condemned to eternal servitude. However, if the original zombie is predicated on the fears of slavery, how does zombification occur in a post-racial society? This paper uses Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out, to explore how iterations of the traditional zombie persist in a post-Obama America. Specifically, it examines how Chris (the main character of Peele’s film) suffers from a loss of bodily autonomy through racial fetishization. However, this paper also explores Chris’ evasion of zombification parallels the 1791 Haitian Revolution— the evasion of racial subjugation and reclamation of bodily autonomy through Black separatism.

I. Introduction

Zombies are beings seemingly frozen in time, unable to transcend residency among the living despite being long deceased. However, the rhetoric that surrounds these creatures is anything but fixed. Depictions of zombies have proven to be fluid throu-

ghout history. One might be surprised to learn that the earliest zombies were devoid of the flesh-eating motivations that typically denote the being. And newer depictions of the creature have selectively abandoned the sluggish, obtuse, and, even, the undead mark of zombification. So, if a universal characterization of the creature is nonexistent, how does a monster come to be classified as a zombie? Examining the social context surrounding portrayals of zombies shows that one pattern may be extracted from the chaos: race. Traditionally, the horror genre has been constructed around society’s “fears of the Other”; conflicts are typically “between the ‘normal,’ mostly represented by… white… heroes and heroines, and the ‘monstrous,’ frequently colored by racial… ideological markers.”1 Therefore, it is unsurprising that variations of zombification on the silver screen have repeatedly paralleled periods of racial conflict within the real world.2 In Jordan Peele’s 2017 breakout film, Get Out, modern zombies can be interpreted as an allegory for the imminent tribulations of Black-white race relations in self-proclaimed post-racial society. And when these fictional monsters are analyzed under a lens of social commentary, the rhetoric surrounding the evasion of zombification proposes Black separatism as the solution to current and forthcoming, real-life racial tensions.

II. The Haitian Origins of the Zombie

Comparing the origins of the term “zombie” to modern usages, it becomes apparent that most zombies in current media have diluted the most important factor in their original definition: slavery. In the 17th century, Black spirituality across the colony of Saint-Domingue3 was dominated by Vodou—a religion born when disparate Central and West Afri-

can peoples conglomerated in bondage on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.4 Vodou practitioners held that the human body was mere flesh controlled by a soul divided: the ti/petit bon ange was responsible for individuality and consciousness, while the gros bon ange was responsible for physical motor functions.5 Additionally, Vodou believed dying was a multi-day spiritual journey; the progression of the soul during death could be tampered with by external forces during this transitional period. In fact, malicious sorcerers/shamans called bokurs would do just that. During death, bokurs would capture the ti bon ange of a dying person in a bottle, allowing for the gros bon age—and by association, the body—to be exploited for free labor by whomever possessed the ti bon ange container. The Haitian word, zonbi, was born to describe these undead victims.6 When examining the rhetoric surrounding Haitian transformations of man into zombie, the process seems to mimic the conversion of Black Africans into enslaved persons. The phrasing of “capturing” one’s individuality and “exploiting” Black bodies “for free labor,” harkens back to the procedural and dehumanizing terminology of trans-Atlantic chattel slavery. These linguistic parallels suggest that zombies themselves may reflect real-life fears of the very same enslaved Haitians who constructed this monster in the first place. After all, for Black Haitians in the 17th century, what could be worse than slave life? The potential that even death would not provide respite from the torturous conditions of servitude. Therefore, when defining zombies, historical precedent suggests that the designation of “zombie” may be less dependent on an undead quality—which seems to be the central focus of colloquial usage—and more so grounded in a process analogous to bondage: zombification as defined by an institutional loss of bodily autonomy. In recognizing the trans-Atlantic slave trade to be the origin story of zombie lore, it is clear that depictions of these monsters have always been tangential to their racial environment. Thus, it is not only appropriate, 4 Currently known as the nations of Haiti and The Dominican Republic.

but often imperative to read zombies as allegories for Black exploitation unfolding in the real world.

III. Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) as a “Post-Racial” Zombie Movie

The interpretation of zombies as a proxy for existing race relations is dependent on historical anti-Black sentiments. Therefore, it can be difficult to understand the monster’s applicability as we approach a future that actively attempts to distance itself from racism. However, Jordan Peele’s 2017 debut horror film, Get Out , manages to effectively assuage such doubts by minimizing the gap between past and future. Set in suburban America, the movie centers around the interracial relationship of Chris Washington, a Black man, and his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage. When the two go upstate to spend a few days with Rose’s family, Chris anticipates an icy reception. But he is pleasantly surprised to be met with open (albeit deceptive) arms. However, the flawed nature of this acceptance becomes apparent when Rose’s father, Dean Armitage, attempts to gain Chris’ favor by saying, “I would have voted for Obama for a third term, if I could. Best president in my lifetime, hands down.”7 Although Dean’s reference to the recent Obama administration acknowledges that the movie is set in the present, his sense of normalcy towards the election of a Black president grounds the plot in a pseudo-futuristic reality in which America has become a successfully post-racial society, electing leaders based on merit and merit alone. Yet, Dean’s deep reverence for Barack Obama is baseless. Dean makes the assertion that Obama was the “best president in [his] lifetime” while simultaneously failing to name any outstanding initiatives or distinctive policies during said administration. This passionate favoritism contradicts his attempt to curate a colorblind, blasé attitude towards Blackness as his review of the 44th president is still a reductive assessment of racial caliber, even if it is positive. Thus, Get Out shows how closely acts of

7 Peele.

1 Benshoff, 31.

2 Mariani; Moreman and Rushton 1-12, 31-41, 60-73.

3 A French colony in the 17th century. Now known as the country of Haiti..

Zarka, “The Origins of the Zombie.” 6 Ibid.

Boatemaa Agyeman-Mensah | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

racism can align with ostensibly anti-racist rhetoric. Peele asserts that progressive, speculative futures may be indistinguishable from past transgressions if America’s post-racial fantasies are underlined by the same hyper-racial fixations which previously fostered racist ideologies.

Get Out subtly manifests Haitian zombification in futuristic narratives by establishing that losses of bodily autonomy in the future will appear primarily in the form of benevolent racism. Specifically, via racial fetishization.8 When the Armitage family hosts a garden party, Rose parades Chris around the house grounds to meet wealthy white individuals. At one point, a woman named Lisa Deets approaches the couple to comment on Chris’ physical attractiveness. Lisa gropes Chris’ upper body then proceeds to let her gaze drift downwards. In an obvious assessment of his genitals, she asks Rose, “Is it true? Is it better?”9 Here, Lisa’s lustful appraisal evokes the hypersexual stereotype of Black men; particularly, the lore that Black men possess the largest phalli. This monolithic fetishization reduces Chris solely into a corporeal vessel indistinguishable from any other Black man. Chris’ body is treated as if it is devoid of emotion or agency, reducing him to a zombie that exists solely for the sexual pleasure of white women. Furthermore, throughout the entire interaction, Lisa never addresses Chris directly, speaking about him to others as if he is not even present. This blatant disregard of Chris’ consciousness suggests an assumed simplemindedness among Black people; not unlike the mindlessness of zombies deprived of their ti bon ange. Through this darkly humorous scene, Peele highlights the ironic, sycophantic racism that results from white society having almost too much admiration for their Black counterparts. Chris continues to complete his rounds at the party. His interactions culminate in a conversation with Parker Dray, an older white man. Parker proclaims, “Fair skin has been in favor for, what, the past hundreds of years? But now,

the pendulum has swung back. Black is in fashion!”10 While this statement diverges from the hypersexual nature of Lisa’s appraisal, Parker’s assertion still plays into racial fetishization from a capitalistic standpoint. By saying that “Black is in fashion,” Parker suggests how post-racial iterations of Black exploitation may occur via cultural appropriation; for example, Black streetwear, music, hairstyles, and even physical features have been stripped of their cultural value after entering real-world trend cycles. The word “fashion” in reference to Black bodies condenses race into something as wearable and removable as a winter coat—a trivial garment subject to be in-and-outof-style at the whim of white consumers. And with Blackness as nothing more than a mere fashion statement, Chris’ body becomes a material commodity reminiscent of the bondage industry that defined both Haitian zombies and slaves. Furthermore, Parker’s citing of historical white preference suggests that a racist past has been vanquished by an inclusive future. However, Peele refutes this conjecture by establishing time as a “pendulum.” Parker’s declaration that America is on the cusp of anti-racism because “the pendulum has swung back” contradicts the understanding that progress has a forward trajectory; inadvertently he admits the inescapable nature of bigotry across time. In fact, bigotry is made synonymous with time. It, too, is the pendulum. Bigotry is constant behind the superficial iterations by which the same racial subjugation is expressed over the course of history—on one end, the demonization of blackness, and on the other, fetishization. Thus, Get Out diagnoses the issue of modern Black-white tensions to be the benevolent racism that occurs under a presumptuous self-labeling of post-racial life. Much like zombies, anti-Black racism has remained frozen in time, taking on various forms of life to preserve its function (the perpetuation of slavery’s legacy) even after society has hastily pronounced it long dead.

IV. The Haitian Revolution, Black Separatism, and the Zombie’s Demise

When paralleling Vodou zombies to Haitian slavery, history not only imitates corporeal reanimation processes but also proposes the unmaking of such transformations. In 1791, Haitian Blacks began a slave revolt against their colonizers.11 The revolution concluded in 1804, when “black leaders declared national independence… and ordered the massacre of nearly every white man, woman, and child remaining in the territory.”12 Haitian Blacks believed interracial coexistence could never be built on the bedrock of slavery/colonization. Oppression could only be negated in a state devoid of white influence and built on Black self-governance. Just as Vodou demands the soul’s components to be in harmonious separation (only when the gros bon ang e becomes unequally powerful are zombies born), Haitian history similarly suggests the cure to subjugation is Black separatism.

Get Out has also been written into history for a revolutionary act: it is one of few zombie movies that allows the Black protagonist to survive. Or rather, allows him to not just survive, but triumph over white characters via the rhetoric of reclamation comparable to Haitian separatist ideology. In the latter half of the movie, Chris discovers the Armitage family business. In a process analogous to zombification, Rose’s mother uses the sound of a clinking teacup to hypnotize Black characters. She stores their consciousness in the “sunken place” so that they may remain alive and fully aware, yet powerless as the brains of physically impaired white buyers are transplanted into their fully capable bodies. Chris realizes he has been lured into a trap too late. He is bound to a recliner for hypnosis. But Chris claws through the leather upholstery and plugs his ears with cotton stuffing, blocking sounds of the teacup so he can escape the house.13 Given that zombification is a surrogate for Black subjugation, it is notable that Chris uses cotton, the very crop which condemned his ancestors to servitude, to retain bodily autonomy.

Cotton can be symbolic of the forced labor which constructed the economic backbone of America. Therefore, using the crop as a tool for liberation rather than a cause for bondage proposes that the creative repurposing of white assets leads to Black economic reclamation. Furthermore, because Chris proceeds to escape the house following this unique reclamation of cotton, Peele seems to suggest that economic empowerment may be a precursor to racial separatism. In the climactic finale, Chris violently forces his way out of the Armitage house, inadvertently setting it on fire before scrambling onto the road. But he is closely pursued by Rose, the sole Armitage remaining. Rose is fatally wounded with a gunshot to the stomach and Chris uses this opportunity to begin strangling her. At this moment, a police car arrives, and Rose whimpers for help. However, the driver is none other than Rod, a Black TSA worker and Chris’ best friend. The men drive off together as Rose dies.

14The image of Chris mounted atop a helpless Rose evokes the racist narrative of a Black man unable to suppress his barbaric urge to assault an innocent white woman. And Rose is aware of this trope. She pleads to the police for help despite having instigated the ongoing violence because of an understanding of systemic racism and a calculating deployment of her assumed victimhood. However, just as the audience accepts the impending destruction of Chris’ body, Peele subverts expectations of zombification at the hands of law enforcement. The cop car—typically a protective emblem in white society, but a symbol of prejudicial brutality among Black communities—becomes the vehicle of Chris’ salvation. Rod’s position as a member of law enforcement suggests that Black people may further escape institutional zombification (and by extension, systemic racism) by placing organized protection back into the hands of their own community members. Furthermore, by breaking work protocol to drive the police car away from his mundane duties at the airport, Rod suggests that true protection—specifically when considering the protection of Black people—requires the abandoning

14 Peele.

8 There is even some anthropological speculation that the Haitian word, zonbi, might have derived from the West African word for “fetish,” zumbi (Moreman and Rushton 3). 9 Peele.

11 Clavin, 118. 12 Clavin, 118 13 Peele.

of current institutions to serve a greater good. Ultimately, suggesting the creation of a separate society established for the interests of Black people that is upheld by Black people.

One concern to a separatist reading of Get Out is that signs of expatriation only make fleeting appearances towards the end of the film, causing separatism to appear either as a mere afterthought or a wildly outlandish interpretation. But Get Out admits its logical fallacies. Rather than shying away from its burdens of proof, Peele’s work can also be read as embracing the ungroundedness of his separatist claims. In the film’s final image, Chris is shown fleeing a destroyed Armitage home to some unspecified location. The viewer can only guess what steps might be taken next to rectify the atrocities that he has born witness to. Where would Chris find adequate therapy? How could he legally prosecute those surviving perpetrators? What amount of financial compensation could remedy his suffering, and who would deliver it? Peele’s choice to end the film without specific answers acknowledges the pattern to deny survivors of racism support within a society built on the foundation of slavery. Chris’ journey to recovery and attempts at reintegration into white-dominated society would likely feel unrealistic or depressing. By ending without resolve, Peele suggests that running toward any unknown future is superior to remaining near any semblance of the racist past. Moreover, by ending the movie with Chris driving away, Peele asserts that despite little victories like the election of the nation’s first Black president or the triumph of a Black protagonist in the zombie film genre, the quest for racial liberation is ongoing and there is still a long road ahead of us. Peele’s failure to explicitly show Chris reaching his promised land may be considered as a deliberate choice; he does not offer a solution in order to task viewers with the responsibility of writing the next chapter. If Black people are to find safety in real life, a place where they can stop running and call their own, what do we envision such a state of racial respite to look like? And how do we see ourselves getting there?

V. Conclusion

From Haitian history to current social climates, the modern zombie melds past and present to show how slavery’s legacy might persist into post-racial futures. Specifically, zombie rhetoric as presented in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) warns of perpetual Black subjugation. His film proposes that the cyclical loss of Black bodily autonomy can only be broken by racial reclamation and separatism. While such interpretations of American race relations may appear extreme, we must consider that zombies appear in a wide range of ways. The exploitation of athletes, rampant police brutality, disproportionate mass incarceration, hyper-sexualization (and subsequent sexual assaults), and extreme maternal/infant mortality rates of Black people are just a few more present-day issues that adhere to the Vodou definition of zombies: the loss of Black bodily autonomy. Zombies ask what it means to not just have a diverse society but an inclusive one. Because if we cannot accomplish the task of peaceful integration, it never hurts to ruminate on a future which distances itself from the monstrosities we have come to accept as normal.

References

Benshoff, Harry M. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Ge neric Reappropriation or Reinscription?” Ci nema Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, [University of Texas Press, Society for Cinema & Media Studies], 2000, pp. 31–50, http://www.jstor. org/stable/1225551.

Clavin, Matthew. “A Second Haitian Revolution: John Brown, Toussaint Louverture, and the Making of the American Civil War.” Civil War History, vol. 54 no. 2, 2008, p. 117-145. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cwh.0.0001.

Mariani, Mike. “The Tragic, Forgotten History o f Zombies.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 4 Aug. 2021, www.theatlantic.

com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/how-a merica-erased-the-tragic-history-ofthe-zombie/412264/.

Moreman, Christopher M., and Cory James Ru shton. Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays On Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition. McFarland, 2011.

Peele, Jordan, et. al. Get Out. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, 2017.

Sharf, Zack. “‘Get out’: Jordan Peele Reveals the Rea l Meaning behind the Sunken Place.” In dieWire, IndieWire, 15 Jan. 2019, www. indiewire.com/2017/11/get-out-jordan-pee le-explains-sunken-place-meaning1201902567/).

Zarka, Emily. “Modern Zombies: The Rebirth of the Undead | Monstrum” Youtube, PBS Storied, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=UqPvWdX4ICE.

Zarka, Emily. “The Origins of the Zombie, from Haiti to the U.S. | Monstrum” Youtube, PBS Storied, 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIG msxBMnjA.

Top of the List!

Luis Quintanilla

Virginia Commonwealth University

“Top of the List!” is a film-to-book adaptation of a campaign video I found in the ATXN video archives for Leslie Cohcrans loud and DIY run for mayor of the City of Austin, Texas, in May 2000. Leslie Cochran was a homeless cross-dresser, self-proclaimed statesman, city wide heartthrob, and an anti-monument to my past paving the way for radical policy change and queer folks alike. Leslie lost the 2000 mayoral election to Texas state senator Kirk Watson, winning only 7.7% of the city’s vote. In this zine I hybridize early 2000s Sunday comic spreads and television closed captions using subtleties in type treatment and image variations to create compositions highlighting Leslies’ irreverent humor and earnest desire for human-centered change. I vividly remember the conversations Leslie ignited within the larger socio-political landscape of Austin, these were uncomfortable conversations people didn’t want to have surrounding gender and economic heirarchies; everyday citizens didn’t/couldn’t see cross-dressing is a means of gender expression rather than a fetishized sexual act, nor did they see it as entertainment expression like drag. Equally, they didn’t/couldn’t see past Lelie as a person experiencing homelessness, blinding them to the drastically human-centered platform Lelie was running on. In many ways we’re active observants of the echoes of this toxic mindset through legislation that is being passed, and contested, regarding public camping bans (Texas House Bill 1925, LAMC 41.18).

My practice has built itself around publishing as a means to build community and shed light onto our darker societal underbelly. I wouldn’t be interested in muckraking these issues if they weren’t still redeemable at the levels at which they are happening. There are tent cities growing around the nation, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness increases daily, our elected government actively pushes them away from urban centers so as to remain out of sight, and in turn, out of mind. There must be another alternative where capital gain isn’t at the forefront of everyone’s mind. This is where the power of zine multiplicity and dissemination shines brightest, being inexpensive and DIY allows me to circumvent traditional print production constraints and circulate widely. I have printed over 200 copies of “Top of the List!” and distributed them in urban “third place” communal grounds such as coffee shops, libraries, doctors waiting rooms, hair salons, and bodegas to name only a few. Ultimately, it’s my earnest desire that these zines are being digested and conversed over with strangers in third places of gathering to bridge the gaps between us all and act as political catalysts to help heal some of the traumas our world inflicts on our most vulnerable neighbors. I still feverishly believe that small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

“A better, more positive Tumblr”: The Repression of Online Sexuality and the Erasure of a Heterotopian Archive

Lucy Allen | University of Southern California

Abstract: In late 2018, the social media site and blogging platform Tumblr instated a ban on the erotic and pornographic materials that had once made up a significant portion of the site’s contents. This ban, though framed by Tumblr staff as a move to make the site safer and more welcoming, in fact appeared to be rooted in financial motivation stemming from the passage of the FOSTA-SESTA acts. This paper explores the cultural, political, and economic backdrop of the ban, and its destructive effect on the communities of marginalized subjects that formed on Tumblr. I use Michel Foucault’s theory of the heterotopia, a real space that subverts and reflects the world outside of it, to define Tumblr’s role before the explicit content ban was put in place, and I use critical archival studies to explore Tumblr’s importance in spite of the regulation placed upon it. In examining the dangers of the ban and of its causes, I draw on Gayle Rubin’s pro-sex feminist theory. I argue that Tumblr can be read both as an archive and a former heterotopia, and that the late-2010s sex-driven moral panic serves to erase these important definitions. This paper draws from disparate fields of study to raise questions of relevance to contemporary discourse and to address matters of political urgency.

I. Introduction

When I logged onto my account on the social media and blogging platform Tumblr on December 3rd, 2018, it was as if the whole website were in mourning. That day, the site’s staff had announced, by way of a post on their official blog, that beginning on the 17th of that month users would no longer be permitted to post or share “adult content.” This vague phrase, the staff explicated in a linked post, refers to “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals

or female-presenting nipples, and any content— including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations— that depicts sex acts.”1 Though the site had an expansive user base with innumerable discrete communities—like particular media objects’ fandoms and groups linked by political affiliation—it was best known for catering to young people, queer people, and those involved in counterculture.2,3 Tumblr was not principally a porn website, but pornographic photos, GIFs, and videos certainly constituted a non-negligible segment of its content. In addition to this porn—much of it portraying queer and kinky sexuality, as well as bodies excluded by normative hegemonic beauty standards—were other sorts of images and materials that would now be proscribed under an explicit content ban: non-sexual nude photography, visuals used in sex education, and any images incorrectly flagged by the imperfect algorithm enforcing the ban.

In elucidating the context of Tumblr’s explicit content ban and its troubling implications for queer and otherwise marginalized communities, I first apply Michel Foucault’s theory of the heterotopia, an “other space” that may both reflect and invert cultural characteristics of the outside world. I connect this heterotopian character to the expansive definitions of the archive proposed by scholars of critical archival studies in order to address Tumblr’s importance as an archival space—while also examining the inherent political and practical limitations of such online archives. I address how and why the ban, rather than stemming solely from the prerogatives of Tumblr’s staff, was instead a move prefigured by a web of governmental and corporate decisions most directly linked to federal anti-sex-trafficking legislation passed in 2018. I use Gayle Rubin’s seminal 1 Staff. “A better, more positive Tumblr.” Tumblr Staff, December 4, 2018. https://staff.tumblr.com/post/180758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr.

2 Tiidenberg, Katrin, and Andrew Whelan. “‘Not like that, not for that, not by them’: social media affordances of critique.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2019): 83-102. https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/full/10.1080/14791420.2019.1624797.

3 Martineau, Paris. “Tumblr’s Porn Ban Reveals Who Controls What We See Online.” Wired, December 4, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblrs-porn-ban-reveals-controls-we-see-online/.

text “Thinking Sex” as a framework to explicate the connection of this legislation to systemic anxieties around the regulation of sexuality.

II. Tumblr as a Heterotopia

Foucault used the term “heterotopia” in a number of his writings to describe those spaces that are other, meaning they contain ways of life and standards of normalcy that differ from the outside world and at times contradict themselves internally. He defines the term thoroughly in the essay “Of Other Spaces,” itself based on a 1967 lecture given by Foucault. In the essay, he contrasts the heterotopia with the utopia, although he explains that both simultaneously connect with and “contradict” the primary spaces of the outside world.4 While utopias, he acknowledges, are “fundamentally unreal,” many instances of the heterotopia appear in the real world. They are “something like counter-sites…in which…all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”.5

Heterotopias, Foucault (1986) elaborates, are “capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”6 Here, he uses the examples of the theater and of the garden—where different identifiable settings or landscapes are artificially constructed in succession or alongsid e one another.”7 This description also characterizes the internet; individual websites may reflect offscreen cultures or places, but their coexistence is enabled only by the architecture of cyberspace. Individual websites may be heterotopias too; Tumblr was and is emblematic among them. As Katrin Tiidenberg and Andrew Whelan observe, “navigating and identifying [Tumblr’s] communities presumes immersion,” as the site’s divisions are delineated by “discursive and psychosocial” means rather than website structure.8 Tumblr was thus heterotopian not only in its cultural difference from broader society but also in its internal divi-

sions and the discourse that formed them. Foucault identifies numerous subcategories of heterotopia and the principles which characterize them. He defines the “crisis heterotopia” as a “privileged or sacred or forbidden place” to which members of a broader society depart to experience a period of crisis, such as sexual maturation, apart from the home.9 There are also “heterotopias of deviation” in which those whose crises are more permanent and definitional must be sequestered.10 Tumblr, in its pre-ban golden age, was characteristic of both of these definitions. As a website most popular among the age group spanning from young adolescence to young adulthood,11 it accommodated, however imperfectly, individuals in the midst of the crises of pubescence and sexual identity formation. Though engagement with materials defined as “adult content” can pose harm to young people navigating the internet—and presumably sometimes did so on Tumblr—the website also served to introduce young people, particularly those who were queer, trans, or questioning, to depictions of sexuality that were not necessarily bound up in the hegemonic constructions of desire and embodiment pervasive in more mainstream pornography.12

III. Tumblr as a Rogue Archive

Foucault begins “Of Other Spaces” with the proclamation, “[t]he great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history,” and contends that the late twentieth century is much more concerned with space than with time.13 “Heterotopias,” he writes, “are most often linked to slices in time—which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies.”14 Some heterotopias, namely the museum and the library, are characterized by “indefinitely accumulating time…enclos[ing] in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes.”15

9 Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 24.

10 Ibid, 25.

11 Smith, Cooper. (2013, December 13). “Tumblr Offers Advertisers A Major Advantage: Young Users, Who Spend Tons Of Time On The Site.” Business Insider, December 13, 2013. https://www.businessinsider.com/ tumblr-and-social-media-demographics-2013-12.

12 Tiidenberg and Whelan, “Not like that, not for that, not by them,” 90.

13 Foucault, Of Other Spaces, 22

7 Ibid.

8 Tiidenberg and Whelan, “Not like that, not for that, not by them,” 90.

14 Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 26.

15 Ibid.

4 Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 24. doi.org/10.2307/464648.

Given the nineteenth century’s preoccupation with history, Foucault (1986) argues that “the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages” makes the archival spaces of the museum and library the emblematic heterotopias of the nineteenth century.16

Internet archives are both consistent with that epoch’s heterochrony—in that they accumulate materials from all times alongside one another—and break with it, because they are characteristically ephemeral. In this respect, they echo the heterotopias Foucault describes as “linked… to time in its most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival” (26). Where the heterochrony of accumulating time i17s peculiar to the nineteenth century, the heterochrony that characterizes the internet age is the paradoxical simultaneous permanence and precarity of internet archives like Tumblr. Such sites permit an endless amassing of materials in (cyber)space, but do not ensure their preservation or guard against their erasure.

As Tiidenberg and Whelan argue, Tumblr’s format, in conjunction with the cultures that emerged there, enabled particular means of critique and self-presentation that were not available on other sites. This capacity was particularly true within communities where sexual images and writing were created and shared. They write that “regularly and pseudonymously creating, posting, liking, hashtagging, commenting on and reblogging sexual content over an extended period of time” led users to “begin questioning, resisting, and subverting various sets of norms. For this particular community, the norms resisted fall are [sic] under the aegis of hetero-, mono-, and body normativity.”18

The lively, large-scale social justice debates and critical inquiry that unfolded within and without the website’s explicitly sexual corners came to constitute a body of work archived across its pages. Noah Zazanis writes that “the theory developed on that platform—through collaboration, argument, and reflection on personal

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Tiidenberg and Whelan, “Not like that, not for that, not by them,” 83-84.

experience—continues to inform” his and other former users’ work. “The collective knowledge we created there,” he writes, “still remains, even as SESTA/FOSTA and the resulting porn ban have driven much of Tumblr’s membership off for good.”19 The depth of writing and interaction that remain on the website thus constitute something of an archive of the sort Barry Reay, echoing Abigail De Kosnick, calls “the rogue archive.”20 Such archives offer “both quantity and democratization, though not necessarily permanency.”21 Vernacular internet archives have been of particular use to trans communities, for whom institutional memory and memorializing is often sparse. K.J. Rawson argues that “a broad range of online materials, including blogs, videos, and online forums, should be considered historical as long as their purpose is to create a historical record of transgender experience.”22 As Andre Cavalcante argues, social media like Tumblr “serve as easily accessible repositories for collective memory.”23 In lieu of formal archives, “social media provide space for memory making, for archiving non-normative sexual knowledge and history.”24 The classification of such materials as constitutive of an historical archive is an important step toward countering the ephemerality which inheres in much internet culture.

IV. The Tumblr Ban and Internet Sexuality

Tumblr staff framed its decision to ban sexually explicit content as consistent with an ostensible commitment to cultivating a safe and supportive internet space, titling the initial announcement post “A better, more positive Tumblr,” and explaining, “without [adult] content we have the opportunity to create a place where

19 Zazanis, Noah. (2019, December 24). “On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway).” The New Inquiry, December 24, 2019. https://thenewinquiry.com/on-hating-men-and-becoming-one-anyway/.

20 Reay, Barry, Sex in the Archives: Writing American Sexual Histories (Manchester University Press, 2019), 9.

21 Ibid.

22 Rawson, K.J. “Transgender Worldmaking in Cyberspace: Historical Activism on the Internet.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1, no. 2 (2014): 38-60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/qed.1.issue-2. 39.

23 Cavalcante, Andre. “Tumbling Into Queer Utopias and Vortexes: Experiences of LGBTQ Social Media Users on Tumblr.” Journal of Homosexuality 66, no. 12 (2019): 1715–1735. doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1511131.1

more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.”25 Yet for many Tumblr users, the ban promised to have the opposite effect. As Tiidenberg and Whelan argue, the “rhetorical framing of [this] commercially motivated decision as coming from a desire to be a ‘safe place’ is deeply ironic, given they are effectively erasing, silencing and evicting communities for queer youth, fandoms, art creators, sex workers and NSFW diarists, with limited alternatives.”26 The sexually explicit content housed on Tumblr was an integral aspect defining its status as a queer space absent much of the repressive normativity of the outside world. As Cavalcante argues in an article published just a few months before the ban was announced, Tumblr both created space for queer community formation and “underscore[d] the profound vulnerability of queer individuals and communities in digital, corporatized space.”27 Removing sexuality and nude bodies from Tumblr’s queer communities meant not only imperiling the liberating conditions they seemed to have cultivated, but also revealing the sinister shadow of state and corporate surveillance that had always been present, despite the space’s offer of safety and camaraderie.

As internet use has become more widespread, it has come under greater legal scrutiny. This phenomenon in combination with the already punitive and regulatory relationship of the state to matters of sexuality has ultimately led to a crisis in sexual cyberspace accelerated by the passage of the FOSTA-SESTA anti-sex trafficking bills.28 Cultural discourses like those around sex and sexuality often respond to seemingly unrelated sociopolitical phenomena. In “Thinking Sex,” Rubin argues that fraught conflicts over sexuality tend to emerge at times of disorder and societal fear. These conflicts, she writes, “acquire immense symbolic weight. Disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displac-

25

“A better more positive Tumblr.”

26 Tiidenberg and Whelan Not like that, not for that, not by them, 95.

27 Cavalcante, “Tumbling Into Queer Utopias and

1816.

720.

24 Ibid.

ing social anxieties, and discharging their attendant emotional intensity.”29 Furthermore, although “sex is always political…there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized.”30 The 1980s, the period during which Rubin initially wrote this essay, was such a time, characterized by the consolidation of mounting neoconservative economic and social policy and the beginnings of what would become the AIDS pandemic. The present day, I contend, is another such time. The perhaps incongruous juxtaposition of increasing social liberalism among many civilian communities and reactionary authoritarianism in many of the world’s highest offices has created a global state that both affirms and undermines many of the factors that ostensibly characterized the liberalism of the early 21st century. In the United States, for instance, the hardline right-wing populism of Donald Trump brought fascism to the forefront of American political discourse. 21st century American social liberalism, particularly in the realms of gender and sexuality, is jarringly incompatible with the authoritarian right, and this dissonance results in the sort of friction that—according to Rubin—prompts a collective desire for the regulation of sexuality.31

V. FOSTA-SESTA and Tumblr

This frenzied desire to regulate sexuality has taken shape in the moral panic surrounding an ostensible sex trafficking epidemic, the threat of which is based more in anxiety around public morality than in genuine concern for the well-being of sexual violence survivors. The response to what the anti-trafficking movement characterizes as an epidemic has coalesced into a moral panic because, as Janie A. Chuang argues, the category of “trafficking” has been broadened in the United States to refer to an ever-greater range of forms of exploitative labor arrangements.

32 In a

29 Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” In Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, edited by Richard Parker & Peter Aggleton, 143-178. UCL Press, 1999. 143.

30 Ibid.

31 Rubin, “Thinking Sex.”

32 Chuang, Janie. “Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law.” The American Journal of International Law 108, no. 4 (2014): 609–649. https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.108.4.0609.

Staff,

Vortexes,”

28 Musto, Jennifer, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Heidi Hoefinger, Nicola Mai, P.G. Macioti, Calum Bennachie, Calogero Giametta, and Kate D’Adamo. “Anti-Trafficking in the Time of FOSTA/SESTA: Networked Moral Gentrification and Sexual Humanitarian Creep.”Social Sciences 10, no. 2 (2021): 1-18. doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020058.

phenomenon Chuang refers to as “exploitation creep,” the United States has used this expansive definition to “generate…heightened moral condemnation and commitment to its cause.”33 In an article published in 2014, Valerie Feldman writes that sex worker activists are troubled by the fact that “most scholarly and popular writing on sex work focuses on individuals who are perceived to be the most marginalized: women working in street prostitution…or, more recently, those who have been trafficked for sex.”34 Though these categories encompass a minority of the sex trade—sex worker advocates consistently distinguish their experiences from those of trafficking survivors35,36—legislation nominally aimed exclusively at trafficking tends to affect the sex industry broadly.37

The most recent major legislative results of the sex trafficking panic are the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), known collectively as the FOSTA-SESTA package. The package, which passed the Senate with a 97-2 vote, and was signed into law by Trump in April of 2018, established provisions that would allow websites to be held legally responsible for hosting content that could be construed as enabling sex trafficking. The stunning bipartisan unanimity of the Senate’s votes can be attributed to the hysteria that moral panics surrounding illicit sexuality engender. “Sex laws are notoriously easy to pass,” Rubin writes, “as legislators are loath to be soft on vice.”38

Despite the titles of the acts forming FOSTA-SESTA, their effect on the internet has primarily impacted sex workers themselves.39 As Feldman notes, “many workers [have moved] online and indoors due to demographic shifts in urban residency and changing patterns of law

33 Ibid, 611

34 Feldman, Valerie. “Sex Work Politics and the Internet: Carving Out Political Space in the Blogosphere.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, edited by Carisa R. Showden & Samantha Majic, 243-266. University of Minnesota Press, 2014. https://www. jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt6wr77g.16. 243

35 Musto et. al. “Anti-Trafficking in the Time,” 3.

36 Blunt, Danielle, and Ariel Wolf. “Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers.” Anti-Trafficking Review, no. 14 (2020): 117–121. https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201220148. 118.

37 Feldman, “Sex Work Politics and the Internet,” 243. 38 Rubin, “Thinking Sex,” 157.

39 Blunt and Wolf, “Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA,” 117.

enforcement,” so legislation limiting the advertising of sex work on internet platforms disadvantages workers themselves in addition to any would-be traffickers.40 Furthermore, as Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf have shown, the limitations imposed on online expression by FOSTA-SESTA have hindered many sex workers’ ability to practice harm reduction in the form of screening clients for “histor[ies] of violence, non-payment, or potential connections to law enforcement.”41 As Rubin explains, “[t]his culture always treats sex with suspicion. It construes and judges almost any sexual practice in terms of its worst possible expression.”42 Thus, the specter of exploitative sex trafficking is made to stand in for all commercial sex in order to secure the harshest legal opprobrium, even as doing so makes sex workers who do not consider themselves trafficked less safe.43 Furthermore, Rubin argues, “[e]very moral panic has consequences on two levels. The target population suffers most, but everyone is affected by the social and legal changes.”44 Not only did sex workers advertising their own services bear the brunt of this legislation, but its reverberations affected individuals not in the sex industry simply by way of their consumption or sharing of sexual and erotic materials online.

In the wake of FOSTA-SESTA’s passage, the administrators of many websites responded with panicked platform and rule changes. The online classifieds page Craigslist took down its personals section, where sex workers had been known to advertise, and the artist support subscription service Patreon halted support for creators of pornographic materials.45 Meanwhile, Tumblr had its own financial concerns linked to its hosting of explicit content. The website’s purchase by Yahoo in 2013 prompted concerns about courting advertisers on a website inundated with porn.46 Furthermore, several months after FOSTA-SESTA was passed, Tumblr had been removed from Apple’s App Store due to

40 Feldman, “Sex Work Politics and the Internet,” 245.

41 Blunt and Wolf, “Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA,” 119.

42 Rubin, “Thinking Sex,” 150.

43 Musto et. al. “Anti-Trafficking in the Time, of FOSTA/SESTA” 8

44 Rubin, “Thinking Sex,” 163.

45 Martineau, “Tumblr’s Porn Ban Reveals Who Controls What We See Online.”

46 Ibid.

reports of child pornography being posted on a Tumblr-hosted blog. Though website staff rapidly removed the content, the App Store, which bars applications “that end up being used primarily for pornographic content,” did not allow the Tumblr app to return.47 These reverberations of corporate anxieties over the impact of pornography on financial gain lend credence to Cavalcante’s observation that the

“[The] potential of Tumblr is limited by its position within a corporate structure that prioritizes profitability…Even as Tumblr’s spokespeople promise an inclusive and progressive platform, the LGBTQ commu nity is nevertheless vulnerable to poten tially adverse corporate paradigms and policies.”48 Though the staff post announcing the adult content ban made no reference to them, the corporate and legal pressures working against the site are clear in the context of corporate responses to FOSTA-SESTA.

Sexual materials on Tumblr were abundant, and thus diverse; like the rest of the site’s content, they presented both queer possibility and the potential to introduce or reinforce harmful depictions or impositions of sexuality on young users.49 The dichotomous nature of Tumblr’s impact that Cavalcante observes further exemplifies the website’s heterotopian status. Contrasting it with Facebook, which requires users to sign up with a single profile under their full, legal names, Cavalcante writes that “Tumblr opened the door for expressing multiple, queer selves. Users can have more than one page.”50 Tumblr, he argues, permits users to construct an identity “that is characteristically patchwork, dynamic, and evolving. Its design permits users to integrate text, photos, links, and video on their pages, allowing for a multimedia expression of self.”51 Like the real-world heterotopias identified by Foucault, Tumblr enables the juxtaposition of diverse materials that together compose a distinct, new space.

VI. Conclusion

The 21st century brought about a new set of heterotopian spaces that appeared at first to be self-contained and outside of the purview of state repression and dominant normative power relations. As a result, communities of the marginalized and others assembled in these spaces with the intent of shielding themselves from the dystopian outside world. The utopias sought online—like all utopias—are definitionally impossible and unreal. As the intervention of FOSTA-SESTA made painfully clear, internet spaces are in fact as intensely surveilled and policed as are geographic spaces, perhaps more so. Tumblr, a heterotopian site which functioned as something of an archive, accumulating the artwork, humor, conflicts, discourses, and tastes of a subset of queer young people, could never truly be “outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages” because it was built under the shadow of digital surveillance.52

Despite this, Tumblr’s vitality and intellectually generative capacity cannot be overlooked. Meaningful cultural production, personal bonds, and sociopolitical debates took place there, phenomena that, outside of the internet realm, would be considered worth preserving. Where the App Store and potential advertisers saw a non-lucrative porn website with the capacity— post-FOSTA-SESTA—to get them in legal trouble, users saw a heterotopia wherein sexuality was a valuable ingredient in the intellectual, artistic, political, and personal discourses taking place.

“Crucially,” Tiidenberg and Whelan write, Tumblr “maintain[ed] its identity as a social media platform, rather than a porn site or a fanfiction forum, thereby maintaining accessibility and the heterogeneity of the userbase.”53 Before, they argue, “Tumblr could have been considered one of the few remaining spaces within the monopolizing, platform-regulated social media ecology that was experienced and used as community-oriented, creative, and safe for non normative or marginalized users.”54 Ephemerality is intrinsic in many human interactions, including those that take place on the internet, but that does not mean that

52 Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 26.

53 Tiidenberg and Whelan, “Not like that, not for that, not by them,” 96.

54 Ibid.

these interactions should be divorced from history or imagined as outside of the historical record. Deletion of blogs and posts, whether by website algorithms and administration or users themselves, erases documentation of Tumblr’s history, but the absences themselves help to reconstruct it. As Reay writes, “archives are always indeterminate, consisting of the absent as well as the present” (15).55 Rather than mitigating Tumblr’s archival status, ephemerality defines its particular contours. A dialectic of presence and absence defines the sum total of human history; although the venues in which culture is forged look different now, this contradiction persists. And though an age of troubling sexual panic has altered the appearance and capabilities of these online venues, dissent remains in the empty spaces and in the ruins.

References

Blunt, Danielle, and Ariel Wolf. “Erased: The impact of FOS TA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers.” Anti-Trafficking Review, no. 14 (2020): 117–121. https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201220148.

Cavalcante, Andre. “Tumbling Into Queer Utopias and Vortexes: Experiences of LGBTQ Social Media Us ers on Tumblr.” Journal of Homosexuality 66, no. 12 (2019): 1715–1735. doi.org/10.1080/00918369.201

8.1511131.

Chuang, Janie. “Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law.” The American Journal of International Law 108, no. 4 (2014): 609–649. https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjin telaw.108.4.0609.

Feldman, Valerie. “Sex Work Politics and the Internet: Carving Out Political Space in the Blogosphere.” In Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequenc es of Policy and Activism, edited by Carisa R. Showden & Samantha Majic, 243-266. Universi ty of Minnesota Press, 2014. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.5749/j.ctt6wr77g.16.

Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Mis kowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22-27. doi.org/10.2307/464648.

Martineau, Paris. “Tumblr’s Porn Ban Reveals Who Controls What We See Online.” Wired, December 4, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblrs-porn-ban-re veals-controls-we-see-online/.

Musto, Jennifer, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Heidi Hoefinger, Nicola Mai, P.G. Macioti, Calum Bennachie, Calog ero Giametta, and Kate D’Adamo. “Anti-Trafficking in the Time of FOSTA/SESTA: Networked Moral

55 Reay, Barry, Sex in the Archives, 15.

Gentrification and Sexual Humanitarian Creep.”So cial Sciences 10, no. 2 (2021): 1-18. doi.org/ 10.3390/socsci10020058.

Rawson, K.J. “Transgender Worldmaking in Cyberspace: Historical Activism on the Internet.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1, no. 2 (2014): 38-60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/qed.1.is sue-2.

Reay, Barry, Sex in the Archives: Writing American Sexual Histories (Manchester University Press, 2019).

Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” In Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, edited by Richard Parker & Peter Aggleton, 143-178. UCL Press, 1999.

Smith, Cooper. (2013, December 13). “Tumblr Offers Ad vertisers A Major Advantage: Young Users, Who Spend Tons Of Time On The Site.” Business Insider, December 13, 2013. https://www.businessinsider. com/tumblr-and-social-media-demographics2013-12.

Staff. “A better, more positive Tumblr.” Tumblr Staff, Decem ber 4, 2018. https://staff.tumblr.com/post/1 80758987165/a-better-more-positive-tumblr.

Tiidenberg, Katrin, and Andrew Whelan. “‘Not like that, not for that, not by them’: social media affordances of critique.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Stud ies 16, no. 2 (2019): 83-102. https://www.tandfon line.com/doi/full/10.1080/14791420.2019.1624797.

Zazanis, Noah. (2019, December 24). “On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway).” The New Inquiry, Decem ber 24, 2019. https://thenewinquiry.com/on-hatingmen-and-becoming-one-anyway/.

St. Quarantine Crowned with Anxiety

Mint Zecoll | Occidental College

The painting I am submitting for the CTSJ Journal St. Quarantine Crowned with Anxiety is a commentary on the experience of COVID-19 and an exploration of the beauty and fragility of faith and hope when faced with a global catastrophe of such a large scale.

I based my painting off of the European painting Saint Rosalie Crowned with Roses by Two Angels by Van Dyke, from 1624. The painting depicts the historical figure of St. Rosalie - a hermit who devoted her life to catholicism, living in the mountains surrounding Palermo, Italy. She is the patron saint of the city because, allegedly, it was her influence and bones that helped control the plague outburst in the city in 1624 and lead to its cessation in 1625. Her remains, which were found by a hunter after she appeared to him in a vision, were seen as a sign of hope and an intervention to the plague from god.

St. Rosalie is Crowned with Roses by Two Angels, as I interpret it, depicts hope and a longing for healing in the face of a crisis. I’ve taken this message and reapplied it to a crisis that has (literally) plagued us for the past two years - COVID-19.

In my painting, along with the symbols of hope and reprieve, I hoped to represent the sense of anxiety, and the fact that faith alone isn’t enough to cure the world. I decided to create this piece as a statement of my experience with the pandemic, depicting little rays of hope that I experienced over the past two years (i.e. my housemates, my own faith, my cat) and offsetting them with a sense of anxiety that overwhelms the image. In doing so, I wanted to highlight the importance of acknowledging the beauty of small things in a crisis - the lighting, the bubbles, the colors - but I also want to caution myself against overemphasizing beauty over practicality and safety. No one saint can ward off a plague, and no thought or thing can erase the horrors and hardships we have had to endure these past 2 years, but we can choose to see the beauty in them as well, as long as we don’t ignore the fear and anxiety behind them.

The Transformative Possibility of Canadian Law and Indigenous Rights: Promising in Concept, Improbable in Practice

Aidan Sneyd | McMaster University

Abstract: In this paper, I will argue that while certain aspects of Canadian law contain theoretical “transformative possibilities” for facilitating Indigenous self-governance and protecting Indigenous rights in general, tangible developments are unfeasible under the approach of the current legal system. To begin, I will briefly explain the concept of transformative possibility. Following this, I will demonstrate that there is a seemingly valid conceptual basis for the idea that Canadian law can help affirm Indigenous authority. Next, I will argue that the mere possibility of progress within the abstract logic of the legal system will not produce meaningful change. On the contrary, problems intrinsic to the current system, such as historical adjudication and jurisprudence and the Canadian government’s general attitude toward Indigenous rights, suggest that material change within the existing power structures of the system is unlikely. In result, this paper will show that, because the hardships that Canada’s current legal system imposes on Indigenous peoples are systemic in nature, the mere changes in attitudes and approaches within the existing system that are submitted by the “transformative possibilities” argument are utterly futile. What is needed, then, are systemic changes; this begins with a recognition of the precise ways in which the current Canadian legal system structurally perpetuates an outdated and onerous framework of Aboriginal rights, one that favors state-interests over genuine amelioration of the relationship between Ca

I. Setting Up the Debate

Patrick Macklem, a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto who has contributed extensive research on Aboriginal Law, has argued that the various forms of law in Canada have failed to accom-

modate Aboriginal needs and interests.1 Instead, the legal system has imposed an unsuitable “Anglo-Canadian” perspective on an Indigenous context that is unique and different from that Anglo-Canadian perspective. 2 The legal system treats Indigenous peoples as both “similar to and different” from non-Indigenous people depending on which position suits state interests, and creates a hierarchical relationship that forces Indigenous people into a position of dependence on the Canadian government.3

In spite of these structural issues, Macklem contends that there is reason to believe that the legal system has the “transformative possibility” to help achieve Indigenous sovereignty and independence.4 In other words, past decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), treaty interpretation, and other legal developments show promising possibilities for change.5 If the system’s rigid adherence to Anglo-Canadian legal understandings is reassessed, it can be opened to incorporate Indigenous peoples in important decisions about their “individual and collective destinies.”6

Others, such as Gordon Christie, have argued that the Canadian legal system is structurally opposed to claims of Indigenous authority, as it uses numerous avenues to wear down and defeat any perceived threat to Canadian sovereignty. 7 Christie uses the example of the Yinka-Dene-Alliance’s objection to the Northern-Gateway pipeline based on Indigenous understandings of power and authority, arguing that such a claim would easily be suppressed by the court through various legal mechanisms in

order to protect state sovereignty.8 The law structurally prohibits the success of Indigenous claims of authority by mandating that the claim be tied to an existing legal Aboriginal right, mischaracterizing the right in question, and interpreting the claim as incompatible with historical practice or lacking sufficient continuity in the present day.9 Even if these methods are unsuccessful, rights claims can still be refuted on the grounds that the right in question had been extinguished prior to 1982, or that the Crown acted justifiably in its infringement of the right.10

In sum, Christie submits that the Canadian legal system has multiple channels through which it can shoot down claims of Indigenous authority in order to protect state sovereignty.11 By contrast, what Macklem argues is that the law’s potential to evolve away from these problems makes it a potential instrument of change. Put differently, whatever issues the current approach may have, the possibility of transformation in the law as it applies to Indigenous rights is enough to support continued efforts of improving Indigenous rights within the existing system.

II. The Case for Canadian Law: Transformative Possibility?

This section will examine how “transformative possibilities” provide a background for the claim that such theoretical potentialities are insufficient on their own. As this section will show, even though the current legal approach to Indigenous rights has been historically oppressive, one might reasonably conclude that the course can still be reversed within the current system through diligent jurisprudence and legislation. Though these “transformative possibilities” can be characterized using many different legal categories, two will be addressed here: constitutional interpretation and fundamental legal principles.

that is, it reads those rights based on the original understanding of the words used in the Constitution at the time it was enacted.12 This method is inconsistent with the approach to other provisions of the Canadian Constitution, which are afforded the ability to evolve and adapt over time, while the scope of Aboriginal rights under Section 35 is held static by originalism.13 This interpretive approach discriminates against Indigenous people by denying Aboriginal rights the same benefits granted to the rest of the Constitution.14 Borrows’s argument can be used to support the notion of transformative possibility because it shows that the chosen method of constitutional interpretation impacts the stability of Aboriginal rights.

In other words, Canadian courts could move away from the current method of interpreting Aboriginal rights, which favors originalist reasoning, and instead allow the constitutional reading of those rights to reflect modern-day realities faced by Indigenous people; for instance, by significantly de-emphasizing the focus on pre-contact practices and traditions where it is unnecessary by today’s standards. In short, a revised interpretative approach within the same legal system may help to ameliorate the conditions faced by Indigenous people in Canada. For example, Barsh and Henderson argue that the trilogy of cases sprouting from R. v. Van der Peet changed the law to make it extremely difficult to establish constitutional rights protections for an Aboriginal practice or tradition.15 Yet, Barsh and Henderson note that two later cases, R. v. Adams and R. v. Côté, each ended with rulings in the Aboriginal parties’ favor, in part because the court ignored the “centrality” requirement that was added in Van der Peet.16 While Adams and Côté were not without their own problems, these decisions suggest that the Canadian legal system maintains the internal capability and willingness to overturn decisions that have led to restrictions on Indigenous

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid, 392.

4 Ibid, 392.

6 Ibid, 456.

John Borrows argues that the Canadian state still relies on originalism to interpret Aboriginal rights;

12 John Borrows, Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 130.

13 Borrows, Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism.

14 Ibid.

15

16 Ibid, 1005.

1 Patrick Macklem, “First Nations Self-Government and the Borders of the Canadian Legal Imagination,” McGill Law Journal 36 (1991), 391-92.

5 Macklem, “First Nations Self-Government and the Borders of the Canadian Legal Imagination.”

7 Gordon Christie, “Indigenous Authority, Canadian Law, and Pipeline Proposals,” Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 25 (September 1, 2013).

Russel Lawrence Barsh and James Youngblood Henderson, “The Supreme Court’s Van der Peet Trilogy: Naive Imperialism and Ropes of Sand,” McGill Law Journal 42 (1997).

rights.

Fundamental legal principles may also reveal transformative possibilities. John Borrows’s objection to the comprehensive power of Crown title and sovereignty provides an example. Borrows argues that the “rule of law” is a fundamental element of the Canadian legal system.17 Yet, the imposition of Crown Sovereignty and its denial of pre colonial Aboriginal authority contradicts Canada’s own definition of the rule of law, provided by the SCC, as an injunction against arbitrary power and an abhorrence of legal and political chaos.18 Specifically, by asserting its authority over Indigenous peoples and ignoring their “preexisting” status and authority, the Canadian government has exercised its power arbitrarily.19 This suggests that a properly functioning “rule of law,” a concept fundamental to the Canadian legal system, would prevent the government from neglecting and nullifying Indigenous authority.

In other words, Borrows’s argument can be reversed to support the possibility that the approach towards Indigenous rights may be transformed within the current legal system. However, this point of view would necessitate a shift away from systemic issues like the rigid application of “Anglo-Canadian” norms, problematic interpretive methods, and other applicative problems. These are not simply problems of “bad action” that can be fixed with a change in legal attitude or a revised method of interpretation. Therefore, the mere theoretical possibility of change is inconsequential without a commitment to broader systemic resolution.

III. The Improbable Reality of Transformative Possibility

As introduced in Part III, “transformative possibility” does not naturally entail positive developments for Indigenous self-government and Aboriginal ri-

17 Gordon Christie, “Indigenous Legal Theory: Some Initial Considerations,” in Indigenous Peoples and the Law: Comparative and Critical Perspectives, ed. Shin Imai, Kent McNeil, and Benjamin J. Richardson (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009), 224.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

ghts. This section will delineate two primary reasons why this is the case: the pervasive issue of “Canadian paternalism,” and the reality that sufficient systemic alterations to the law’s power structures are infeasible.

The Canadian legal system’s approach to Indigenous affairs suffers from the problem of “Canadian paternalism,” whereby the Canadian state has assumed the power to unilaterally define the essence of the uniquely Indigenous experience that is at the heart of Indigenous rights. Similarly, Barsh and Henderson point out that the ruling in Van der Peet “entrenches European paternalism because the courts of the colonizer have assumed the authority to define the nature and meaning of Aboriginal cultures.”20 However, this is a problem for many, if not all existing Aboriginal laws, constitutional interpretations, and other legal categories. Each of these involve non-Indigenous Canadian entities inventing and imposing the criteria for Indigeneity, while also enforcing non-Indigenous norms and values onto an Indigenous context.

For instance, Barsh and Henderson look relatively favorably upon R. v. Sparrow for leaning towards Aboriginal law as the source of Indigenous rights.21 Yet, the decision in Sparrow still suffers from the problem of paternalism by forcing Aboriginal identity into a box created by the “colonial courts.” Particularly, Sparrow still imposes the requirement that an Aboriginal right must be tied to a practice or tradition that existed prior to Canadian sovereignty. Yet, as Barsh and Henderson themselves explain, a characteristic feature of any culture is its ability to adapt and change over time.22 The requirement of preexistence for Aboriginal rights thus plainly ignores the possibility that a given Indigenous practice or tradition may no longer have any clear ties to precolonial society. Thus, the Canadian legal requirement of “preexistence” can deny the validity of a practice or tradition, even if it is genuinely culturally significant to an Indigenous

20 Barsh and Henderson, “The Supreme Court’s Van der Peet Trilogy: Naive Imperialism and Ropes of Sand,” 1002.

21 Ibid, 1008.

22 Ibid, 1001-1002.

group by its own modern standards.

Indeed, the Canadian legal system is intrinsically linked with the problem of paternalism. If non-Indigenous Canadian legal and political bodies maintain the sole right to delineate the borders of Indigeneity, establishing true Indigenous self-government and a full scope of Indigenous rights remains improbable. This is because, by definition, Indigenous communities and individuals are not in control of how their cultural identities and practices are defined. One might argue that, while the problem of paternalism may be inescapable assuming no change to the attitudes and approaches within the current system, the argument for transformative possibility is predicated on such change. In Macklem’s terms, for example, it involves ditching the law’s overreliance on Anglo-Canadian legal understandings. Therefore, this problem is avoidable. Contrarily, I argue that an overhaul to the legal system of the character described here is not realistic.

First, it would simply mark a significant shift from the status quo. The changes proposed here (for instance, to escape the problem of paternalism) would require Canada to relinquish a certain level of control over the ability to adjudicate Indigenous affairs and to determine Aboriginal rights and identity. Importantly, the pursuit of Indigenous self-government and the notion of genuine Indigenous rights are not subject to a single interpretation; different Indigenous nations and individuals may have different understandings of these concepts. Yet, irrespective of one’s understanding of such objectives and outcomes, the changes required would entail a shift in the Canadian government’s current attitudes towards legal and policy decisions surrounding Indigenous peoples. At a minimum, this would involve a revised approach to constitutional interpretation, a larger role for Indigenous knowledge in policy and decision making, and a shift in the way that the common law regulates Aboriginal peoples’ relationship and rights to land. Yet, it will also likely require a more structural change in legislative and federal authority, and a withdrawal of total Crown sovereignty over Indigenous

affairs.

On one hand, it would be incorrect to claim that progress has not been made. For example, constitutional jurisprudence on Section 35 rights has shifted over time from “justifying infringement on Section 35 rights” to “finding that Section 35 recognises[sic], affirms and protects rights.”23 However, despite these positive developments, the courts still do not fully acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty and the independent status of Indigenous law.24 One could argue that this only means that this acknowledgement is the next step in the progression of Canada’s legal approach to Indigenous affairs. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that the government of Canada wishes to avoid this kind of progression.

For one, Canada has long exercised sovereignty over Indigenous peoples, and while historical action is not inherently predictive, expecting radical change from this is a dubious proposition. Furthermore, Canada’s interpretation of the doctrine of discovery “does not recognize the permanent sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples in Canada to land and resources.”25 While Macklem argues that this is an illegitimate interpretation of the doctrine,26 this does not mean the Canadian government itself will eschew this understanding. On the contrary, the state’s continued inclination to stamp out any perceived threat to Indigenous sovereignty, as noted by Christie,27 suggests a continued rejection of the permanence of Indigenous sovereignty that is consistent with the above interpretation of the doctrine of discovery. This issue is a microcosm of the intransigent and uncompromising position that the Canadian legal system has taken towards Indigenous rights.

Most Indigenous groups remain under the con-

23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Linking Indigenous Communities with Regional Development in Canada. (Paris, France: OECD Publishing, 2020), 43, https://read.oecd-ilibrary. org/urban-rural-and-regional-development/linking-indigenous-communities-with-regional-development-in-canada_fa0f60c6-en#page45.

24 Ibid, 44.

25 Christian Aboriginal Infrastructure Developments (CAID), “Indigenous Sovereignty and Resources,” CAID.ca, Last modified July 28, 2019, http:// caid.ca/Dself_det_resources.html.

26 Macklem, “First Nations Self-Government and the Borders of the Canadian Legal Imagination.”

27 Christie, “Indigenous Authority, Canadian Law, and Pipeline Proposals,” 208.

trol of the Indian Act — even those that have reached a modern treaty agreement which removes them from the Act and grants them independent authority do not receive the true and full scope of self-government. These groups remain under “federal responsibility” per Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, and remain subject to the general laws of Canada.28 As Christie explains, through Canada’s apparent acceptance of a “diminished form” of Indigenous sovereignty, self-government becomes “vague and uncertain” enough to be controlled and limited by the government. 29 This allows the state to openly acknowledge the “inherent right of self-government” without having to accept the ability of Indigenous peoples to actually exercise this right.30 Through these actions, the Canadian state has hindered the possibility of genuine Indigenous self-government. Therefore, the ground that Canada has given to the struggle for Indigenous rights and authority only highlights the concessions that they are clearly not willing to make. There is thus little reason to believe that the changes necessary for transformative possibility to become tangible progress are imminent.

Furthermore, a simple shift in attitude from the Canadian state will not begin the push for these changes on its own. External stakeholders will also inhibit the changes necessary to realize transformative possibility. As Christie argues, the state is directed by larger industrial-capitalist forces, meaning that it not only protects its own self-interests from perceived threats like Indigenous self-government, but also the financial and corporate interests that drive the actions of the state.31 Therefore, Christie argues, the forces that oppose Indigenous authority are simply too powerful and entrenched to be attacked internally through the mechanisms of the current Canadian le-

28 OECD, Linking Indigenous Communities with Regional Development in Canada, 44; Canada, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Treaties, agreements and negotiations: Self-government, (Ottawa: Canada, 2020), https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100032275/152

9354547314#chp3.

29 Christie, “Indigenous Authority, Canadian Law, and Pipeline Proposals,” 196.

30 Ibid.

31 Christie, “Indigenous Authority, Canadian Law, and Pipeline Proposals,” 212.

gal system.32 Notwithstanding the direct connection between industrial-capitalist forces and the Canadian state, that such powerful entities independently oppose the objectives of transformative possibility does not bode well for its practical realization. This creates another systemic obstacle to the legal changes needed to make progress in the facilitation of Indigenous sovereignty and the proper entrenchment of Aboriginal rights.

IV. Conclusion

A look at the Canadian legal system’s approach to Indigenous rights and claims to sovereignty might reveal promising theoretical possibilities. For instance, a change in constitutional interpretation may correct the course of failed Aboriginal rights protections, while scrutinizing Crown sovereignty through the lens of fundamental legal principles like the rule of law may reveal an avenue for Indigenous self-government. Despite how encouraging these “transformative possibilities” may appear, they are a far cry from substantive change. That is, there is a significant difference between theoretical possibilities and feasible outcomes. Merely because transformative possibility is identifiable does not mean that we can expect it to lead to tangible progress.

The very concept of non-Indigenous government entities controlling the identity and affairs of Indigenous groups is indelibly tied to the problem of “Canadian paternalism.” Any change within the power structures of the current system would require drastic reorganization in the Canadian government’s approach to Indigenous affairs. The Canadian state would be forced to relinquish a degree of power and control over Indigenous nations that the Canadian government has shown no willingness to accept; even if they were, external actors will also stand in the way of change within the power structures of the Canadian state. Canada retains the sole right to shift the limitations on Aboriginal rights and claims to sovereignty, and it will be able to do so for as long as

the state’s own goals are mutually exclusive with substantial change. As a result, it appears impracticable that improvement in the law’s treatment of Indigenous people in Canada will occur through the mechanisms of the Canadian legal system as it currently exists. Merely adjusting interpretive approaches or recommitting to principles that are fundamental to the existing legal system, as implied by the notion of transformative possibility, will not alone produce ameliorative results for Indigenous rights. Rather, systemic changes are necessary to facilitate Indigenous self-government and insulate Indigenous rights from the oppressive exercise of state power. To start with, this entails more room for Indigenous voices to help formulate the legal concept of Indigeneity. The current system invokes Canadian hegemony by unilaterally applying an Anglo-Canadian ideology to give legal character to critical aspects of Indigenous identity.

This succinctly highlights the systemic nature of the problem — Canada’s current framework of law treats Indigenous affairs with the same tact and applies the same legal methodology as it does with any other legal right or obligation. However, the Indigenous experience is unique, and accordingly, demands greater flexibility from the legal system to recognize and accommodate the essence and real diversity of Indigenous perspectives. This involves, for instance, abandoning the onerous and often arbitrary requirement that a valid Indigenous practice or tradition must have ties to society pre-European contact, a requirement that pervades the Canadian legal regime of Aboriginal rights and prevents the constitutional protection of fundamental aspects of Indigenous culture that are otherwise valid according to modern cultural standards — standards that have long since evolved “post-contact.” A blueprint of the full extent of the structural changes required is beyond the scope of this paper. For now, I submit that the “transformative possibilities” of Canadian law are not the encouraging signs of evolution that some contend they are, and that any substantial change to improve the law’s treatment of Indigenous peoples

requires reciprocal systemic changes to Canada’s legal system itself.

References

Barsh, Russel Lawrence, and James Youngblood Henderson. “The Supreme Court’s Van der Peet Trilogy: Naive Imperialism and Ropes of Sand.” McGill Law Journal 42 (1997): 993-1009.

Borrows, John. Freedom and Indigenous Constitu tionalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Canada. Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Treaties, agreements and negotiations: Selfgovernment. Ottawa: Canada, 2020, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100 100032275/1529354547314#chp3.

Christian Aboriginal Infrastructure Developments (CAID). “Indigenous Sovereignty and Resources.” CAID.ca. Last modified July 28, 2019. http://caid.ca/Dself_det_resources.html.

Christie, Gordon. “Indigenous Authority, Canadian Law, and Pipeline Proposals.” Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 25 (September 1, 2013): 189-215.

Christie, Gordon. “Indigenous Legal Theory: Some Initial Considerations.” In Indigenous Peoples and the Law: Comparative and Critical Perspectives, edited by Shin Imai, Kent McNeil, and Benjamin J. Richardson, 195-231.Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009.

Macklem, Patrick. “First Nations Self-Government and the Borders of the Canadian Legal Imagination.” McGill Law Journal 36 (1991): 382-456.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Deve lopment (OECD). Linking Indigenous Communities with Regional Development in Canada. Paris, France: OECD Publishing, 2020. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/.

https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/.

“Altar, Feed, Church”

Grayson Cassels

My body of work titled, “Altar, Feed, Church” investigates the female form in conversationwith two spaces: digital spheres and southern communities. In the process of creating this work, I grappled with my experience of femininity, shame, sexual health, and bodily ownership. I used paint and mixed media to create capsules that critically explore the rigidity of tradition and the optimism of innovation.

“Textbook Shot” and “Shoving a Stick of Woodland Sage up my Left Nostril” explore my experience growing up in a traditionally southern community with various masculine institutions and practices influencing the way I physically and mentally interacted with the world. The scene in “Textbook Shot” depicts a memory I have of going hunting with my dad and bringing the deer carcass to a butcher shop, where I was met with teasing, sarcastic mocking as the men there realized I had become proficient at the practice. I started hunting with my dad at a young age before really understanding it as a tradition of masculinity and power, or the gravity of killing another being. Later, I found myself reflecting on the connection between hunting as an inherited sport and the inherited shame and hypersexuality I felt growing up in my female body in a Southern community. I aim for that feeling in this piece through fragmentation and collage, investigating the parallels between the objec-

and back covers

Virginia Commonwealth University

Figure 1: “Digital 2” *also used for the front

Figure 2: “Textbook Shot”

tification of the animal and my experiences as a woman in a male-dominated community, where objetification and subjugation were present.

In a response to my experience as a woman growing up in the south, “Mind Body Tightrope,” and “Digital 1,” “Digital 2,” and “Digital 3” retroactively respond to my childhood by presenting my current environment and digital world as a place of freedom and empowerment. Each of these pieces incorporates the use of figuration and the grid. The incorporation of the grid is based partly in its history as a visual structure where it was used to make 15th century frescos and by contemporary artists like Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin. I am interpreting the grid through my observation of the grid-

ded format of camera rolls, social media feeds, and other interfaces on electronic devices. I couple the use of the grid with figuration, such as in “Mind Body Tightrope,” where the two figures are deeply embedded in a larger image of abstraction.

The layering of paint with various textures, drawn images, and collaged social media screens, creates a vision of the present and perhaps future world, challenging traditional notions of feminism and blurring the boundaries between human and machine.

“Altar, Feed, Church” Continued:

Figure 3: “Mind Body Tightrope”

Figure 5: “Shoving a Stick of Woodland Sage up my Left Nostril”

Figure 6: “Digital 3”

Community Land Trusts are the Necessary Future of Black Reparations

Sydni Scott | Columbia University

Abstract: The concept of reparations for Black Americans – as a means of rectifying the economic inequality that has resulted from historical legacies of slavery and subsequent racially discriminatory policies – has been defined in American political discourse by its narrow scope of focus, and dismal levels of public support. This paper explores an expansive idea of reparations beyond federal or state cash-payouts in the form of Community Land Trusts, which are non-profit organizations designed to create permanently affordable housing in a given area. It begins with an argument for the inefficacy of race-neutral policy as a means to reduce the racial wealth gap and the necessity of race-conscious policy. Next is an evaluation of Community Land Trusts as political mechanisms for reparations, their benefits, drawbacks, and future potential. Finally, this paper presents a challenge to the assumption that reparations policies are so unpopular as to make them politically infeasible, including putting competitive threat theory and exposure theory in conversation with contemporary public opinion polling data. Lastly, this paper concludes with a report of the first implemented reparations resolution in Evanston, Illinois which has developed over the past year.

I. Introduction

In 2016, the median net worth of white households in the U.S. was $171,000. In contrast, the median income for Black households was nearly ten times less than that: $17,150. According to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Consumer Finance, in 2010, white Americans owned 88.4% of the nation’s wealth; Black Americans owned just 2.7%.1 There are few

1 McIntosh, K., Moss, E., Nunn, R., & Shambaugh, J. (2020, February 27). Examining the Black-white

political phenomena in the United States as pervasive as the racial wealth gap. This undeviating feature of American politics and culture permeates every major institution: education, housing, the justice system, healthcare, employment. While progressive policy has meandered along a trajectory of increasing civil rights and equality for Black Americans, this progression is ultimately stunted by inaccessibility to institutions that allow for the growth of generational black wealth. Although there are many institutions that can allow for acquisition, the dynamic of race-based economic inequality is foundationally bellied by the inability for Black Americans to access the stability of safe and secure housing necessary for accumulation of wealth. This essay is broken down into four parts. I will begin by briefly describing the historical context that contributed to modern economic demographics. Then, I will address the dissonance between race-neutral and race-conscious policy and argue with examples why the former is ineffective. Next, I will introduce the efficacy of race-conscious policy through the lens of Community Land Trusts and analyze their potential impact on wealth building. Lastly, I will discuss some limitations of Community Land Trusts, but why now in particular is the optimal time to advance it as a race-conscious policy in the United States.

Contemporary racial wealth inequality was driven by a series of policies that have adapted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to contend with developing civil rights legislation and bar African Americans from accessing means of building capital. In the immediate aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation, Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15, better known colloquially as “40 acres and a mule” granted freed Black Americans up to 40 acres of tillable land, and in some cases, an army mule to jumpstart their introduction as wage-earners to the US economy. Unfortunately, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his successor,

Andrew Johnson reversed the order in 1865 and returned the land to former confederate southerners, leaving newly freed Black people with few options other than becoming sharecroppers for former slave owners.2 This trajectory has continued throughout contemporary American history, and Black Americans experienced disenfranchisement in almost every institution.

An analysis of policy that disenfranchised Black Americans from 1865 to the present, though compelling, is beyond the scope of this paper, and instead I will focus on a series of policies implemented in the 1930’s that significantly impacted modern institutions of housing and the demographic distribution of wealth that ensued. Broadly I’m referring to the New Deal, which served the purpose of generating access largely to housing support in the US. While a similar law, the G.I bill, didn’t allow Black veterans to access all the educational resources afforded to white veterans because the educational institutions in question employed the use of segregation policies, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) similarly instituted the practice of redlining in combination with New Deal government subsidies and grant programs for mortgage financing.3 The Homeowners Loan Corporation, FHA, and Veterans Administration used maps of metropolitan areas and color-coded them based on where it was considered safe to insure. All sections where Black Americans lived – or were proximate to – were considered too risky to issue mortgage loans.4

In his 2017 book, The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein details both the history behind the laws and the ramifications on future racial wealth inequity. Essentially, these practices were justified on the grounds that if Black Americans were able to buy property in or near white suburbs, the value of those properties would decline. In actuality however, this

2 McCammon, S. (2015, January 12). The Story Behind ‘40 Acres And A Mule’. Retrieved December 15, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/ codeswitch/2015/01/12/376781165/the-story-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule

3 Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was white. New York: W.W. Norton.

4 Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

logic was empirically inaccurate. Black people were actually willing to pay more for properties because their housing options were already so limited. However, The Underwriting Manual of the FHA decreed that “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities’ ‘ and African Americans couldn’t get loans. In one particular example in Detroit the FHA wouldn’t proceed with lending until developers constructed a 6-foot-high cement wall separating the development from a nearby black neighborhood. Even black potential property buyers with the credit to afford loans were barred from purchasing property in developing suburbs.5 These policies lasted from the 1930’s until the late 1960’s when the 1968 Fair Housing Act was passed that finally prohibited the policy.6 However, by then, while technically legally allowed to purchase property in predominantly white suburbs, the property values in those neighborhoods had increased so much that they were no longer affordable to Black homeowners with less valuable equity in their current properties. White Americans have been able to build equity in those properties that could be used to fund everything from college tuitions to entrepreneurial pursuits. In the Color of Law, Rothstein estimates that the houses in question are now currently estimated at values between $300,000 and $400,000).7

These effects are still relevant today because accumulated capital and income operate dramatically differently in the United States. In order to comprehensively evaluate the relationship between race-neutral policy and the racial wealth gap, it is first necessary to establish the way in which wealth inequality functions. To do so, I look to French economist Thomas Piketty. In his work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty first describes the distinction between distribution of wealth and income, or in other terms, return on capital vs. wage-based earnings. The reason he focuses on this distinction

5 Rothstein, “The Color of Law.”

6 HUD Housing Discrimination Under the Fair Housing Act: HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).” Housing Discrimination Under the Fair Housing Act | HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Accessed December 15, 2020.

7 Rothstein, “The Color of Law.”

wealth gap. Retrieved October 02, 2020, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-theblack-white-wealth-gap/

is because his work centers around, “changes in the relative importance of inherited wealth and savings in the… dynamics of wealth inequality.”8 Piketty developed an economic model whereby if the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth in a particular country, then wealth inequality is self-perpetuating because accumulation of wealth is more profitable than labor-based wages.9 The trajectory of the United States included a ratio of 5:1 in 1910, falling slightly in the following decade before rising again to 5.5:1 around the time of World War II. Finally, it fell to below 4:1 in 1950, and has been steadily on the rise ever since. As it stood by 2010, the ratio was at 4.5:1. A concerning component of Piketty’s findings includes the fact that these climbing ratios weren’t emblematic of market instability, and in fact, occur while the market is functioning under conditions economists would describe as efficient.10 The connection between Piketty’s model and effects of housing discrimination is persuasive. While as of 2017, black wages were around 60% of total white wages, total black wealth was instead just 5% of white wealth.11

II. Race-Neutral Policy

Having discussed the trajectory of discriminatory policy that contributed to the racial wealth gap as it stands today, I will move forward with my central argument. A racial disparity that grew out of explicitly racist policies can only be rectified through contemporary policy that acknowledges race. This is in direct contrast with what are known as race-neutral or universal policies. I argue that race-neutral policies, though worthwhile, are ineffective at reducing the racial wealth gap. First, this is because American institutions conform to the standards Piketty identi-

8 Piketty, T., & Goldhammer, A. (2017). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Policy. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 1(1). doi:10.1177/153244000100100103

9 Solow, R. M. (2014, April 22). Thomas Piketty Is Right. Retrieved September 19, 2020, from https://n ewrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed 10 Abid.

11 Rothstein, “The Color of Law.”

fied. Universal policies are still inherently organized to reward wealth rather than wage-based labor. This is exemplified not only in the structure of our tax policy – the Center on Budget and Policy reported that the 2017 tax policy allows for significant tax breaks on income from wealth that income from labor do not experience – but also in policies that are ostensibly intended to alleviate wealth inequality.12

For example, Social Security, a federally funded insurance program that consists of retirement, disability, and survivor benefits, is undeniably beneficial to Black Americans. However, this is in large part because they oftentimes have fewer alternative retirement assets, simply meaning much of total social security paid out by the government goes to Black Americans.13 Further, there are in fact components of Social Security policies that seek to rectify wealth inequality. One such program is the Progressive Benefit Formula. Broadly, workers with lower wages proportionately receive more benefits than workers with higher wages. This significantly serves Black workers who average lower wages than white workers. However, even though the Social Security benefit formula is progressive in that it allows for low earners to qualify for higher proportions of their pre-retirement earnings, workers with lower earnings still receive lower dollar benefits due to the function of proportion. The actual dollar amount Black Americans receive in benefits is lower than for white Americans because of their lower overall earnings).14 This disproportionate dollar amount means this policy does little to amend the racial wealth gap as we understand it from Piketty.

This dynamic is replicated throughout other political institutions as well. While healthcare policies likewise contain no overt racial language, the implementation ignores race in such a way that allows Black Americans to be excluded from the benefits

12 Huang, C., & Taylor, R. (2019, November 06). How the Federal Tax Code Can Better Advance Racial Equity. Retrieved October 02, 2020, from https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/how-the-federal-tax-code-canbetter-advance-racial-equity

13 Hendley, A. A., & Bilimoria, N. F. (n.d.). Social Security Administration. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/ v62n2/v62n2p59.pdf

14 Abid.

consistently. This can include surface-level trends such as the fact that in 2018, the percentage of white Americans that were uninsured was around 5.4% while the same uninsured rate for Black Americans was almost double at 9.7% despite making up a fraction of the population.15 However, it also includes factors that differentiate poor black Americans from poor white Americans. For example, Medicaid is subject to regional stipulations, and in 2018, many Southern states with large Black populations imposed strict employment requirements for certain Medicaid recipients and individuals who couldn’t meet the requirements were allowed ninety days before their Medicaid status was terminated. 16 However, access to the job market is variable along racial lines that aren’t accounted for with proxies like income. A 2003 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, considering candidates with identical merit, a white man with a former felony conviction is more likely to get a call back for a job than a Black man with a clean record.17 In response to this policy over 18,000 Black Americans lost their health insurance in 2018 due to their inability to meet these qualifications.18

Many universal policies aren’t ineffective because of overt racial language. Instead, they’re ineffective because they ignore factors that are most critical to the propagation of the racial wealth gap and the policies necessary to overcome it. They shape colorblind policy in a society in which race is one of the most salient social factors. As a result, even with race-neutral policies in place, the racial wealth gap has only worsened. A 2017 report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that between 1983 and 2013, Median Hispanic household wealth declined 50%, Black median household wealth declined 75% and

15 Taylor, J., & Kahlenberg,. Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African Americans. Retrieved October 02, 2020, from https://tcf.org/content/report/racism-inequality-health-care-african-americans/

16 NASHP. “State Proposals for Medicaid Work and Community Engagement Requirements,” January 2018. https://www.nashp.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/01/Medicaid-Work-Requirements-Chart_10_31_19_Final. pdf.

17 NBER “Employers’ Replies to Racial Names.” NBER, Sept. 2003, www nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names.

18 NASHP, “State Proposals.”

median white household wealth increased 14% . 19

III. Race-Conscious Action

Community Land Trusts (CLT) are non-profit organizations that seek to provide affordable permanent housing to low-income communities by acquiring multiple plots of land scattered across a specific geographic location and allowing for private development on top of the land. Critically, the land is never resold and instead is removed permanently from the market on behalf of the target community. Because ownership of the land itself is never transferred outside the bounds of the land trust, it can support the permanent ownership of housing. The trust issues a long-term ground lease of the land to the owners of the property that is typically up to 99 years. This lease – a small monthly payment – is heritable, renewable, and mortgageable.20

This is an example of how this concept works in practice: A CLT, typically privately funded, acquires parcels of land in a given city through either purchase or donation. They can fund the development of residential buildings, and then put them up for sale specifically to low-income prospective buyers. Those buyers are able to establish manageable mortgages for their property, as well as invest in them with the knowledge that the property value won’t increase beyond their means. This is because land trusts maintain mostly constant prices that aren’t influenced by the movement of the conventional housing market and are instead tethered to local incomes. This factor differentiates land trusts from standard government subsidies or private grants that provide financial aid to low-income buyers in either their down payments or their mortgages. In this latter scenario, after making payments to the mortgage and developing equity in the home, the original buyers can sell it for a price that has become inaccessible to other low-income

19 Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, et al. Prosperity Now, 2017, pp. 1–34, The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing out America’s Middle Class.

20 Davis, John Emmeus. Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2014, community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/report-davis14.pdf .

individuals and families. Therefore, that grant funding is only beneficial once. Instead, with land trusts, the terms of purchase necessitate that owners either sell their property back to the land trust, or to other low-income property buyers. Therefore, a location of permanently affordable housing is established. Land trust housing also protects owners from downturns because residents are not overextended. Moreover, a 2010 study by Emily Thaden and Greg Rosenburg of 96 CLTs across the country found that CLT homeowners were 10 times less likely to be in foreclosure proceedings and 6.6 times less likely to be seriously delinquent than conventional homeowners, a result that is particularly significant given the lower income limits usually restricting CLT home buyers.21 To end this overview of land trusts, the last critical factor to note is that in 1992 an amendment to the National Affordable Housing Act lent land trusts a formal definition that allowed them to access federal funding through grant acquisition. After 1992, land trusts were allowed to qualify as a “Community Housing Development Organization “(CHDO). Because of this distinction, many more were able to receive funding from the federal HOME program through HUD in order to supply their operations and their future projects.22

This basic structure of a land trust is still distinct however, from a Community Land Trust. A Community Land Trust functions in the same way but is modeled with three values at its focal point: ownership, organization, and operation. In addition to residential housing, CLT’s encourage the development of shared commercial spaces including businesses and community centers. Most commonly, at least one-third of a Community Land Trust’s board is composed of community residents in addition to real estate experts, benefactors, and business professionals, allowing for the possibility of direct participation in decision-making and community

21 Thaden, Emily. “Stable Home Ownership in a Turbulent Economy,” July 1, 2011. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/stable-home-ownership-turbulent-economy.

control of local assets. In addition to the development of affordable housing, many land trusts are involved in a range of community-focused initiatives including homeownership education programs, commercial development projects, and community greening efforts.23 What’s more, Community Land Trusts are developed based on the needs of the specific communities they serve and can prioritize anything from agricultural development to corporate pursuits. Having outlined the basic structure of a CLT, I will now evaluate the beneficial impact they can have on the ability for Black Americans to participate in different sectors of political and social life.

Community Land Trusts aren’t entirely new. What is widely acknowledged as the first CLT was called New Communities Inc. and it was established in Georgia in 1969 by Robert Swann, Slater King, and Charles Sherrod.24 Since their inception, CLT’s have developed around the country, and as it currently stands, there are over 260 CLT’s in forty-six states, Puerto Rico and D.C.25 While not all specifically race-based, these developments have provided the opportunity to gather empirical data about their efficiency, as well as the impact that they can have on economic inequality. For example, Myungshik Choi published a study in the Journal of Urban Affairs in 2017 that explored CLT’s effectiveness at preventing and slowing gentrification. The author used a population of all active CLT’s in the U.S. at the time of the study that were listed in the National Community Land Trust Network and then compared four categories: gentrifying neighborhoods with no CLT’s, gentrifying neighborhoods with CLT’s, non-gentrifying neighborhoods with no CLT’s, and non-gentrifying neighborhoods with CLT’s. The qualifications for gentrification tracked the rate of increase of the white population, college-educated people, median income, median value of single-family homes, and percentage of owner-occupied units all against the corresponding citywide medians. They concluded that not only do CLT’s alleviate the impacts of gentri-

fication where it occurs, they also decrease the odds of gentrification by 74%. In addition, the findings suggested that CLT’s yield community assets in neighborhoods by improving their stability. Essentially, because of this they found that CLT’s can serve to benefit both residents and local municipalities regardless of whether they’re gentrifying. Lastly, it was concluded that CLT’s make for ideal proposals for community representatives because she demonstrated that they increase racial diversity while maintaining neighborhood standards for middle-class ratios, educational levels, and the rate of homeownership.26 These community scale impacts are also mirrored by smaller changes. Similar to Thaden and Rosenburg’s finding from 2010, the Lincoln Institute found that the rate of foreclosure and mortgage delinquency is significantly lower in CLT’s and what’s more, provide stability for generational wealth.27

This stability is critical because in addition to secure housing as a benefit of its own accord, stability is also a fundamental necessity for growth of black business and entrepreneurship. The Kauffman Institute’s 2016 report finds that access to entrepreneurial economic mobility is often hindered at the foundation. “95 percent of African American and 87 percent of Latino middle-class families do not have enough net assets to meet most of their essential living expenses for even three months if their source of income were to disappear. People of color do not have the assets to take the risk of entrepreneurship, to quit their jobs, and bet on a new idea.”28 The solutions outlined in the report include creating access to new social networks, pursuing alternative credit score methods, and developing pipelines for minorities to access professional education programs. Community Land Trusts are poised to facilitate all of

26 Choi, Myungshik. “Can Community Land Trusts Slow Gentrification?” Journal of Urban Affairs 40, no. 3 (September 27, 2017). https://doi.org/10. 1080/07352166.2017.1362318.

27 DeWolf, Elizabeth. “The Impact of Community Land Trusts on Neighborhoods.” Equality Indicators, 26 Feb. 2018, equalityindicators.org/ blog/2018/02/26/the-impact-of-community-land-trusts-on-neighborhoods/.

28 Desai, Sameeksha, and Travis Howe. 2020, Who Doesn’t Start a Business in America? A Look at Pre-Entrepreneurship Leavers. https:// www.kauffman.org/entrepreneurship/reports/pre-entrepreneurship-leavers-in-america/

these growth solutions by fostering an environment of growth and support, cultivating access to new sources of credit, and offering educational tools to capitalize on the stability provides. 29 Lastly, they provide proximate and affordable commercial spaces for developing black businesses.

Despite overwhelming empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of CLT’s and their impact on residents’ financial mobility, they’re not without their valid critiques. The first of these critiques is that without the ability to build equity as property value increases as is possible in the conventional housing market, Black homeowners are still being undercut in their ability to acquire wealth. 30 While true, this criticism has a fairly straightforward rebuttal. Subsequent to the housing market crisis of 2008, Black homeownership is at an all-time low, and the disparity between the proportion of Black and white homeowners is more drastic than it was when race-based housing discrimination was legal.31 While the ability to build equity is a critical one, as it currently stands, Black citizens largely don’t have access to homeownership that would result in significant equity building. I argue that it’s more important to encourage Black homeownership where it’s most affordable. Although not producing dramatic gains, not only are Black homeowners shielded from volatility in the housing market, they also have access to financial options that aren’t available to renters like a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit, both of which can be used to support education, entrepreneurship, or the pursuit of other properties. In addition, some CLT’s allow homeowners to build equity in increasing property value as long as the local average income has similarly increased.32

On the other hand, however, a more com -

29 Davis, “Origins and Evolutions.”

30 Foster, Daniel, UCLA chapter, Rebecca Tsosie, Charquia Wright, and Jaylin Stevenson. “The Limits of Land Reform: A Comment on Community Land Trusts.” UCLA Law Review, September 21, 2019. https://www. uclalawreview.org/the-limits-of-land-reform-a-comment-on-communityland-trusts/.

31 Young, Caitlin. “These Five Facts Reveal the Current Crisis in Black Homeownership.” Urban Institute, July 31, 2019. https://www.urban.org/ urban-wire/these-five-facts-reveal-current-crisis-black-homeownership.

32 Davis, “Origins and Evolutions.”

22 Palmer, Analiese. “Strategies for Sustainable Growth in Community Land Trusts.” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, March 2019.

23 Davis, “Origins and Evolutions.”

24 Palmer, “Strategies for Sustainable Growth.”

25 Davis, “Origins and Evolutions.”

plicated criticism is often levied upon CLT’s: The economic model is inherently incompatible with the community-based ideals. This opinion has been explored at length by law students, community organizers, and policy experts. Essentially, CLT’s are perpetually dependent on donors, grants, or other outside funding because the money they earn from the land lease – typically $30-$45 a month from residents that live on the land – isn’t nearly enough to sustain the entirety of the land trust, especially if new land or development is to be pursued.33 Because of this chronic underfunding, CLT’s ability to function is reliant on the ability to expertly navigate the esoteric and meticulous process of grant applications, which often require comprehensive tax and financial data as a baseline for eligibility.

While earlier I referenced the accessibility to HUD as a positive milestone in the trajectory of CLT’s, as access to federal funding kept many land trusts in business, the ultimate effect has been the attrition of the founding principles of community. By the time enough administrative efficiency to engage successfully in the grant allocation process has been established, priorities have often shifted away from community participation, and towards the bureaucratic process of pursuing grants and courting donors. In recent years, the leadership of CLT’s has drifted away from accountability to community members, and increasingly towards hyper professionalization.34 This has also resulted in a regression in the pragmatic outputs of CLT’s that mirrors the increasing distance between contemporary profit based CLT’s and their ideological predecessors. While this isn’t a problem experienced by all CLT’s, it is one that is fairly inherent to the structure. Expansion of the program and the benefits it provides isn’t possible without economic growth and profit – the very antithesis of CLT’s to begin with. This dilemma delivers us to the fourth section of this essay.

as Government Spon-

I will begin by arguing that the merit of CLT’s as a concept shouldn’t be irrevocably marred by the poor practical implementation of its values in specific trusts. However, this paper readily acknowledges that the model is unsustainable and vulnerable in its reliance on outside funding. The solution to this problem is for local governments to commit to supporting the construction and maintenance of Black Community Land Trusts in acknowledgement of their individual histories of racial housing discrimination. As I have argued in this essay, race-neutral policies are ineffective at reducing the racial wealth gap. However, in contemporary politics, race-conscious policy has often prompted little interest or traction. Overwhelmingly, unpopularity among voters, particularly white voters, has been referenced and cited as the predominant obstacle.35 However, in this final section, I will argue that public opinion about racial policy is dynamic and particularly favorable to progressive policy, particularly at this junction in the U.S.’s political landscape. Additionally, there is also emerging evidence that race-based reparations policies are politically feasible at the local level.

A fundamental inverse relationship between the perceived danger or competition for white people due to the proximity of Black communities and support for policy that is at least presumed to support minorities grounds plenty of research on the relationship between public opinion on race and support for progressive policy. This dynamic is underscored in Martin Johnson’s 2001 article titled, The Impact of Social Diversity and Racial Attitudes on Social Welfare Policy. In it he described the dynamic of “group threat” in which white voters’ likelihood to support progressive social policy is directly correlational to their feelings about the security of their status as racial majorities. In this model, white Americans are less likely to support social welfare policy if they feel that

35 Marist. “Nature of the Sample: Exclusive Point Taken-Marist Poll of 1,221 National Adults .” May 2016 Marist Poll, 2016. http://maristpoll. marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us160502/Point%20Taken/Reparations/Exclusive%20Point%20Taken-Marist%20Poll_Reparations%20Banner%201_May%202016.pdf#page=4.

increasing minority populations will threaten them either economically – based on a perceived threat to their employment opportunities and increasing cost of welfare – or socially – based on perceived threats of their cultural values and social dominance.36 However, his paper also introduces the apparent contradiction of a competing theory that dictates that increased exposure to racial diversity increases positive attitudes towards racial minorities, with interpersonal interaction most effective at decreasing racial animus. This was represented by the 1992 New York mayoral election that found white voters that lived in racially diverse neighborhoods – and therefore exposed to more racial diversity in their everyday interactions – voted for incumbent Black mayor David Dinkins far more often than white voters living in homogenous white neighborhoods.37

Essentially, Johnson argues that both theories can coexist, and there is a threshold below which increasing racial diversity will prompt positive exposure to racial minorities, and therefore improve perception of race relations, while above the threshold, competitive threat sets in and the opposite is true. Neither of these theories are revolutionary, but they do illuminate the fact that public perception, and as an extension of that, support of public policy is more fluid and dynamic than polls might suggest. This general theory of racial resentment has endured for decades, but as reported public support for Black Americans and the social problems they face has improved, a reconsideration of this dynamic is demanded.

To explore the validity of government sponsorship of CLT’s I will analyze some of the data available regarding public opinion. To begin, a Pew Research study published on October 6th, 2020 demonstrated current support for reparations programs. Respondents were polled on their opinions about policies that could rectify racial inequality in America. The results did not support reparations. Even among white democrats, the percentage of people that believed reparations would be a productive mechanism by

which to achieve racial equality topped out at 43%.38 However, there is one caveat to these findings. When polled, all participants were given a definition of reparations that involved the U.S. government paying cash reparations directly to black people who are the descendants of slaves.39 This idea is incredibly unpopular for several reasons, but it is notably distinct from the solution I propose.

In an Atlantic article titled The Impossibility of Reparations and published in response to Ta-Nehisi Coates own Atlantic article The Case for Reparations David Frum identifies many of the criticisms that are levied against the concept of reparations in the U.S. First of course is the striking unpopularity, which I will return to at the end of this section, but in addition, a series of logistical questions that Coates left unacknowledged. Most fundamentally - how do reparations work? Will these programs simply be the first of many similar and diluting programs for other marginalized groups? How do we keep track of who is a descendent of enslaved people? Can “free” cash really do anything to disrupt the racial wealth gap? How is it fair for wealthy black Americans to receive government support over poorer people of other races? And certainly most pressing, how much is this going to cost Americans?40 These are questions that accompany Pew Research’s understanding of reparations. However, my argument isn’t grounded in federally supported cash payouts for every Black American. To discuss the structure that exemplifies the reparations program I suggest, I look to Evanston, Illinois.

In November of 2019, by an 8-1 vote, the City Council of Evanston officially began its reparations program to the black residents of the city. This effort was borne out of Evanston City Council Reparations

38 Parker, Kim. “Amid National Reckoning, Americans Divided on Whether Increased Focus on Race Will Lead to Major Policy Change.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, November 3, 2020. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/10/06/amid-national-reckoningamericans-divided-on-whether-increased-focus-on-race-will-lead-to-major-policy-change/.

39 Abid.

40 Frum, David. “The Impossibility of Reparations,” July 6, 2020. https:// www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/the-impossibility-of-reparations/372041/

IV. Community Land Trusts

36 Johnson, M. (2001). The Impact of Social Diversity and Racial Attitudes on Social Welfare 37 Abid.

Subcommittee and involves a model for reparations that is specific and well-organized. Any Black resident that lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 and was the victim of any housing discrimination is entitled to government assistance to fund the purchase of permanent housing. At the time this paper was written, specificities on the funding amount had not been released, but the trajectory of this resolution will continue to progress throughout 2022. Because local governments do not have the authority to waive tax liability as the federal government does, the money will be paid directly to the lending institution as opposed to individuals. Finally, the funding for this endeavor will come from sales tax on recently legalized marijuana.41 With this design, benefits are directly targeted at an identifiable and distinguishable group of Black Americans that were the victims of explicitly discriminatory policy. The funding directly benefits the expansion of Black homeownership, and significantly, doesn’t pose any additional annual tax burden on Evanston’s other residents.

My proposal is that Community Land Trusts be instilled into this course of action. I argue that this model can not only be replicated throughout the United States but can also alleviate the funding problem experienced by Community Land Trusts while also allowing the government funds to result in long-term benefits. This idea isn’t entirely revolutionary either. New York Attorney General James announced a $1.6 million grant towards CLT’s in New York.42 As Palmer describes in her study on CLT’s the support of local governments has been pursued for decades. Endorsement can result in easier acquisition of public funding as well as access to land either through donations or below-market sales. 43 However, these partnerships have never served the explicit purpose of providing housing opportunities

41 City of Evanston.” Reparations | City of Evanston, www.cityofevanston. org/government/city-council/reparations.

42 Attorney General, New York. “Attorney General James Grants $1.6 Million To NYC For Affordable Housing.” Attorney General James Grants $1.6 Million To NYC For Affordable Housing New York State Attorney General. Accessed December 15, 2020. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/attorney-general-james-grants-16-million-nyc-affordable-housing.

43 Palmer, “Strategies for Sustainable Growth.”

specifically to Black Americans, and they’ve never acknowledged the necessity for reparations. All of these implicit acknowledgements can and must be made explicit in order to pursue racial equity and establish accountability for the programs as they develop. This partnership would require City Council and subcommittee members as well as a majority of black community members in addition to the professionals that advise the development of the trust. In addition to representation on the board of the trust, the implementation should include recurring meetings to track the development progress, as well as stipulation that funding remain guaranteed until an observable metric of rectification has been identified and achieved.

The remaining caveat is obviously that the mechanism of funding reparations with legalized marijuana isn’t widely available. While this is true, it doesn’t invalidate the benefits of parsing out reparations on a local level so that restitution is undergone in accordance with the specific history of discrimination in that location, and it certainly doesn’t invalidate the potential for innovate funding solutions that can be pursued at the local level. One particularly successful CLT is Seattle’s Africatown Community Land Trust, and this CLT was borne out of acknowledgement of substantial racial disparities in Washington that were propagated by the government and have resulted in high hurdles to economic equality. Black people in Washington are less likely to have a job that pays enough to meet basic needs – only 28% – they have lower household income and higher rates of poverty, and additionally, black household median income is $18,000 less than the state median and 60% of black children live in poverty compared to 39% overall. Lastly, 35% of Black people live in homes that they own compared to 65% overall, and black net worth is eleven times less than state average.44 Given this barrage of data, ACLT has striven to provide not only housing, but robust opportunities for black businesses and entrepreneurship to combat these statistics.

As of today, they own the Liberty bank building in Seattle’s central district as well as six other properties in heritage rich locations which provide housing and support to Black owned businesses. 45

To return to the question of popularity and consequent political feasibility, I argue that the preconceived notion of reparations results in misrepresentative data about support for the concept of this type of policy. Because robust polling data of public opinion on modern reparations ideas doesn’t yet exist, I will instead briefly reference changing public opinion of race as an issue in the United States, and the degree to which Americans believe it should be addressed through policy. To explore this contemporary and specific moment of racial awareness, I’ll utilize a Pew Research Center study that was conducted in September of 2020. While opinions on specific policies vary, several trends in particular are noticeable. First, the majority of Americans report having pursued some level of education on the history of racial inequality in the past three months, and overall, increasing proportions of Americans are acknowledging the impacts of historical racial inequality. This includes 49% of respondents who believe overall that the United States has not made enough progress in terms of achieving racial equality, an increase from 45% in just 2019. This trend is consistent across all racial demographics, with, for example, the proportion of Hispanic Americans increasing from 48% in 2019 to 57% in 2020, and the proportion of white Americans who believe racial progress hasn’t gone far enough increasing by a smaller, but visible margin of 37% to 39%.46

Second, in addition to questions regarding personal opinion on race relations, the respondents were also polled on the degree to which they believed reinvigorated anti-racist activism over the course of 2020 will result in policy changes. 77% agreed, with around 1 in 3 respondents believing it would result in major changes, and a slight majority of Americans claim they’ve been paying more attention to racial

45 ALCT About Us.” Africatown Community Land Trust, www.africatownlandtrust.org/about-us/.

issues over the past three months. Third, and most critically, for every question asked, Black Americans were the racial group most likely to acknowledge the role that race plays in the inequality in our society, and additionally to support mechanisms for rectifying that inequality.47 While suppositions about increasing representation of black voters in the American electorate won’t be addressed in depth in this particular paper, there is growing evidence of the increasing salience of black voters in the US.48 The United States is currently facing a critical juncture in the history and future of race relations, and it must be capitalized on to generate sustainable equality.

V. Conclusion

The potential for Community Land Trusts can’t be comprehensively explored in this essay. There remain worthwhile inquiries into the effects of CLT’s on communities such as the impact that CLT’s can have on participation in and engagement with the education system and the labor market. In addition, implementation across various regional locations will require research on varied strategies such as mixed portfolios, cross-subsidies, and scattered-site models .49 However, in this essay I set out to make a case for the inclusion of Community Land Trusts in the already underway movement towards economic reparations, and other race-conscious policies in the United States. This argument is grounded in the belief that race-neutral policies are intrinsically unable to address the worsening racial wealth gap. These policies attempt to address a problem delineated by race with an ineffective proxy, and therefore ignore the factor that is most central to the conversation about the racial wealth gap and the policies necessary to overcome it. It is an ideological flaw that begets pragmatic flaws.

In response, I argue that an expansive view

47 Abid.

48 Albright, Cliff, and Tory Gavito. “Opinion: The Way to Keep Georgia Blue.” POLITICO. POLITICO, December 14, 2020. https://www.politico. com/news/magazine/2020/12/14/georgia-black-voters-democrats-senate-runoffs-444590.

49 Palmer, “Strategies for Sustainable Growth.”

44 Pfingst, Lori, et al. African American Leadership Forum-Seattle, 2017, Creating an Equitable Future in Washington State

46 Parker, “Amid National Reckoning.”

of reparations is necessary, one that can contend with both the undeniable historical legacy of institutionalized racism as well as the dynamic and varied Black population that exists today. This requires our discussion of reparations to transcend the limitations of cash payouts. As I have argued, Community Land Trusts fill that role by allowing for access to a housing market that has historically been refused to Black citizens. They’re sustainable in that this initial access is compounded by future potential for affordability and security, and they’re unique in the agency they afford to community members to represent themselves in the proceedings of the land trust. This line of questioning has not only intellectual merits in the form of policy devising and the pursuit of innovative funding alternatives, but it also addresses the enduring relegation of black people to a second-class status in the United States. Although it has gone long unacknowledged, the United States can’t embody the ideals of justice and equality upon which it was founded until this inequity has been rectified.

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a prayer for my yoni

Esther Karpilow | Occidental College

a prayer for my yoni

This work explores the experience of healing physically and spiritually after sexual trauma. This piece is multi-medium, allowing me to draw upon various facets of my creativity. The images of female reproductive organs were created with linocut that I initially carved prior to a traumatic sexual experience, and eventually repurposed for this piece. I found a sense of closure by reclaiming these images that were once triggering to me. The layered script throughout the work reads: “I pray my yoni finds peace. I pray my yoni heals. I pray my yoni flows like water. I pray my yoni recognizes its strength. I pray my yoni overcomes anger.” My process heavily included the use of orange, because of the symbolic meaning associated with the color. Orange is representative of the sacral chakra, which is the center of our sexuality, creativity, and emotional body.

The inspiration for this piece came from my experiences as a Black woman and survivor of sexual assault. I have relied on prayer, spiritual connection, and creativity as means for coping with my trauma. I repeat this prayer as a way of affirming and manifesting my aspirations for healing. In this mantra it was important for me to acknowledge my anger explicitly. Tropes about Black women being angry, as well as common conceptions of anger as a negative emotion, have left me feeling unable to sit with that emotion. While my anger is still something I hope to overcome, I recognize it as part of my process, and as a potential agent of change. This piece is by no means an end point for my healing, but rather a reflection of one aspect of my experience as I continue to grapple with the aftershocks of my abuse.

Foucault on Border and Migration

Robin Ehl | Rheinische Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversität Bonn

Abstract: At the European external border countless human beings are dying — every year, month, and day. This is an unjustifiable tragedy and cruelty. Even the greatest consideration would not be able to adequately tribute those human beings in the following theoretical reflection.

I. Introduction

Borders are powerful social institutions that inevitably shape the view of the world: separating space, dividing people, preserving nation-states, creating room for nationalist or xenophobic speeches. But they can be questioned. Among others, Michel Foucault’s theories represent one way to question borders and to deconstruct power relations. Therefore, Foucauldian theories provide a framework for the deconstruction of borders. The use of his theories on borders is especially interesting since he also drew a border himself by stating that his theories would mainly take into account the European context. At the same time, this makes the use of Foucault’s theories on borders ambivalent since he can provide both: a method for the deconstruction of the border and a new border.

Borders become especially relevant in the context of migration: They always represent a barrier a migrant has to overcome. This may be without any problems when crossing is granted, but this might also pose an insurmountable obstacle. Because of the diversity of reasons that may cause people to migrate, migration and borders are also related to warfare, discrimination, economic crises, and more recently the climate emergency. International migration thus appears as a phenomenon whereby local crises gain a global dimension. In 2017 the world counted 258 million international migrants,1 under-

1 United Nations, “Population Facts.”

lining that an important number of people are directly affected by migration. Additionally, migration is highly relevant in current political debates.

The following reflection will focus on the possible mutual influences between the European external border in a recent context of increased immigration and the predominant form of administration in Europe as it has been described by Foucault: biopolitics. Therefore, the first part will initially outline recent developments of immigration into the European Union (EU) and modifications of European border policies as of 2019. As a first theoretical aspect, it will be shown how the impact of the European external border grows beyond the mere borderline itself. The second part will foremost present the concept of biopolitics which constitutes a centerpiece of Foucault’s theories. This will then be used to demonstrate that the European external border is itself a manifestation of biopolitics. The last section will attempt to answer the question to which extent the biopolitical external border contributes to biopolitics in the EU.

II. Migration at the European external border

Human migration occurs worldwide and may be explained by a wide variety of factors, such as economic, ecologic, or political contexts or warfare and terrorism. Likewise, one could distinguish between push and pull factors.2 Rather than stressing the differences, it seems more important to underline common points to establish a definition of migration. For the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a migrant is “a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons.”3 While the migrant population decreased compared to the global population between 1960 and 2000 from 3.05

percent to 2.71 percent,4 its share increased by 64% between 2000 and 2015.5 One of the places where migration became most visible in recent times is the external border of the European Union (EU) which will be analyzed here. In addition to the border between Mexico and the United States, the external border of the EU can be seen as a border between the so-called Global North and the Global South and thus as a place, where the possession of citizenship is distinguished clearly.6 Even if analyzing this border cannot necessarily allow universal conclusions, it allows an insight into the relation of the Global North and its southern counterpart.

This section will first give a brief overview of the migration into the EU before proceeding to an overview of the development of border techniques both in terms of surveillance and policy developments. Towards the end of this section, it will be pointed out that the border effectively stretches out both into the EU and into third countries.

a) Recent immigration into the EU

While the largest part of migration takes places within, from, or to Asia, Europe is the second continent in terms of migration movements following estimations of the UN.7 Already in previous times, considerable migration into the EU has taken place as indicated by the share of people currently living in the EU but not born in one of its member states.8 As of January 2018, 38.2 million people lived in the EU who migrated previously into one of the member states. However, this does not include undocumented cases, often termed “illegal” or “irregular” migration. While this is not the place to open the debate about the appropriate term, it should be stated that the perhaps less condemning terms of undocumented migrants or clandestine migration shall be used from here on. Undocumented migration is by definition

4 Özden et al., “Where on Earth Is Everybody?,” 4.

5 Own calculations from: McAuliffe et al., “Migration and Migrants,” 13.

6 Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers. Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border.”

7 McAuliffe et al., “Migration and Migrants,” 23.

8 Eurostat, “Statistiques sur la migration et la population migrante.”

more difficult to track, meaning that available statistics are not perfectly reliable. Depending on the source, it is estimated that 1.9 million to 8 million people live in the EU without the necessary documents.9 The peak of immigration into the EU in 2015 with more than one million undocumented immigrants (Figure 1) triggered countless public debates in Europe. Even though the yearly arrivals into the EU decreased to about 141,000 in 2018,10 the topic continues to be of great political relevance in a lot of member states. Obviously, persons traveling without necessary documents are forced to cross the border clandestinely. There are several routes either by sea or by land which are commonly considered as immigration routes into the EU and therefore possible ways of crossing the EU external border clandestinely. For example, the Eastern Mediterranean Route, the Central Mediterranean Route, or the Western Balkan Route are frequently mentioned. 11 The number of crossings per route varies greatly but is monitored closely by the European border agency, Frontex, which produces monthly updated migratory maps.12 As of June 2019, the most crossings were registered at the Eastern Mediterranean Route.13 For the migrants, clandestine border crossing comes with risks such as drowning but more generally also physical and mental health risks.14 15 Additionally, female refugees are especially exposed to risks.16

To complete the picture about immigration, it is necessary to state that many Europeans are not favorable to immigration from outside of the EU. As of 2019, 44% of the interviewees had a negative opinion on immigration from third countries.17 In some member states, public opinion is very opposed to immigration from third countries, such as in Slovakia

9 McAuliffe et al., “Migration and Migrants: A Global Overview,” 21.

10 UNHCR, “Europe Monthly Report - June 2019.”

11 Bachstein, “Schleuser weichen auf andere Mittelmeerrouten aus”; Malécot, Costil, and Fattori, “Migrations vers l’Europe, les chiffres et les routes”; Frontex, “Migratory Map.”

12 Frontex, “Migratory Map.”

13 Frontex.

14 Puchner et al., “Time to Rethink Refugee and Migrant Health in Europe.”

15 Freedman, “Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Refugee Women.”

16 Eurobarometer, “Europeans’ Opinions about the European Union’s Priorities,” 69.

17 Eurobarometer, 71.

2 E.g. Zimmermann, “European Migration: Push and Pull.”

3 International Organization for Migration, “Who Is a Migrant?”

where 76% of the interviewees expressed a negative opinion on immigration from outside of the EU.18

b) Policy responses and technology

The previous part illustrated that the EU was temporarily confronted with an important number of immigrants and at the same time important concerns of the population about immigration from outside of the Union. To react to the increase in immigration, several policy measures were taken. Turkey for instance modified its legislation when it became the first host country worldwide for refugees following the war in neighboring Syria.19 Similarly, the EU took measures to strengthen the surveillance of its borders and to increase control over immigration. However, immigration policies at the EU’s external borders are created by actors on two different levels: On the one hand, member states may strengthen border control at their part of the European external border via their national border guards. On the other hand, the EU may develop policy responses for the entire Schengen area and may strengthen the surveillance of the European external border via its border agency, Frontex. With this in mind, the following will be restricted to policies taken by the EU, including the deployment of novel technologies. National coast and border guards will be neglected for a threefold reason. First, every member state has different agencies, leading to a fragmentation of the national policies. A comparison of those approaches or a bare description would not necessarily contribute to the aim followed here, that is to say in what terms the European border manifests elements of biopower or more generally biopolitics. Second, language barriers would strongly complicate an in-depth analysis of the national agencies. Third, and most importantly, the European level explicitly aims at connecting the different national agencies for example by centralizing available information as will be shown. This is why the European border agency

18 Akın and Akın, “The Syrian Refugee Crisis and Turkey-EU Relations: Responses in Politics”; Ekmekci, “Syrian Refugees, Health and Migration Legislation in Turkey”; İçduygu, “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead.”

19 E.g. through the Schengen borders code (Regulation 2016/399)

Frontex becomes a key actor. Alongside Frontex, the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) will be taken into account.

Frontex defines its objective as follows: “Together with the Member States, we ensure safe and well-functioning external borders providing security.”20 Thus, it becomes quickly clear that the external border is regarded as an important matter for the internal security of the EU. Likewise, a Frontex report states that Frontex’s core objective would be to “safeguard the free movement of persons within the European area of freedom, security and justice.” 21 To achieve this objective, Frontex deploys a variety of different technical measures particularly aiming at monitoring the movements of third country nationals while favoring travel for EU-nationals.22

Among other measures, Frontex’s mandate was extended and its resources were significantly increased in 2017 as a reaction to the period of increased immigration into the EU. As a result, Frontex is now charged with controlling the smuggling of certain goods, should support the coast guards of the member states, and should increase its return programs of immigrants.23 For these aims, the agency used its enlarged resources to double its staff compared to 2017, to build up a rapid intervention unit, and to provide automatic data analysis for a “risk analysis and vulnerability assessment.”24 In terms of technology, the agency uses most notably patrol cars, vessels and boats, thermovision vans, surveillance cameras, drones, sensors, and since 2017 a “Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance system” to detect irregular vessels in real-time.25 Specific operations sometimes mobilize several measures under a joint command, such as the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur). Aware of the multiplicity of actors involved in the surveillance of the European border, the objective of Eurosur is to centralize the use of

20 Frontex, “Vision, Mission & Values”, emphasis added.

21 Frontex, “Annual Activity Report.”

22 Glouftsios, “Governing Circulation through Technology within EU Border Security Practice-Networks.”

23 Frontex, “Annual Activity Report,” 7.

24

technology to overcome organizational problems among the different agencies involved in the control of the European external border.26 In fact, not only is the data collection done by a multitude of actors but the collected data is also used for multiple purposes, such as the fight against drug trafficking to operations aiming at curtailing clandestine immigration.27 Yet, border control is not based exclusively on technology: Anthropological work on airport controls highlights the importance of trust and distrust in travelers by border officers.28 Apart from that, it becomes clear that the European external border is increasingly under supervision by Frontex, which increasingly deploys technology. Therefore, the agency has been equipped with enlarged responsibilities.

c) Geographical extension

In addition to the increasing level of technology used, the border is also enlarged both into the EU and beyond the geographical limits of the EU.

The first phenomenon is not a specific European phenomenon but is also observable elsewhere since the ever-increasing global trade makes foreign commodities available not only to consumers in border regions but in the whole territory. On the other hand, international passenger travel is no longer forced to pass through ports or terrestrial border-crossings of a given territory but is more common via airports. Since airports are located in multiple places over the country, there is an increasing number of exit and entry points not only along the border but also within the territory. In sum, frontiers are no longer limited to peripheral regions where they lead to the construction of borderlands, but they affect the whole country. 29

The second phenomenon however is especially interesting for the case of the European external border. Following Casas-Cortes et al., border externalization would be “a series of processes of territo26

rial and administrative expansion of a given state’s migration and border policy to third countries.”30 The externalization in the case of the EU is twofold. First, the extension is taking place on a technical level, since Frontex employs so-called “liaison officers” in third countries and offers training programs for border officials also for non-EU countries where the agency is authorized to assist with migration matters.31 Second, border extension is taking place on a broader policy level, since the EU concluded cooperation agreements with multiple countries to retake immigrants. The most impressive might be the agreement between the EU and Turkey requiring Turkey to take refugees originating from Syria while the EU would take rejected asylum seekers from Turkey in the same proportions.32 Additionally, the EU has previewed to finance sheltering in Turkey with Euro 1.45 billion for 2019.33 Because of this deal, Turkey has taken the role of a “gatekeeper” for immigration into the EU,34 illustrating the extension of the European external border beyond the actual borderline. Apart from this bilateral treaty with Turkey, the EU concluded several agreements with countries in its neighborhood as part of the ENP. These neighborhood policies include 16 non-EU countries but are not limited to border and migration issues strictly speaking. Instead, the ENP covers a range of policy fields, regrouped in four pillars focusing on democracy, economic development, security, and migration and mobility. 35 Regarding security, cooperation agreements with countries in North Africa and the Middle East essentially aimed at strengthening stability in the countries,36 contribute to capacity-building37 and promote security cooperation,38 for example through agreements with the European agency Europol.39 The fourth pillar aims

30 “‘Good Neighbours Make Good Fences,’” 231–32.

31 Frontex, “Annual Activity Report,” 18, 33, 38.

32 European Council, “EU-Turkey Statement”; Weber, “The EU-Turkey Refugee Deal and the Not Quite Closed Balkan Route.”

33 European Council, “Le Conseil Approuve l’accord Sur Le Budget de l’UE Pour 2019 - Consilium.”

34 Zoeteweij and Turhan, “Above the Law - Beneath Contempt: The End of the EU-Turkey Deal,” 155.

35 EEAS, “EEAS.”

36 E.g. Johansson-Nogués, “The EU’s Ontological (in)Security.”

37 E.g. Ioannides, “Inside-out and Outside-In.”

38 E.g. Zardo and Cavatorta, “Friends Will Be Friends?”

39 Kaunert, “Europol and EU Counterterrorism”; Kaunert, Léonard, and

Frontex, 29, 36.

25 Bellanova and Duez, “The Making (Sense) of EUROSUR,” 31; Frontex, “Annual Activity Report,” 19, 37.

Bellanova and Duez, “The Making (Sense) of EUROSUR,” 28. 27 Frontex, “Annual Activity Report,” 15. 28 Crosby and Rea, “La fabrique des indésirables.” 29 Amilhat Szary, “Introduction.”

at the same time at supporting legal movements and “discouraging” irregular migration.40 Thus, in addition to the deal with Turkey and technical cooperation, the ENP constitutes an example of the existing support provided by the EU to third countries in its geographic neighborhood.41

To sum up, there has not only been an increase of EU-wide cooperation on the external border with a considerable employment of technology, but the border can no longer be described as a simple line, currently affecting a much broader geographical space. The extension into the EU-territory will be neglected since globalization is not a phenomenon unique to the EU. By instead focusing on the extension of the border beyond EU-territory through the measures described, one can go as far as interpreting an “extra-territoriality” for the EU.42

III. Biopolitics at the limit

a) The concept of biopolitics for Foucault

First of all, it should be noted that Foucault’s concept of biopolitics is strongly related to the rest of Foucault’s works: It is particularly connected to biopower certainly, but also to discipline, sovereignty, statistics, population, and governmentality. In addition to that, it is at least difficult, if not impossible, to present the concept of biopolitics in a single definition because Foucault had not the time to elaborate on it in detail. This is why the existing ones are judged as “obliquely” and “allusive.”43 He even wished that the lectures he held about biopolitics would not be published. 44 Since it is nevertheless very popular in the secondary literature on Foucault and not less promising for contemporary analysis, an attempt to grasp this concept before proceeding is a precondition.

Wertman, “EU Counter-Terrorism Cooperation.”

40 Kaunert, “Europol and EU Counterterrorism.”

41 For an overview of existing literature about the ENP and its consequences for the extension of the border, see Casas-Cortes et al. “‘Good Neighbours Make Good Fences,’” 232.

42 Casas-Cortes, Cobarrubias, and Pickles, 246.

43 Senellart, “Course Context.”

44 Terrel, Foucault au Collège de France, 7.

To some extent, there is a historical development sketched out by Foucault ultimately leading to the development of biopolitics. Foucault saw a pivot point during the 18th century. While the power of the state has previously been exercised essentially through discipline on individuals as “surveillance and training,”45 beginning with the 18th century, a new form of power was introduced: biopolitics. Biopolitics did not completely replace disciplinary power but extended it; contrary to discipline, which is exercised on individuals, biopolitics affects the masses or — to use a similar but a term with different implications — the population.46 Tentatively, biopolitics could be summed up as the influence of the state on the body to control specific elements:

“(…) propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a biopolitics of the population.”47

If one wants to stick to this chronological comparison, one can note that the threat of death because of disciplinary measures is no longer predominant, but that influencing life through biopolitics becomes the biggest concern.48 The application of biopolitics includes an implicit image of human beings which are increasingly understood as a “set of coexisting living beings,”49 forming a population on which modifications can be made by the state. A bit further Foucault states that biopolitics integrates in the larger development of organizing resources; the “management

45 Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 13.

46 Foucault, 13; Genel, “Le biopouvoir chez Foucault et Agamben,” para.

5.

47 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 139. French original: “(…) la prolifération, les naissances et la mortalité, le niveau de santé, la durée de vie, la longévité avec toutes les conditions qui peuvent les faire varier leur prise en charge s’opère par toute une série d’interventions et de contrôles régulateurs : une bio-politique de la population.” Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1:139.

48 Blanchette, “Michel Foucault: Genèse Du Biopouvoir et Dispositifs de Sécurité,” 2; Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1:183–84. However, it shall only be noted that Foucault was himself opposed to this linear comparison Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 10. For a discussion of possible interpretations of the relationship between biopower and discipline see Macmillan, “La biopolitique et le dressage des populations.”

49 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 367. French original: “ensemble

of state forces.”50

The term biopolitics goes along with the term biopower. Even though this citation appears somewhat neglected by the accessed secondary literature, Foucault defines biopower as: “the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.”51 In analogy to the concept of biopolitics, biopower comes with another implicit understanding: Foucault assigns indirectly in a question to the power-holding side the following task which could only be completed by biopower whose “(…) main role is to ensure, sustain and multiply life, to put this life in order[.]”52 Starting from those two definitions cited above, two seemingly contradictory conclusions can be drawn: The first one is that the population now figures as a target of power.53 The second one is that power is no longer exercised in the name of the sovereign but in the name of the population. 54 Both indicate the double role Foucault assigns to the population: He sees population at the same time as an object and subject of biopower.55

Apart from that, biopolitics and biopower have effects on the geographical conception of space which will be of special interest to the following section. Since both biopower and biopolitics are exercised on the individual body and control the population, they bypass the dimension of territory:

“[O]ne never governs a state, a territory, or a political structure. Those whom one governs are people, individuals, or groups.”56

Biopower is sometimes interpreted as extending beyond the limits of disciplinary power. While

50 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 367. French original: “la gestion des forces étatiques” Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 377.

51 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 140. French original: “l’assujettissement des corps et le contrôle des populations” Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1:184.

52 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 138. French original: “rôle majeur est d’assurer, de soutenir, de renforcer, de multiplier la vie et de la mettre en ordre[.]” Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1:181.

53 E.g. Macmillan, “La biopolitique et le dressage des populations,” 49.

54 E.g. Rabinow and Rose, “Thoughts on the Concept of Biopower Today,” 1–2.

55 Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 107–8.

56 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 122. French original: “[O]n n’y gouverne jamais un État, on n’y gouverne jamais un territoire, on n’y gouverne jamais une structure politique. Ceux qu’on gouverne, c’est de toute façon des gens, ce sont des hommes, ce sont des individus ou des collectivités.” Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 126.

biopower is directed on the whole population, discipline is only limited to persons having misbehaved and are therefore for instance detained in prison: While biopower is “deterritorialized,”57 discipline is limited to enclosed localities.

This deterritorialization implicates at least to some extent freedom of movement. Indeed, for Foucault, the introduction of biopower and biopolitics goes hand in hand with the passage from a disciplinary government to a government promoting liberalism. Since liberalism is a vast term, it is crucial to give the entire passage where Foucault gives his understanding of the term in the context:

“The new art of government therefore appears as the management of freedom, not in the sense of the imperative: “be free,” with the immediate con tradiction that this imperative may contain. (…) Liberalism formulates simply the following: I am going to produce what you need to be free. I am going to see to it that you are free to be free.”58

The governmental form described by Foucault is no longer centered around correcting misbehavior but focuses on the promotion of life and especially on producing a context where the individuals can benefit from a maximum number of choices. Yet, Foucault proceeds that giving choices makes it necessary to introduce controls.59 This leads to the conclusion that freedom and security contradict one another so that it becomes necessary to increase the surveillance of the population.60

b) The biopolitical dimension of the external border

For Foucault, biopower essentially describes a form of power that is exercised on a population rather than on a territory combined with the ambivalent Foucauldian conception of liberalism which guarantees freedom of choice alongside an increase of controls. Are these modern forms of power described by Fou-

57 Topak, “The Biopolitical Border in Practice,” 819. 58 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 63. French original: “Le nouvel art gouvernemental va donc se présenter comme gestionnaire de la liberté, non pas au sens de l’impératif : « sois libre », avec la contradiction immédiate que cet impératif peut porter. (…) Le libéralisme formule ceci, simplement : je vais te produire de quoi être libre. Je vais faire en sorte que tu sois libre d’être libre.” Foucault, Naissance de La Biopolitique, 65. 59 Foucault, Naissance de La Biopolitique, 65. 60 Flew, “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics,” 52.

d’êtres vivants et coexistants” Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population, 377.

cault also at work at the European external border? Is the European external border biopolitical? The following section constitutes an attempt to answer those questions.

Before examining the biopolitical dimension of the European external border, two closely related assumptions will be made. First, it will be assumed that biopolitics is still the predominant form of power in the EU, as Foucault’s theory suggests.61 Second, it will be assumed that liberalism, as described by Foucault, is the leading paradigm within the EU. Albeit liberalism might come in different forms depending on the member states, the introduction of the European area of freedom, security, and justice is a common denominator shared by all member states. Citizens, goods, capital, and services have the right to circulate freely within the EU, pointing towards the paradigm of liberalism. Tellingly, already the designation as the “European area of freedom, security, and justice” combines security and freedom (cf. a)). The introduction of the area of free circulation practically abolished the borders between the member states. While this has a sheer multitude of other impacts, it also leads to a different way of providing security. If this has been an issue for each member state on its own before, it now becomes a European issue. For example, new institutions such as Europol were introduced and are operating at the European level.62 Perhaps without being a prominent shift in the beginning, the abolition of the internal borders resulted necessarily in the creation of the common European external border. Following this point of view, the European external border thereby becomes the instance that ensures the existence of the freedom of circulation within the EU, as it is also explicitly stressed by Frontex (cf. b)).

At this point, one might raise the objection that even though the connection is drawn between border and liberalism, it is not equivalent to a connection between border and biopolitics. But before going

61 This is neglecting that Foucault spoke about Europe and not about the political union named EU. Even though this represents a methodological fault, it is necessary to elaborate through Foucault on the European external border.

62 Kaunert, “Europol and EU Counterterrorism.”

back to biopolitics, it appears necessary to confront the effects of the external border with the theoretical background laid out previously.

Most obviously, the European external border is affecting people who are about to cross the borderline. When those effects on the population are considered, two perspectives need to be taken into consideration. The first perspective, which will be called the European perspective, is practically already described: The border limits the space of free circulation for European citizens. It will affect the citizens via diverse screening technologies, such as passport controls on airports.63 Interestingly, Frontex aims to reduce these effects for EU citizens in an effort to make traveling abroad easier and quicker.64 Consequently, the second perspective is the perspective from outside the border which will be called the third country perspective. It comes as no surprise that the European border appears to be a restricted area in the third country perspective. Of course, there are people, including migrants, who can cross the border without encountering problems. Yet, some travelers are affected by the border. Writing specifically about the Greek-Turkish border, Ozgun Topak points out that the border is an area of state power and, in addition, undergoes increased technization increasing the “effects,”65 while some are even of the opinion that the European external border has been closed for immigrants.66 The fact that the mobility of specific categories of people by the border controls points to the fact that the border is exercising sanctions against those persons, or in Foucauldian terms, disciplinary measures. Albeit applying to concrete individuals, the sanctions visible out of the third country perspective originate from the identification of “an undetermined biological threat”67 legitimizing a-political mechanisms to keep this threat, referring to human beings, outside of the EU. Finally, this allows drawing the conclusion that while EU citizens are only marginally affected by the European external border, the same

63 Crosby and Rea, “La fabrique des indésirables.”

64 Schindel, “Bare Life at the European Borders,” 8.

65 Topak, “The Biopolitical Border in Practice,” 816.

66 Balibar, “L’Europe-frontière et le ‹ défi migratoire ›,” 138.

67 Schindel, “Bare Life at the European Borders,” 12.

border becomes an important obstacle for some out of the third-country perspective, since power through discipline is used on third country nationals fitting into certain categories.

In addition to influencing individuals by using hard command and control approaches, the European external border also influences whole populations. Thus, biopower manifests in three aspects at the European external border. First, nor can the border be described as a simple geographical delimiter on a map, nor are its effects limited to its immediate surroundings. What was termed “border-externalization” (cf. c)) stands for a series of policies, such as some aspects of the ENP, which complement the external border. Those policies come into effect well beyond the border. Even though they do not target potential migrants exclusively, several measures influence immigration flows before immigrants even arrive at the border. From the third country perspective, the external border is neither a line nor a wall, it appears as a broader space with different levels of control. It is thus a manifestation of Foucault’s observation that power is no longer executed over a territory, but on a population (cf. a)). Second, the EU increases its support in third countries to root causes of flight or immigration. This aims at minimizing future border-crossings and is therefore closely related to immigration policy. Even if this differs from “border-externalization,” the support provided in this manner directly affects living conditions and therefore represents a biopolitical measure. Third, surveillance is done with increasing use of technology, aiming at a centralization of available information, but also at delivering information on events at the border nearly in real-time (cf. b)). From a theoretical point of view, this contributes to increasing use of statistics monitoring the behavior of the population. On the one hand, this is aimed at supporting measures against immigration and therefore consists of disciplinary measures (cf. b)). On the other hand, this information is also used to establish better predictions, or as a Frontex report terms it: “risk analysis and vulnerability

assessment.”68 In general, all three aspects demonstrate that the border has a large biopolitical impact on third country nationals. Therefore, the European external border appears as a biopolitical border. To recapitulate, the consequences of the border as it is presently conceptualized are both directly linked to the border itself and affect a larger territory beyond the border. Directly linked consequences tend to have more similarities with the disciplinary form of power described by Foucault since this type of consequences affect individuals rather than a population. In contrast, more indirect consequences are similar to a control over a population and are influencing its behavior since they are considered as potential migrants. In other words, more indirect consequences are biopolitical forms of power. Thus, the border has recourse on both forms of power.

c) To which extent does the biopolitical external border contribute to biopolitics in the EU?

Finally, the question formulated initially can be addressed more adequately based on the above findings. To which extent does the biopolitical external border contribute to biopolitics in the EU? This question goes beyond the aspect that the border itself constitutes an element of biopolitics as shown above. It asks how today’s external border and biopolitics within the EU are linked and therefore sheds light on a topic Foucault did not develop but which is highly relevant in the secondary literature. Before two points will be made to show how the European external border and biopolitics are connected, a very brief remark on the temporal frame is necessary.

Beforehand, the word “today” in the question indicates a certain temporal development of the relation between border and biopolitics. In several works which apply the concept of biopolitics to contemporary borders, it is noted that Foucault himself rarely spoke about borders or territory. 69

68 “Annual Activity Report,” 29.

69 Elden, “Governmentality, Calculation, Territory”; Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers. Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border,” 140,158; Walters, “Reflections on Migration and Governmentality.”

Almost as an explication, it is added that borders were not a political issue at the time Foucault was writing and that migration became a political topic only after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.70 The latter assumption may be questioned since the so-called “iron curtain” would be perhaps the most prominent example to underline that borders were already a political issue at the time of Foucault. Since his thoughts on biopolitics were not finished at the time he held his lectures,71 borders might as well be an aspect he did not yet consider. Because of these unclear circumstances, past events will be left aside and the following considerations will be limited to the situation “today.”

First, the border controls the composition of the population which represents the subject and object for biopolitics. In times of disciplinary power, the object and subject of the measures in question are relatively clear: In a prison, for example, there are guards and inmates. But when it comes to biopolitics, the power is exercised over the whole population. But what is part of this population and what is not? When does the population act as the subject of biopolitics, who is included in statistical calculations? Who is targeted by interventions? Likewise, when the population acts as the power-holding institution, who can make decisions? Regarding democracies this would lead to the practical question: Who can vote? The current border, since it constitutes a restriction in the third country perspective, represents one of the elements restricting the access to the population it encompasses. In this way, immigrants who wish to apply for citizenship are monitored before becoming part of the population.

This has important consequences for the objective of the border. It is sometimes presumed that the European external border fails since there are still migrants crossing the border.72 Strictly limited to the biopolitical point of view, the objective does not lay in the erection of an insurmountable barrier

70 Walters, “Foucault and Frontiers. Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border,” 141.

for migration, but in the regulation and monitoring of potential changes in the population.73 This becomes increasingly important in times of more significant global migration (cf. a)). The European external border can therefore be described as a biopolitical instrument controlling changes in the population.

Second, one point can be made about the relationship between the border, biopolitics, and security. As mentioned in the beginning, the border is often presented as an essential instrument providing security for the area of free circulation (cf. b)). This discourse suggests that third countries represent a threat to the security within the EU. Notwithstanding the publicly proclaimed images of terrorists or others, one connection appears between border and security when analyzed through a biopolitical lens. For Foucault, security is necessary to provide freedom of choice to individuals which in its turn is a fundamental characteristic of biopolitics (cf. a)). As exhaustively elaborated by Foucault, security is provided by the control of the population. But this control is mostly limited to European citizens and does not extend to third country nationals. While there are attempts to introduce this control partially in neighboring countries, for example through cooperation in terms of counterterrorism (cf. c)), it can be assumed that the level of control on European citizens is much higher than it is on third country nationals. In this context, the border becomes a potential instrument to control third country nationals attempting to cross the border.

Until here, this second point does not differ greatly from publicly proclaimed objectives of the external border as they are stated for example by Frontex (cf. b)). But it differs greatly in terms of the implicit assumptions made about the population. This will be briefly laid out on the example of terrorism: Starting with the terror attacks in 2001, “Islamic terrorism” became a popular notion in public discourse pointing to the construction of an ever more urgent threat.74 Some discourse refers for example to a lack

of integration of Muslims75 or dichotomous discourse confronts “the Western and Muslim worlds.”76 Clearly, this does not represent a holistic overview, but the brief example of Islamic terrorism shows that a threat is at least sometimes seen in other countries or within other populations than this of the authors of the discourse. In contrast to this discourse, the above point made through the lens of biopolitics does not presume different levels of threat for different populations. It focuses on the level of control exercised on the population: Since this level is different, using the border as a control mechanism appears necessary to maintain biopolitics within the EU. In collecting and screening the identities of third country nationals before possibly granting access to the biopolitical space, the border adjusts the level of control over this third country population. Even if this external population would constitute exactly the same level of threat to the freedom granted by biopolitics, a border regulation thus appears necessary just because the threats are unknown. Further research could build on this finding to deconstruct public discourse of threat emanating from foreign populations.

IV. Conclusion

After the empirical and theoretical foundations, it has been shown that the European external border does not only manifest elements of a disciplinary form of power but that it has also a biopolitical influence on third-country nationals. The biopolitical dimension is reinforced by the tendency to externalize the border beyond the mere borderline. At the same time, the Foucauldian grid of power analysis allows a better grasp of the extent of the ongoing “border-externalization.” Following the considerations on the border itself, it has been attempted to establish a connection between migration and biopolitics in the EU. As a result, it has been pointed out that the border fulfills a double function to maintain the biopolitical space within the EU. On the one hand, it acts as a delimiter for the population. On the other

hand, the external border provides security to the space of free circulation. Finally, it appeared thanks to the Foucauldian lens, that the securitization of the border constitutes an instrument to compensate for the lack of control over foreign populations which makes border regulation necessary even if the level of threat for security would be equal.

At this point, an important contradiction appears: Third country nationals willing to enter the EU are subjected to the biopolitical border but cannot influence its biopolitics. This is insofar interesting as Foucault states that biopolitics is exercised on the population, not in the name of a sovereign, but in the name of the population itself (cf. a)). In the case of the frontier, this element appears to be missing or at least to be present in only a very limited frame. Starting from this observation, the application of Foucault’s thoughts to borders and migration is part of the broader debate on the rights of immigrants to participate in democratic processes. Mobilizing democracy theories, the right for immigrants to participate in the design of borders has already been claimed.77 On the contrary, it has been replied that borders fall within the sovereign decisions of the state so that immigrants can not claim co-determination rights.78 Notwithstanding, Étienne Balibar questioned the legitimacy of borders as a division in a world no longer simply divided in Westphalian nation-states.79 Further contributions to the debate about the rights to democratic participation of immigrants could include findings from a Foucauldian analysis of borders and their underlying mechanisms of power. This is urgently needed because the concepts of nation states, borders, and sovereignty in an ever more connected world with increasing global migration are undergoing rapid change and are threatened to become meaningless.

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The Means to

Match Their Hatred: An Examination of Islamophobic Rhetoric in State of the Union Addresses

Daisy Lupa | Northern Michigan University

do so in the following order:

Abstract : This research examines Islamophobic language in the State of the Union Addresses of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. In this research, the Addresses from 2002-2020 are discussed using a typology of Islamophobia from the 1997 Runnymede report. Quotations from each speech are examined and dissected for literal, subliteral, and implied Islamophobic remarks. This research found that all three presidents used Islamophobic, if not Orientalist and xenophobic, language in the Addresses, although the intensity and style of the Islamophobia varied from president to president. Each of the presidents created Islamophobic narratives about America’s relationship with Muslims, built off of the narratives of the preceding presidents, beginning with September 11th attacks. This research demonstrates how Islamophobic rhetoric is wielded by the American government to serve the needs of their individual administrations and the goals of the American government at large.

I. Introduction

While examining the 2002-2020 Presidential State of the Union Addresses, I intend to illustrate the implicit Islamophobic functions served by the language of State of the Union Addresses. This language supports combative narratives about Islam and America that have played a part in the rise of anti-Muslim hate crime. These narratives also support patterns of oppression against Muslim in America and abroad, and support the status quo of American domination of non-‘Western’ countries. Throughout this essay, I will establish important definitions, examine pertinent rhetoric, and critically investigate the 2002-2020 State of the Union Addresses for Islamophobic, and relatedly Orientalist and xenophobic, speech. I will

First, I will explain the purpose of the annual State of the Union Address. I discuss what is typically covered in these addresses, and how their purpose has evolved throughout American history, particularly in regards to the language used and the subjects covered. This will allow me to place potentially Islamophobic rhetoric in the context of the larger themes usually covered in these Addresses.

Second, I give a working definition of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric. This definition, while not a universal definition of Islamophobia, is multifaceted, and specifically applicable to speech and writing. It is aided by a typology that can be used to examine Islamophobic speech further.

Third, I examine the State of the Union Addresses of 2002-2020 and compare them with the foreign policy actions taken relating to the Muslim world, and domestic anti-Muslim/ Islamophobic hate speech during those years. I will pay particular attention to references of Islam, the Middle East,1 and the Muslim World as they appear in these Addresses. I will also remark on the various Islamophobic/anti-Muslim stereotypes and actions this language feeds into, and the narratives created about America’s relationship with Islam.

Last, I will provide a conclusion summarizing my findings, and exploring their broader implications.

II. Background on the State of the Union Addresses

The basis of the State of the Union Address is outlined in the United States Constitution, which states that the President “shall from time to time

1 In the speeches I am examining, the term ‘Middle East’ is often used as a blanket term for the Southwestern region of Asia. I will use this term when directly discussing presidential quotations, but otherwise will refer to the region as Southwest Asia as, according to CIA records, this term includes Afghanistan and Pakistan. These two countries are often included in the events the presidents discuss as occurring in ‘the Middle East’, yet are not officially a part of ‘the Middle East’ as a geographical designation.

give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”2 Although the audience of the State of the Union Address was originally intended simply to be Congress, modern presidents address the nation as a whole, as well as its representatives, using the address as a chance to display the entirety of their political platform.3

The themes of the State of the Union Address often concentrate on the past and future, bipartisanship, and optimism for the future of the nation.4 Rule et al. found that lexical contents of the State of the Union Addresses were “remarkably stable” through American history.5 However, there has been gradual change in the lexical discourse of the speeches. Modern speeches after World War I spend considerably more time discussing domestic and foreign policy, and less time discussing political economy and statecraft.6 While the lexical content of the speeches change gradually, and the concerns of the nation change over centuries, the individual emphases of each president’s speeches often correlate to the presidents’ progression in office.7 The first State of the Union a president gives is often optimistic and diverse in regards to policy issues.8 Mid-term speeches usually focus on highlighting presidential accomplishments, as do election-year addresses, although the election-year addresses also focus on policy proposals.9 Election year addresses have this dual focus in an attempt to demonstrate potential action if re-elected.10 Addresses after reelection tend to focus on legacy-building initiatives in defense and foreign

2 US Const. Art. II, sec 3

3 Coleen J. Shogan and Thomas H. Neale The President’s State of the Union Address: Tradition, Function, and Policy Implications (Congressional Research Service, 2009), 1.

4 Ibid, 6.

5 Rule, Alix, et al. “Lexical Shifts, Substantive Changes, and Continuity in State of the Union Discourse, 1790–2014.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 35 (2015), 10840, doi:10.1073/ pnas.1512221112.

6 Ibid. 10841

7 Shogan and Neale, The President’s State of the Union Address, 8. and Rule, et al, “Lexical Shifts”, 10841.

8 Shogan and Neale, The President’s State of the Union Address, 8.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

policy.11 This pattern serves as a useful lens through which to view Bush and Obama’s speeches. At the time of this writing, only Bush and Obama have delivered two terms worth of State of the Union Address, and so the patterns on speech content noted above can be fully applied to them.

The State of the Union Addresses are an important tool that allows the President to inform the nation of his policy directives. Although the State of the Union Addresses do not receive extremely high viewership numbers, media coverage of the speeches after the fact serves to inform citizens on the content and themes of the speech.12 Additionally, even as television and radio viewership decline, the White House has encouraged citizens to watch and engage with the Address on the Internet.13

III. Islamophobia and its definitions

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) defines Islamophobia as “a fear, hatred, or prejudice toward Islam and Muslims that results in a pattern of discrimination and oppression.”14 However, like most definitions of prejudice, this description is very broad and does little to detail the ideologies and actions that result in Islamophobic discrimination. The Islamophobia Research & Documentation project at the University of California Berkeley Center for Race and Gender has a more complex definition of Islamophobia:

“Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocen tric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve “civilizational rehab” of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise).”15

11 Shogan and Neale, The President’s State of the Union Address, 9.

12 Shogan and Neale, The President’s State of the Union Address, 11.

13 Ibid.

14 CAIR. “Islamophobia 101.” Counter Islamophobia Project, Accessed July 27 2020. http://www.islamophobia.org/research/islamophobia-101. html.

15 Bazian, Hatem. “Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project.”

This definition is better at describing how anti-Muslim actions can affect and victimize Muslims. It also better alludes to the ideologies that reinforce Islamophobic sentiments. However, for the purposes of this paper, this definition is too broad and concentrates too heavily on immediate victimization of Muslims. It cannot be easily applied to the language of the State of the Unions. The 20th-anniversary report of the 1997 Runnymede Report on Islamophobia has a similarly clunky definition:

“Islamophobia is any distinction, exclusion or restriction towards, or preference against, Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or i mpairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”16

This definition effectively highlights the way Islamophobia acts as an oppressive force on Muslims and limits the freedoms Muslims could potentially enjoy otherwise. This definition works in conjunction with the 1997 Runnymede Report’s typology of socially open and closed views of Islam. The 1997 report explains that the “phobic dread of Islam is the reoccurring characteristic of closed views.”17 These closed views of Islam serve as possible reactions that feed into Islamophobic narratives, while open views are possible reactions which accept and engage with Islam. The open and closed views of Islam are structured around eight distinctions.18 The eight distinctions are:

1. Whether Islam is seen as monolithic and static, or as diverse and dynamic

2. Whether Islam is seen as other and separate, or as similar or interdependent in relation to other cultures

3. Whether Islam is seen as inferior to other cultures, or as different but equal

5. Whether Islam is seen as manipulative or ingenuous

6. Whether Muslim criticisms of ‘the West’ are rejected outright or accepted and investigated

7. Whether discrimination against Muslims is defended or opposed

8. Whether Islamophobic discourse is expected and viewed as natural or discouraged and problematized.19

These distinctions can be applied to language and word choice more effectively than definitions concentrated on individual fear or violence. While definitions of Islamophobia based on violence or fear are useful in studying Islamophobic acts, such as hate crimes, these definitions do not effectively isolate what is harmful about Islamophobic speech. Islamophobic speech does not directly cause physical harm to anyone, yet it can propagate hateful ideologies and spread Islamophobic sentiments effectively. These sentiments can, in turn, inspire violent and hateful actions. By studying Islamophobic speech, we can ascertain a comprehensive understanding of how Islamophobia functions in a society. However, we can only do that with a definition of Islamophobia that can be usefully applied to speech, like the Runnymede report’s definition. Because the Runnymede report’s distinctions pose Islamophobic action as a choice, where one can take the open or closed view, this typology creates a better mechanism with which to critique potentially Islamophobic action. Additionally, because this typology does not limit its concentration to explicitly harmful actions, but also can be applied to Islamophobic narratives and stereotypes, it is a useful tool with which to examine inexplicit Islamophobic remarks.

IV. The State of the Union Addresses

4. Whether Islam is seen as an enemy or an ally

UCB Center for Race & Gender, 2020, www.crg.berkeley.edu/research/ islamophobia-research-documentation-project/.

16 Islamophobia: Still a Challenge to Us All. Runnymede, 2017, 1.

17 Islamophobia: A Challenge to Us All Runnymede, 1997, 4.

18 Islamophobia, 1997, 4-5.

The September 11th attacks marked George 19 Ibid,

Bush’s presidency almost from the very beginning. Bush had given a handful of addresses to the nation before the attacks, but most were routine event speeches or focused on policy concerns.20 By the end of the day on September 11th, the rhetorical tone of Bush’s presidency was forced to shift dramatically. Rather than focusing on conservative tax agendas or Christian values in a new millennium, Bush’s presidency had to shift its focus to leading a nation through a great crisis, and commanding a nation during an expansive, overseas conflict.

For this reason, I have excluded Bush’s 2001 State of the Union Address from this study. The focus of Bush’s presidency was so dramatically changed by the 9/11 attacks, that the rhetoric and narratives that the Bush administration was attempting to build in pre-9/11 speeches are obsolete. Furthermore, 9/11 drastically changed the way the nation discoursed on Islam, and Islamophobic modes of thought increased in modern political rhetoric.21 Islamophobic hate crimes also increased in frequency, from the 5th largest category of religious hate crime to the 2nd largest after 9/11.22 In the early 2000s, this Islamophobia was present everywhere, easily seen in the casting of blockbuster action movie villains, and anxieties about terrorism as a security concern. 23 I believe that the Islamophobia of post-9/11 American society will be reflected back in the speeches of American presidents.

Over the course of seven State of the Union Addresses, the Bush administration builds an intrinsically Islamophobic narrative in which to frame the actions of the American government in a post9/11 world. This narrative paints Southwest Asia as a desolate ‘uncivilized’ location, ruled by tyrannical dictators, destined to turn towards violent, ‘radical,’

20 United States, White House. Selected Speeches by President George W. Bush. Government Printing Office, 2008, 15, 51.

21 Kumar, Deepa. “Framing Islam: The Resurgence of Orientalism During the Bush II Era.” Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 34, no. 3, 2010, doi:10.1177/0196859910363174, 255

22 United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics. Government Printing Office, 2000, 7. And United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics. Government Printing Office, 2001, 9.

23 Touzani, Mourad, and Elizabeth C. Hirschman. “Islam and Ideology at the Movies: Prototypes, Stereotypes, and the Political Economy.” Recherche Et Applications En Marketing (English Edition), vol. 34, no. 2, 2018, doi:10.1177/2051570718801719, 8.

terrorism unless saved by the intervention of freedom-seeking Americans. These characterizations fit perfectly with the closed views of Islam present in the Runnymede report’s 1st and 2nd distinctions.24 Bush characterizes Muslims and leaders of Muslim nations in unique ways which are reminiscent of classic racist and Islamophobic stereotypes from media almost a century old. Bush also creates a holistic world binary, which on the surface pits America again terrorism, but by way of his characterizations of Islam and ‘the West,’ pits Islam against Christianity, and magnifies this political and ideological conflict into a religious and moral one, also with inherently Islamophobic themes. I will demonstrate these narratives by examining the text of Bush’s State of the Union Addresses in chronological order.

2) 2002

Bush begins his 2002 State of the Union Address by describing how “the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers.”25 By using the word ‘civilized,’ Bush implies that there is an ‘uncivilized world,’ which is also implied to be the ‘unprecedented danger’ facing ‘the civilized world.’ Essentially, Bush labels the threat of terrorism, specifically terrorist acts taken by Muslims, as ‘uncivilized.’ This danger is Muslim terrorists. By labeling it as such, Bush feeds into the third distinction of closed views of Islam the Runnymede report details, that Islam is inferior to the West, and inherently backward, being sexist, primitive, and barbaric, a perfect image of an ‘uncivilized’ culture.26 This is but the first occurrence of implied Islamophobia in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address.

Bush frames America’s actions in Southwest Asia post-9/11 to be actions of liberation and a return to the natural order of things. He discusses how America ‘saved’, ‘freed,’ and ‘liberated’ people from ‘brutal oppression,’ ‘terrorist leaders,’ and ‘outlaw

24 Islamophobia, 1997, 4.

25 Selected Speeches, 2008, 103

26 Islamophobia, 1997, 4.

1) Bush

regimes.’27 This narrative is present throughout the speech and creates a story of American saviors combating evil Muslim terrorists to free oppressed foreign citizens.28 Bush characterizes America as a rightful presence in the Middle East, reinstating itself after deploying American justice on the terrorists, saying “The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay.”29 He characterizes the terrorists specifically as cowardly, once again feeding into Runnymede’s third typology. By saying “terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own,” and “eliminate the terrorist parasites” 30 Bush purposefully notes the perceived cowardly nature of the terrorists, and brings it to the attention of his audience.

Bush paints a clear picture in this speech of a world inhabited by uncivilized, cowardly, oppressive Muslim terrorists occupying foreign lands America seeks to protect. He characterizes America and Americans as noble, freedom-loving, and courageous. He specifically cites actions taken after 9/11, and declares Americans to be “steadfast, and patient and persistent,” “deliberate,” and possessing “unity and resolve.”31 However, his idea of America is not simply peaceful and virtuous. He sees America as a just defender of freedom, willing to do whatever it takes to bring peace on Earth. He warns the terrorists: “Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves you will not escape the justice of this nation.” He tells Americans, “we must pursue [the terrorists] wherever they are.”32 While entertaining the fear that other countries will not heed his warning of the terrorist threat, he reassures the nation that “if they do not act, America will.”33 He views the war on terror as America’s duty, saying “History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight...because while the price of freedom and

27 Selected Speeches, 2008, 103-113.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid, 103.

30 Ibid, 103-105.

31 Ibid, 105-107

32 Ibid, 105.

33 Ibid.

security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.”34 He also warns of the outcomes if Americans shirk this duty, saying “We are protected from attack only by vigorous action abroad and increased vigilance at home.”35 Bush characterizes this conflict not as a clash of morality, but as a clash between Good and Evil on apocalyptic, divine terms. He labels America’s enemies as the “axis of evil.” He tells citizens that “we can overcome evil with greater good.”36 In the closing paragraphs of the speech, he asserts that “Evil is real and must be opposed,” and reminds the viewers that “God is near.”37 Lastly, he claims “that we [Americans] have been called to a unique role in human events.”38 All of this creates a narrative of Good and Evil, where justified, protective, noble, Christian America faces down against cowardly, barbaric, Muslim terrorists. Bush never outright labels Islam as Evil, but the subtext is present. He adopts a black and white worldview, with Good, America, and Christianity on one end of the spectrum, and their implied opposites on the other. The only opposite he explicitly labels is Evil, as the opposite of Good, but, this kind of binary implies that the opposite of America is terrorist outlaw regimes, and, the opposite of Christianity is Islam, therefore they are all linked. This binary is closely aligned with many of the typologies of the Runnymede report’s closed views of Islam. While the literal topic of this speech is America’s relationship with terrorism, Bush quickly and perhaps deliberately maps religion and morality onto this conflict, feeding into Islamophobic stereotypes, and contextualizing these stereotypes within his moral binary. Bush’s moral binary links America, Good, and Christianity together, as one concept, and opposes it with the similarly linked ideas of terrorism, Evil, and Islam.

3) 2003

Bush continued with similar rhetoric in 2003. A

large portion of the 2003 State of the Union focuses on Saddam Hussein. This State of the Union was delivered a few months before the Invasion of Iraq, and to illustrate the need for that invasion, Bush details Hussein’s failings as a leader. He characterizes Hussein as cowardly, noting that he agreed to disarm his weapons of mass destruction in order to “spare himself.”39 He also paints Hussein as an unreasonable, uncontrollable leader, saying that “nothing to date has restrained him” and that “trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy.”40 Furthermore, he believes Hussein to be deceptive, saying “he clearly has much to hide,” “he is deceiving,” and that he “has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums”41 to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

By characterizing Hussein as an unreasonable, untrustworthy, coward, willing to spend enormous sums to protect himself, Bush evokes stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs that have been present in Western culture for centuries. His illustration of Hussein includes the 3rd, 4th, and 5th typologies of closed views of Islam detailed in the Runnymede Report: Islam as an inferior culture and religion, compared to the West, Islam as the violent enemy in a ‘clash of civilizations’; and Islam as a manipulative political ideology.42 These stereotypes, specifically in the language Bush uses, are reminiscent of various Islamophobic caricatures of Arabs and Muslims present in media in the 20th century. In “Islam and Ideology at the Movies: Prototypes, Stereotypes, and the Political Economy,” Touzani and Hirschman show the resonance between American illustrations of Muslim leaders and stereotypical Muslim characters in Islamophobic media. When discussing the character of the sultan in The Thief of Baghdad (1940), Touzani and Hirschman mention

“The sultan’s narcissistic, spoiled behaviors (playing with “the greatest collection of toys in the world,” behaving “like a child”) communicate negative impressions of Arab-

Muslim leaders that have carried forward to contemporary US ideology regarding “enemy” Muslim leaders, such as Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.”43

By describing Hussein as an unreasonable coward, Bush feeds into Islamophobic stereotypes of Muslims already present in the American consciousness. Media has already exposed Americans to images of cowardly, greedy, controlling Arab and Muslim leaders. Bush, who, for political purposes, must villainize Saddam Hussein, is able to achieve this more swiftly and effectively by playing off this stereotype already present in American minds. While Saddam Hussein was a morally reprehensible leader, Bush specifically emphasizes aspects of his leadership that play into Islamophobic stereotypes, such as being cowardly, greedy, and unrestrained.

Bush’s characterization of Saddam Hussein is the most striking feature of the 2003 Address, but he continues to reinforce the narratives he introduced in 2002. He elevates America as a symbol, saying “The American flag stands for more than our power and our interests. Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life.”44 In saying this he reassures his audience that the presence of an American flag, whether in a domestic or foreign location, is not just a symbol of a government and military, but the symbol of the global protector of oppressed people. Bush is convincing his audience that America is not simply a country, but a heroic and just ideology, at war with its polar opposite. Bush sees America as the global judicial system, deciding who should be punished and how, saying “one by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.”45 He presents ‘American justice’ as a special brand of justice, its superiority justified by America’s national specialness inherent to its founding. He says, “Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind.”46 In Bush’s worldview, America, and its particular brand of justice,

43 Mourad, “Islam at the Movies”, 2018, 10.

44 Selected Speeches, 2008, 154

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid, 158.

is so exceptional, that it is responsible for the entire world’s safety. Bush carefully walks the tightrope of American exceptionalism and pan-Western superiority. He is sure to include America’s ‘friends,’ meaning other Western nations, as those standing between hope and freedom, and terror and destruction, yet he also declares America’s independence from them, saying “the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.”47 By emphasizing these dynamics, Bush reinforces the East/West, terrorist/ America, uncivilized/civilized, Muslim/Christian, Evil/ Good dichotomy he implies in his 2002 Address. In Bush’s worldview, it is America’s duty to protect the civilized world, the West, from the uncivilized world’s threats. Bush even declares America’s goals are divinely justified, saying “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity.”48 While many of these quotes do not overtly mention Islam, Bush’s black and white philosophy is implied when he discusses ‘the civilized world’ and religious conceptions of good and evil.

4) 2004

Bush’s 2004 State of the Union Address feeds into many of the same narratives as his previous speeches. He uplifts America as “a nation called to great responsibilities,” including “bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent.”49 He reassures us that “the United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins,” that “because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better” and, most importantly, “no one can now doubt the words of America.”50 Bush continues his narrative from the previous two post-9/11 speeches, in which America serves as a trustworthy and brave savior to the oppressed people of the world, working to achieve a specifically Christian ideal of justice. He says that “lead[ing] the cause of freedom” is America’s “special calling” and

that “We can trust in that greater power. Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.”51 As Bush elevates America as a land of goodness and Christian morality, he also implies that Southwest Asia and its inhabitants are the polar opposite.

Bush reminds us that “The terrorists continue to plot against America and the civilized world.”52 As always, this implies that the terrorists are not from or do not inhabit the civilized world. He fleshes out this image of the ‘uncivilized world’ more, as a geographically desolate and unwelcoming location. When describing the capture of Saddam Hussein, he says “the once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole.”53 He tells us the US military is “going after the remaining killers who hide in cities and caves.”54 The ‘uncivilized world’ Bush imagines is full of holes and caves, where terrorists plot to undermine Western democracy. His descriptions of this are evocative of stereotypes about Southwest Asian countries and the Muslim world originating from early colonial cinema.55

5) 2005

Unlike previous Addresses, Bush uses the 2005 State of the Union Address to concentrate on America’s allies in Southwest Asia. Bush congratulates America’s allies, and remarks on the strides America made in the past four year under his guidance.56 However, there is one important development in Bush’s characterization of Islam and terrorism: The 2005 State of the Union is the first time the word ‘radical’ makes it into one of his State of the Unions. He says “the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder.”57 Four years after 9/11, well into the war on terror, this marks an important development in the presidential discourse on terrorism, a

51 Ibid, 211.

52 Ibid, 198.

53 Ibid, 199.

54 Ibid.

55 Mourad, “Islam at the Movies.”, 2018, 9-10.

56 Selected Speeches, 2008, 279-293

57 Ibid, 288.

development that is continued in his 2006 Address.

6) 2006

George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address is the first time the phrase “radical Islam” is spoken in a State of the Union Address. In his 2007 article “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse,’ Richard Jackson tells us “the use of the term ‘Islamic terrorism’... discursively links the religion of Islam with terrorism, thereby forming an unconscious and seamless association between the two.”58 I would argue the same is true for a phrase like ‘radical Islam.’ ‘Radical Islam’ forms a discursive link between Islam and violent extremism contained in the word ‘radical.’ Whether in an attempt to define this phrase for his audience, or to distance himself from accusations of Islamophobia, Bush qualifies ‘radical Islam’ as “the perversion of a noble faith into an ideology of fear and death.”59 He refers to ‘radical Islam’ or ‘radicalism’ twice more in the speech. Although three words in a speech of several thousand may not seem significant, I argue that the function of ‘radical Islam’ directly feeds into the narrative Bush wishes to create around terrorism and its threat to America. Unlike ‘terrorism’, ‘terrorist’, and ‘terrorist attack,’ ‘radical’ is an adjective, which can be ascribed to a noun, like Islam. In turn, Islam can easily be turned into an adjective by changing it to the form ‘Islamic.’ Therefore, ‘radical Islam’ can easily form a compound adjective ‘radical Islamic,’ which can be tacked in front of ‘terrorism’. In this way, the subconscious, stereotypic connection between terrorism and Islam which was already present in the American consciousness, at least since 9/11, can be discursively linked through ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Bush further characterizes ‘radical Islam’ as a malicious, intelligent enemy set on world domination that is antithetical to America. He says “By allowing radical Islam to work its will--by leaving an assaulted

world to fend for itself--we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals, or even in our own courage.”60 Once again, he poses Islam against American ideals.

He also uses the 2006 State of the Union Address to paint an interesting picture of the conflict America finds itself in. He says “We’ve entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite.”61 By declaring that America ‘did nothing to invite’ this conflict, he further characterizes ‘radical Islam’ as an aggressor on innocent Christian America. It is curious that he brings this narrative up now, five years after this conflict began. Perhaps, America’s innocence felt obvious to the viewer so soon after 9/11, but, as conflicts in Southwest Asia became more and more intractable, Bush felt the need to remind Americans of their identities as victims.

7) 2007

The 2007 State of the Union Address is the last of Bush’s addresses that builds upon the narrative he created throughout his administration. He calls for aggressive action, saying “to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy,” characterizing terrorists as cowardly, and unwilling to fight out in the open, a characterization supported by their guerilla tactics.62 He uses the term ‘radical’ again in this speech, but in a more interesting way than in the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ This speech, notably, is the first time Bush touches upon sectarian violence within Islam. He describes acts of sectarian violence committed by “Sunni extremists,” “Shia extremists,” “radical Shia elements,” “violent radicals,” and “extremists on all sides.”63 After six years of characterizing Islam as a monolith, Bush suddenly seems to be concerned with violence within the religion. Of course, he is sure to qualify these threats as ‘extremists’ and ‘radicals,’ but also reminds the audience that “Sunni and Shia extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian

60 Ibid, 337.

61 Ibid, 349.

62 Ibid, 476.

63 Ibid, 472.

58 Jackson, Richard. “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse.” Government and Opposition, vol. 42, no. 3, 2007 doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x, 405. 59 Selected Speeches, 2008, 336.

threat. Whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent they have the same wicked purposes.”64 Although Bush is attempting to differentiate between Sunni and Shia terrorists, he tells us they are essentially they are the same, turning Islam monolithic once again. His attempts to avoid portraying Islam as a monolithic bloc fail, and he only succeeds in reinforcing the Islamophobic stereotypes he employed in the past. Furthermore, Bush never explicitly labels the ‘totalitarian threat’ and the ‘same wicked purposes’ as terrorism. He never explicitly states that terrorism is what Sunni and Shia extremists are the same side of. This absence allows the discourse built over decades of stereotypes about violent Muslims linking terrorism and Islam present in his audience’s mind to fill in the blank of the ‘totalitarian threat’. By never outright explaining that terrorism is the threat, Bush allows people to assume he is talking about Islam.

Bush further characterizes ‘radical Islam’ with descriptions reminiscent of offensive Islamophobic stereotypes. When possible, Bush uses religious language when describing the actions of terrorists, discussing how they are “possessed by hatred”, have “wicked purpose” and “preach with threats.”65 In doing so, he strongly links the terrorists’ religion with their destructive actions, further cementing the connection between Islam and violence in his audiences’ minds. He also backs up the stereotype that Islam is backwards, by saying “take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the opposite.”66 Although he explicitly discusses Al Qaeda here, in the previous line, he describes Al Qaeda’s followers as “Sunni extremists,” making their religion an important descriptive fact about their terrorist identities.67 Bush continues to link Islam, ‘uncivilizedness’, and backwardness, in an Islamophobic way.

8) 2008

For his last State of the Union Address, Bush holds back descriptions of terror and Islam, concentrating on his successes. He emphasizes the importance of democracy and describes “the miracle of America,” rather than focusing on ‘radical Islam’ and ‘violent extremists.’68 However, when he does mention the conflicts America has found itself in Southwest Asia, he says “we are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century.” 69Bush is reminding America of the apocalyptic terms he gave to the war on terror. The story Bush tells is that of the fate of the free world resting on the just, Christian American soldiers defending the innocent from cowardly, brutal, radical, extremist Muslims. However, Bush must now hand this conflict off to a new leader, Barack Obama.

9) Obama

Barack Obama’s successes in 2008 and 2012 over Republican candidates mark a significant decision by the American electorate to prioritize the values of the Democratic party. Although President Barack Obama continued America’s aggressive involvement in Southwest Asia, which led important developments in the war on terror, the focuses of his presidency were decidedly different than his predecessor. So too was his oratory style and the substantive contents of his State of the Union Addresses. However, throughout his presidency, Obama took advantage of the narratives surrounding Islam and terrorism that Bush’s administration put into place and manipulated them to fit the themes of his presidency.

America. In all of his State of the Union Addresses, when discussing terrorism, Obama uses ‘extremist’ or ‘extremism’ seven times, and adds the descriptor of ‘violent’ once. This is less than other important State of the Union vocabulary, like ‘economy’ and ‘healthcare,’ but its presence and specific verbiage does make it useful in this research.

10) 2009

Ibid, 468.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

Obama does not spend the same amount of time in his speeches discussing the terrorist threat to America, and when he does, he focuses more on America’s mission and its success as opposed to characterizing the terrorists themselves. When he does discuss terrorism, he uses the same language that, by 2008, has become commonplace throughout 68 Ibid, 540

Obama continues Bush’s Islamophobic narrative and puts his own more subtle and Orientalist spin on it. This first occurrence of this is in his first State of the Union Address, in 2009. He tells us that “terrorists plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away.”70 Concentrating on the physical distance between America and Southwest Asia, while factually very large, also serves to reinforce the supposed ideological distance between the two locations. Obama often uses very evocative, imagerial language like this in his speeches, which of course improve the aesthetic appeal, but also relies upon and emphasizes images already stored in the public consciousness. In later speeches, Obama will continue to emphasize the physical distance between America and the actual locations where terrorists live. While this emphasis is not Islamophobic, it is reminiscent of the orientalist language of the 1700s and 1800s, which draws particular attention to the physical distance and separation between ‘the West’ and ‘the Orient.’ As Said explains, “for there is no doubt that imaginative geography...help[s] the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away.”

71 By emphasizing the geographical distance between themselves and what they are discussing, historic orientalists intensified their own feelings of importance. Similarly, in his speeches, Obama intensifies America’s importance by

70 Obama, Barack. “Remarks of President Barack Obama -- Address to Joint Session of Congress.” National archives and records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 24 Feb. 2009, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-address-joint-session-congress.

71 Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York, Random House, 1978, 55

verbally prioritizing the physical distance between it and the supposed origin of the terrorism it opposes. As Obama continues, he echoes Bush’s narratives on America. Obama emphasizes the strength of America, saying “there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America.”72 Through his presidential speeches, Obama avoids the degradation of other countries, their leaders, or their citizens. He does, however, often laud the success of America, especially concerning things that he believes are inherent good qualities of America and Americans. Although he does not speak on this to the same length and breadth that Bush does, this is definitely a theme present in almost all of his speeches.

11) 2010

While Bush centered most of his State of the Union attention on Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2010 Obama shifted to Iran, a more pertinent subject during his presidency. Once again, he is sure to mention the physical distance between the United States and Iran. He also highlights Iran’s status as an authoritarian theocracy by referring to by its official title, when he says “the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated.”73 Obama mentions Iran’s isolation, referring to the sanctions placed on Iran. However, with the use of the word ‘isolated’ he is also referencing the idea of Iran’s culturally controlling dictatorship, which, for many years, cut the Iranian people off from the rest of the world. Many older Americans watching Obama’s Address would remember the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, and others may think of movies illustrating the Iranian regime like Not Without My Daughter (1991). Obama’s characterization of Iran as ‘isolated’ serves triple purposes, noting the result of the sanctions on Iran, reemphasizing Iran’s distance from America, and reminding Americans of the culturally isolated depictions of Iran by American new sources and media.

72 Obama, 2009.

73 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 27 Jan. 2010, obamawhitehouse.archives. gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address.

Obama also uses his 2010 State of the Union Address to continue the negative characterization of Muslim world leaders. He says “Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations” when discussing the Iranian response to American sanctions.74 It is unclear, in the context of the speech, whether he is referring to their obligation to the international community in regards to nuclear arms or obligations to their citizens’ economic welfare. Either way, Obama is characterizing the Iranian leaders as ill-fitted to their office, ignoring their responsibilities in order to achieve their own goals. This fits into the fifth Runnymede typology of closed views of Islam, where Muslims are seen as ingenious manipulators, with only their own interest at heart.

12) 2011

Unlike Bush, Obama does not pose the war on terror as an apocalyptic conflict for the morality of the world. However, he does still warn the terrorists of America’s strength. He characterizes America as a mighty, determined force, saying “we’ve sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: We will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.” 75 While this statement is not Islamophobic, it does illustrate how Obama adjusted Bush’s messaging and characterization of the American military to fit his own means and style. Furthermore, in the first part of the statement, Obama specifically mentions “the Afghan border” and “the Arabian Peninsula,” locations in the Muslim world that he discusses earlier in the speech. The alliteration of these two pertinent locations makes his sentence more aesthetically pleasing, but the inclusion of these locations also furthers his suggestions of the distance between America and the Muslim world.

13) 2012

74 Ibid.

75 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in State of Union Address.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 25 Jan. 2011, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address

President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address was the first State of the Union Address delivered after the CIA-lead operation resulting in Osama bin Laden’s death. Although Obama mentions bin Laden by name only twice in the speech, the Islamophobic rhetoric in this speech does stand out, especially in comparison to the 2011 Address, where there was no Islamophobic rhetoric.

During this Address, Obama characterizes members of Al Qaeda as cowardly and unorganized, saying “the Al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling.”76 This characterization fits in line with previous Obama and Bush characterizations of terrorists. This emphasis on the cowardly nature of the terrorists reinforces already present stereotypes about all Muslims and continues to discursively connect Islam and terror. Obama continues on in that sentence saying “they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America.” 77 Here, Obama is not characterizing the United States military, or even the United States government as powerful and unstoppable, rather, America as a whole. Elsewhere in the speech, he continues this, citing the strength of ‘America’ rather than a facet of the American government or military responsible for the actions he lauds. In previous speeches, Obama congratulates America on successes and waxes poetically on the unique attributes of America. His 2012 Address stands out from these previous addresses, in its aggressive tone. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Bush’s Addresses. In his 2012 speech, he is more confident in America’s might and importance in comparison to other countries, and less on America’s good qualities in and of themselves. Obama says “anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”78 This quote has a radically different tone than his previous speeches.

Not only is Obama confident in America’s continued excellence, but he also dismisses anyone who suggests otherwise. Although Obama is not explicitly discussing criticisms of America by Muslims, the rhetoric he holds in this statement in reminiscent of the sixth Runnymede typology of closed Islamophobic views, where Muslims criticisms of ‘the West’ are automatically rejected. While Obama’s statement is not Islamophobic, the rhetoric behind it could easily be applied in an Islamophobic manner, marking a shift in Obama’s State of the Union Addresses.

Obama also continues with his characterization of Iran and its leadership. He states: “the regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent.”

79 He continues to emphasize Iran’s isolation, and continues to paint Iran’s leaders as irresponsible. He also implies America’s might, describing the sanctions as ‘crippling,’ cause unrelenting pressure. Obama characterizes America as an unstoppable force in the face of undemocratic values. Although it contains less religious messaging, this new rhetoric from Obama is reminiscent of Bush’s speeches, with an emphasis on America’s importance and power, as a beacon of hope to the world. The fiery rhetoric in this speech reflects Obama’s success in killing Osama bin Laden, and also serves to characterize Obama himself, as a confident, successful world leader, ripe for re-election.

14) 2013

After his reelection, Obama returns to his classic themes in 2013. Without the major event of bin Laden’s death informing the message of the speech, Obama concentrates on what he plans to do with his new term in office. Although he does discuss Al Qaeda and the situation in Afghanistan, he mostly concentrates on the successes America has had in those regions.80 He also shifts his focus West, to

79 Ibid.

Syria and Egypt, but still keeps the tone of the speech relatively positive, focusing on America’s support for human rights causes in those countries. 81 He does touch briefly on some Bush-like war on terror rhetoric, saying “we must enlist our values in the fight [against terror].”82 Obama’s focus on the unique values of American life that make America a beacon for democracy, while secular, are reminiscent of Bush’s more religious theme. While Obama considers values like freedom, diversity, and justice to be key to the national morality, Bush considers faith, humility, and righteousness to be uniquely American, as well as Christian. Either way, both presidents agree that their values are important to America’s character, and can serve to combat the terrorist threat.

15) 2014

Obama continues to emphasize values in his 2014 State of the Union Address. He tells his audience that “on every issue, the world turns to [America], not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might - but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.”83 Obama carefully balances the glorification of American values and justification for American actions, while not attempting to tear down other countries and culture’s own values. Through careful speech writing and rhetoric, in many of his speeches, Obama manages to prioritize what he labels as American values while not explicitly holding them above any other values. This is very different from Bush’s speeches, which attempt to elevate American values while also exposing the dangerous sides of other ways of thinking. Obama’s speech content and delivery is also significantly different from Donald Trump’s speeches, as we will examine later in this paper. and Records Administration, 12 Feb. 2013.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

83 Obama, Barack. “President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 28 Jan. 2014, obamawhitehouse.archives. gov/the-press-office/2014/01/28/president-barack-obamas-state-unionaddress.

76 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 24 Jan. 2012, obamawhitehouse.archives. gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state-union-address.

80 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives

Unlike Bush, when Obama seeks to devalue and delegitimize terror, he does not simply label it as ‘evil.’ In his 2015 State of the Union Address, Obama describes the United States as standing up to “the bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.”84 This powerful use of language easily labels the terror acts he is describing as destructive, and ideologically invalid, without bringing in a Bush-like moral binary. The listener can infer the moral incorrectness of terrorism from Obama’s words, but he does not define their evil in implicitly religious terms. Like Bush, Obama does argue in favor of the war on terror and for United States involvement in Southwest Asia. Obama’s argument is constructed on moral, but not explicitly religious terms. Like Bush’s narrative, Obama also argues that the war on terror is a conflict of good and evil, but he does not require the good and evil to be divinely ordained, and rather, defines them in more humanistic terms. Through this narrative construction, Obama avoids the ‘clash of civilizations’ type of Islamophobia. Obama is still able to declare that terrorism is bad, and American acts to prevent it are good, but does not feed into crusade-like rhetoric, as Bush did. Bush relies on an age-old Christian narrative to justify his actions, while Obama relies on humanistic moral values to continue what Bush began.

17) 2016

In his final State of the Union Address, Obama doubles down on the narratives he has created through his presidency and the Bush-era narratives he continued. He demonizes the terrorists, characterizes our conflict with them as inherent and unavoidable, and glorifies American strength. First, he dismisses fears about the decline of American might, saying “all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger

84 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address January 20, 2015.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 20 Jan. 2015, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-state-union-address-January-20-2015

and America getting weaker” is “political hot air.”85 He continues, “Let me tell you something. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth, period. Period.”86 Similarly to when he expresses this sentiment in previous speeches, Obama slips into more casual and confident language to glorify American success. He also is uncharacteristically dismissive of the criticisms of America he mentions, as he was in 2012. These moments are surprising breaks from the peaceful, well-crafted language of the average Obama speech, but also display an interesting difference between the rhetoric of Obama and Bush.

Obama does not shy away from continuing stereotypes about Muslims and terrorists that have been present in the American consciousness for decades. As he discusses world events, he describes discord in Southwest Asia as “rooted in conflict that date back millennia.” 87 This is an interesting characterization of modern Southwest Asian conflicts and is reminiscent of the first Runnymede typology, of Islam as a monolithic, unchanging entity. Obama applied the same types of stereotypes present against Muslims to Southwest Asian countries, the two of which are closely linked in the American consciousness.

Obama also characterizes terrorist individuals and critiques responses to their ideology. Although, in other speeches, like Bush, Obama remarks on the world entering a new era, he always tries to keep the rhetoric positive and progress focused. He reminds us “as we focus on destroying ISIL, overthe-top claims this is World War III just play into their hands.”88 Although Bush never claimed the war on terror was World War III, the rhetoric Obama criticizes here is reminiscent of the apocalyptic narrative Bush painted. Of course, Obama also fed off that

85 Obama, Barack. “Remarks of President Barack Obama – State of the Union Address As Delivered.” National Archives and Records Administration National Archives and Records Administration, 13 Jan. 2016, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/12/remarkspresident-barack-obama-%E2%80%93-prepared-delivery-state-unionaddress.

86

narrative in his own presidency, simply shifting it in a more secular and optimistic direction. This quote provides an interesting peek into the clash of rhetoric between presidents. However, he does not focus on the domestic creation and propagation of this narrative and concentrates on how it is used overseas, saying “that is the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit.”89 This is almost reminiscent of the post-9/11 rhetoric calling for Americans to get back to business as usual as fear would ‘let the terrorists win.’ Obama is telling the American people that they should stick to the secular, optimistic rhetoric he relies on, rather than fall back to fiery rhetoric of the past administration. This divide was directly reflected in the 2016 election, where, of course, much more aggressive rhetoric won. It is ironic that Obama calls for this now, several months after the decision was made.

In the next sentence, Obama moves on to characterize the terrorists, creating vivid scenes in his audience’s minds. This is a classic Obama speech writing tactic. In the opening to his 2014 State of the Union address, he expertly deploys it to conjure inspiring images of the American working class. Here, in 2016 however, he paints a much different picture. He describes “masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages.”90 The language he uses here is reminiscent of many Islamophobic tropes. In media, particularly mid-century film, Muslims are often present in hordes and masses, better conjuring the Islamophobic typology of Muslims as monolithic.91 When Obama describes ‘masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks’ it immediately conjures images of this scene found in fiction media and news reports. Obama here deploys an imagerial trope we are already familiar with to solidify our image of the enemy. Furthermore, it is of great significance that he describes the terrorists as ‘plotting’. Both Bush and Obama use the term ‘plot’ or ‘plotting’ to describe terrorist actions. By describing the terrorists as ‘plotting’ Obama feeds

into the fifth typology of Islamophobia, where Islam is seen as scheming and manipulative.

In the next half of this sentence, Obama calls back to the Bush-like rhetoric he dismissed in the previous sentence. He tells us that the terrorists “pose an enormous danger to civilians, they have to be stopped, but they do not threaten our national existence.”92 This is a direct criticism of Bush’s anti-terror rhetoric. In his speeches, Bush constantly pitted Americans against terrorists, declaring that their ideologies posed existential threats to each other. This is exactly what Obama is criticizing. Obama, although he did build upon Bush’s foundation of anti-terror rhetoric, is attempting to shift it to a much more progressive direction in the last hours of his presidency. He then, in an explicitly anti-Islamophobic remark, declares that “we sure don’t need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative of one of the world’s largest religions.”93 Obama is rebelling against Bush’s rhetoric, and directly noting the Islamophobia present in it and much of the rhetoric it inspires. However, in the next sentence Obama turns back to his usual progressive, yet also aggressive rhetoric, saying “we just need to call them what they are: killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.”94 While Obama tries to shift the rhetoric surrounding American involvement in the war on terror, he still calls his people to action. However, the action they have already taken, electing Donald Trump as the next president of the United States, will greatly impact both rhetoric and policy.

18) Trump

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Addresses are an aesthetic shift from the speeches of Barack Obama. They also have an interesting shift in contents. Both Obama and Trump spoke much less on terrorism than Bush, Obama concentrating on the economy and healthcare, and Trump concen-

92 Obama, “Remarks of President Barack Obama”, 2016.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

trating on immigration. Although Trump’s immigration rhetoric is not the subject of this research, it is important to note that much of the stereotyping and xenophobia he relies on in his discourse on Islam and Islamic terrorism is strikingly familiar to his discourse on immigration from Central and South American countries.

Trump’s State of the Union Addresses pose different challenges than those of Obama and Bush. Unlike his predecessors, Trump concentrates on the superiority of his presidency and his policies rather than the success of America as a whole. He also takes unique advantage of fear-based rhetoric surrounding immigration and terrorism. Even Bush, speaking after the 9/11 attacks, did not focus as much on fear, and rather attempted to inspire Americans to be courageous. Trump’s self-involvement and fear-mongering make his speeches stand out, and will prove to be key in later arguments.

19) 2017

Donald Trump’s first State of the Union Address marks a return to the good/evil rhetoric of the Bush administration. Obama only mentions the word ‘evil’ once, in a direct reference to Ronald Reagan’s ‘evil empires.’95 Bush says the word ‘evil’ fifteen times, as he sets up his good/evil dichotomy.96 Trump begins discussing evil at the end of his speech’s first paragraph, ironically, pertaining to hate crimes. 97 Trump says that hate crimes “remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.”98 This quote is not Islamophobic, but it provides a useful example of when Trump is willing to denounce things as ‘evil,’ which we will return to later on.

In this speech, Trump’s greatest concern seems to be the prioritization of the safety of the Ame-

95 Obama, “Remarks of President Barack Obama,” 2016.

96 Selected Speeches, 2008, 23-525.

97 Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump in Joint Address to Congress.” The White House, The United States Government, 28 Feb. 2017, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-joint-address-congress/.

98 Ibid.

rican people. Trump is sure of the importance of the American people and their legacy, saying “each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty, and justice in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present. That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world.”99 He also continues the now 16-year old rhetoric that Bush and Obama pushed, explaining that we are entering a new era. Trump says “a new chapter -- of American Greatness is now beginning.”100 Unlike the new eras Bush and Obama entered into, this is not a ‘clash of civilizations’ or new era of conflict between worldwide forces, this is a new era of ‘American Greatness.’ Trump explains that this new era ushers in “a new national pride sweeping across our nation” and “a new surge of optimism.”101 Trump also declares that in this new age “America must put its own citizens first. Because only then can we truly make America great again.”102 Unlike Bush and Obama’s new ages, concerning American involvement in international situations, Trump emphasizes the need to prioritize Americans. This is a key point in many of his xenophobic and Islamophobic arguments which occur later in the speech. Although Trump spends less of his speech on terrorism as he does on immigration, the time he does spend has a significant amount of speech pertinent to this paper. He continues the Bush-era phraseology of “radical Islamic terrorism.”103 He also continues the Obama-style emphasis on geographic distance, and adds his own xenophobic twist, emphasizing that “the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.”104 Trump expresses many of his immigration-related anxieties in concert with concerns about terrorism. Through his campaign and presidency, Trump has created a narrative that describes an America if his policies are not put into place, in which foreigners take control of the nation and use it for immoral purposes. In this speech, he

promotes this rhetoric, saying “we cannot allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.”105 Interestingly, in this paragraph, he does not specify what kind of extremists his audience should be fearful of. However, it is implied that he is discussing Islamic terrorism. This sentence is used to justify the policies he discusses earlier in that paragraph, those of more restrictive entry vetting policies. Here, Trump uses the Islamophobic assumption that terrorism and Islam are inherently linked to promote a policy that is deeply xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic.

Trump continues in the speech to characterize Muslim terrorists in the same way that previous presidents have. He describes ISIS as “a network of lawless savages.”106 Here he plays into Bush-like themes of ‘civilized versus uncivilized’ people, characterizing ISIS terrorists as ‘lawless savages.’ Although ISIS has committed many reprehensible acts, they do operate under strict adherence to an interpretation of Sharia law, making the descriptor of ‘lawless’ inaccurate.107 Furthermore, the word ‘savages’ has a deep and complex history of racist and orientalist use in America going back to the Declaration of Independence.108 Trump uses inaccurate racist and orientalist language to characterize terrorists through Islamophobic tropes which debuted on the presidential stage in the Bush era.

Trump discusses American actions against terrorism in a particularly aggressive manner. He calls for America and its allies to work to “extinguish this vile enemy from our planet.” Unlike Obama, Trump does not call America to the humanitarian cause of stopping terrorism. Unlike Bush, Trump does not call America to a holy crusade against terrorism. Trump simply wants to use the American military to utterly destroy terrorist forces on a global scale.

20) 2018

Like the presidents preceding him, Trump

illustrates a world where the United States military is all that stands between freedom and terrorist domination. Trump supports this narrative when he asks Congress “to end the dangerous defense sequester and fully fund our great military.”109 By labeling the defense sequester as ‘dangerous,’ Trump is emphasizing the importance of the American military to the country’s safety. Furthermore, he is implying that anyone who does not support the end to the sequester is unconcerned with America’s safety.

In his 2018 State of the Union Address, Trump describes what America must do to terrorists. He tells Americans “to extinguish ISIS from the face of the Earth” and “when possible, annihilate them.” 110 This is a very aggressive, militaristic language. As he describes how terrorists should be treated, he further condemns them, saying “terrorists are merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas they should be treated like the terrorists they are.”111 This statement is shockingly reminiscent of the statement Vice President Dick Cheney made to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on November 14, 2001: “Somebody who comes into the United States of America illegally, who conducts a terrorist operation killing thousands of innocent Americans, men, women, and children, is not a lawful combatant. They don’t deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war.”112 Trump echoes the rhetoric of the Bush administration, labeling terrorists as enemy, or unlawful combatants, a label used to prevent the application of Geneva Convention prisoner of war rights to Guantanamo detainees.113 In doing this he references the dehumanization of Muslim people already committed by the American government, while also promoting it as a goal of his administration.

109 Trump,

www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumpsstate-union-address/.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid.

112 Cheney, Dick. “Remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 14 Nov. 2001, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/ vp20011114-1.html.

113 Hardy,

Donald. “President Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address.” The White House, The United States Government, 30 Jan. 2018,

Colleen E. The Detention of Unlawful Enemy Combatants during the War on Terror. LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2009.

Elsewhere in this speech, Trump also outlines what values he will champion as ‘American’ during his presidency, saying “[American] heroes live not only in the past, but all around us -- defending hope, pride, and the American way.”114 While these values are not necessarily partisan, Trump’s implementation of these values deeply reflects a conservative attitude. In a Bush-like sentence, Trump says “as long as we have confidence in our values, faith in our citizens, and trust in God, we will not fail.”115 This reminder of religion, and confidence that it will bring America victory is very similar to Bush’s speeches. Throughout his presidency, Trump uses interesting rhetoric pertaining to values and faith to justify his actions. He emphasizes faith and religion, like Bush, but also highlights America’s unique perspective on freedom and democracy, the same secular values Obama touted. However, like all presidents, Trump’s actions do not always reflect the values he claims to represent.

Although it is unrelated to specific Islamophobic language in Trump’s 2018 State of the Union Address, I think it is important to point out the Islamophobic hypocrisy of one of the statements made in this speech. In the beginning of this speech, as Trump lauds American accomplishments during his first year in office, he says that he has “taken historic actions to protect religious liberty.”116 While there is no doubt he is referring to actions taken by his administration to protect conservative Christian liberty, in issues like abortion and school prayer, there is a level of deep irony in this statement. This speech was delivered a year after Trump signed his ‘Muslim ban’ order, and only six months before this order is upheld by the Supreme Court.117 As Trump holds religious freedom close as a value of his presidency, he openly supports policies attacking the religious freedom of Muslims. This represents something more important than his Islamophobic language: his Islamophobic actions.

114 Trump, “President Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address,” 2018.

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid.

117 “Timeline of the Muslim Ban.” ACLU of Washington, 10 Feb. 2020, www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban.

21) 2019

In his 2019 State of the Union Address, Trump focuses on freedom. He lauds the United States for victories of its past, including that “In the 20th century, America saved freedom.”118 By bringing up these successes of freedom and democracy, Trump tries to relate the romanticized conflicts of the past to present-day issues. Trump is attempting to draw parallels between the conflicts we face today, and conflicts of the 20th century, like the Second World War and the Cold War.

Trump then describes the United States military’s successes in Syria and Iraq, saying “we have liberated virtually all of that territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty killers.”119 Similarly to Bush, Trump uses language like ‘liberated’ and ‘grip’ to characterize the oppressive nature of ISIS and the heroic actions of the United States military. Again, he focuses on freedom, of the liberation of victims of oppression from their tyrannical leaders. Here, Trump is taking a page out of Bush’s book, in setting up a binary between ISIS-- bloodthirsty killers ruling with a tight grip on their people--and Americans--heroic saviors fighting for freedom across the centuries. Although this is not Islamophobic, it is an important narrative going forward, influenced by Bush’s dichotomy, which was a key function in his Islamophobic speech.

22) 2020

Trump’s self-praise of America’s religious freedom continues in his 2020 State of the Union address. He claims “In America, we do not punish prayer...In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion.”120

118 Trump, Donald. “President Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address.” The White House, The United States Government, 5 Feb. 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumpsstate-union-address-2/.

119 Ibid.

120 Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump in

One of Trump’s major talking points in his speeches is how much he values religion and faith. It is interesting that he emphasizes this point so much in the same speech where he uses Islamophobic language and stereotypes to promote policies harmful against Muslims, a religious minority in America. The Trump administration supports the form of freedom allowing him and his supporters to be free in their hateful and offensive rhetoric and action, rather than allowing all Americans to be free in the practice of their religion and culture.

He begins this messaging, by, once again, using the label “radical Islamic terrorism.” 121 He succinctly links Islam with terrorism, and heightens the anxiety around it by labeling it ‘radical’. He then begins discussing “the barbarians of ISIS.”122 A few months before this speech was delivered, ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid carried out by a multi-national coalition.123 In this speech, Trump labels him a “bloodthirsty killer.”124 Trump then takes every possible opportunity to emphasize how ‘barbarous’ and ‘bloodthirsty’ ISIS members are. Trump focuses on the inhumane actions taken by ISIS rallying his base in favor of American intervention. It is important to Trump’s platform that he characterizes Muslim foreigners as inhumane and violent, as this could be used to direct attention away from the inhuman practices evident in his own domestic policies.

Once again, in this State of the Union Address, Iran is an important topic. Only a few days before the delivery of this speech, an American drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani. Trump characterizes Iran in a similar way to President Obama’s characterization, while bringing up Bush-era concerns for the effects of the Iraq War. He says “Soleimani was the Iranian Regime’s most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American service members in Iraq.”125 Trump is taking advantage of resonant

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid.

123 “Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: IS Leader ‘Dead after US Raid’ in Syria.” BBC News, BBC, 28 Oct. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50200339.

124 Trump, “Remarks by President Trump in State of the Union Address”, 2020.

125 Ibid.

historical issues to dehumanize Soleimani, calling him ‘a ruthless butcher’ and ‘monster’. Trump uses his administration’s handling of the assassination to demonstrate that this was the most appropriate way to handle the situation. Trump congratulates the military on having “terminated his evil reign of terror forever.”126 To Trump, the only possible way to deal with a Muslim threat is to completely demolish it. Trump emphasizes this over and over while discussing terror, and uses this destructive and finalizing language to discuss non-terror Muslim enemies, like Soleimani. He treats this like it is the only option. This is reminiscent of the eighth typology of Islam, where Islamophobic actions are expected and naturalized. Trump is showing that demonizing and dehumanizing Muslim enemies, and then utterly destroying them, is the best way to deal with them.

Trump’s rhetoric is perhaps the most blatantly harmful dogma of any of the three presidents examined. This can be seen in the way anti-Muslim hate actions grew after his election. For Trump, Muslims are just another group of people to be othered and alienated in an attempt to prove America’s superiority. Just as he justifies placing immigrant children in cages by citing crimes done by migrants, so too does he enact xenophobic, Islamophobic policies by characterizing the ‘bloodthirsty’ nature of Muslim terrorists.

The New America project has tracked anti-Muslim activities in the United States from January of 2012 to November of 2018. It tracks six different types of anti-Muslim incidents:

● Anti-Sharia legislation: legislation attempting to ban “foreign law” (a dog whistle for Sharia law) from implementation, usually accompanied by Islamophobic rhetoric.

● Opposition to refugee resettlement: legislation or actions by public officials hindering or opposing the resettlement of refugees from majority Muslim nations in their area.

● Opposition to mosques, Muslim cemeteries, and schools: opposition to the construction of Islamic

State of the Union Address.” The White House, The United States Government, 4 Feb. 2020, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-stateunion-address-3/.

buildings by governments, elected officials, and the general public, backed by Islamophobic rhetoric

● Anti-Muslims actions and statements by elected and appointed officials: discriminatory actions and statements marginalizing or restricting their religious freedoms, sometimes made in formal governmental settings, or in personal situations, like on social media.

● Hate incidents against mosques and Islamic centers: Media reported incidents of crimes committed against Islamic buildings, or assumed Islamic buildings, linked to anti-Muslim prejudice127

● Media reports of anti-Muslim violence and crimes: threats, harassment, physical harm, and attempt at physical harm motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice. Due to the limited time span of the project, this information cannot be used to compare the incidents and types of Islamophobia across the three presidencies. However, these data do demonstrate one important development: the increase of Islamophobic hate crime after Donald Trump’s election. The New America project recorded a tripling of anti-Muslim actions from October of 2016 to November of 2016.128 Many of these anti-Muslims actions referenced the election of Donald Trump.129

There was a series of letters sent to numerous mosques across the country, calling Muslims “vile and filthy people” promising that President Trump is “going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”130 A few weeks after the election, a man attacked a fellow bar patron, who he thought was Muslim, saying “things are different now.”131 A Florida Republican State Senator made fun of concerns over fears of conservative authoritarianism under Trump’s presidency, by comparing those anxieties to Islam.132 In California, a week after the election, a woman’s car was destroyed by people who assumed she was Muslim. The perpetrators left a note on the car, saying

127 “Anti-Muslim Activities in the United States.” New America www. newamerica.org/in-depth/anti-muslim-activity/.

“This is our nation now.”133 The morning after the election, a Muslim community center was vandalized with simply the word “Trump.”134 A Muslim student was robbed by two men who made comments about the president and the Muslim community.135

The New America project has a very selective set of criteria to determine what anti-Muslim acts are included in its survey. It errs on the side of exclusion over inclusions.136 Even with this conservative survey style, anti-Muslim hate acts tripled from October to November of 2016.137 As shown above, many of these hate acts directly referenced the president’s election and his hateful anti-immigrant, Islamophobic rhetoric.

In conclusion, although all these hate acts occurred before President Trump gave a single State of the Union Address, I have included these statistics and anecdotes to illustrate the effect Trump’s election had on hate crime perpetrators. The inclusion of the word ‘now’ referencing Trump’s election in so many hate acts illustrates the justification his election allowed in many hateful ideologies. Trump symbolizes the hatred many Americans hold towards Muslims, and his election has normalized this hatred. It is the natural outcome of the Islamophobic narratives and policies set up by the Bush administration directly after 9/11 which are illustrated in the State of the Union Addresses since 2002.

V. Conclusion

As demonstrated above, all three presidents in office after the 9/11 attacks have included Islamophobic, orientalist, or xenophobic speech in their State of the Union Addresses. Although the political situations relating to Islam and Southwest Asia are complex, unique to each presidency, and deserve their own individual examination, it is clear that each presidency uses Islamophobic narratives and speech to support their policies at the cost of the well-being

of Muslims.

George W. Bush had a great complex of issues weighing on his presidency. After the horrific 9/11 attacks, America was suffering from a rise in hateful vitriol and a need for large-scale action. Bush was able to direct American’s anger and fear into military action in Southwest Asia. These were and are complex conflicts caused by a variety of motivations of various world leaders across the globe. However, the American people needed a neat and contained story to tell themselves, to justify their involvement. Thus, the Bush administration created a particular narrative surrounding American involvement in Southwest Asia, that can be observed in his post-9/11 State of the Union Addresses. Bush characterizes American involvement in Southwest Asia as a conflict for the soul of the world, emphasizing the evil nature and moral wrongs of America’s enemies and illustrating a world where the American military is the only thing standing between free democracy, and authoritarian dictatorship. Although he never states it outright in his Addresses, Bush simplifies the complex, multifaceted conflicts in Southwest Asia into a holy war, with the assumed Christian American West facing down against the barbaric Muslim terrorists in Southwest Asia, in a final showdown for the moral outcomes of society. All of this, he pins on terrorists or authoritarian regimes he discursively links to Islam. However, Bush’s narratives became obsolete as America’s involvement in Southwest Asia shifted, and the perceived terrorist threat transformed. Where the Bush administration was concerned with Iraq and Al Qaeda, Obama’s administration grew concerned with Iran and ISIL/ISIS. With these shifts in policy came a shift in the narrative the government told about Islam.

Seven years after 9/11, Obama needed justification for the United States’ continued military involvement in Southwest Asia. Obama’s presidency appealed to a significantly different segment of the population, and so his administration had to fine-tune Bush’s narrative to fit the themes of Obama’s presidency. Rather than appealing to religious concerns, Obama emphasized secular American values and

morals. He also steered away from the good and evil binary Bush sets up, in favor of concentrating more on American exceptionalism.

Obama rallied Americans around the love and pride they have for their country. However, while celebrating the diverse and welcoming nature of America, Obama still took advantage of orientalist and Islamophobic narratives to add fuel to the fire of American interventionism. Obama may have done this to garner support for American military action, and he may have tried to amplify the otherness of foreigners to emphasize the American nature of his own presidency, which came under fire by the far-right. However, any Islamophobic or orientalist speech pales in comparison to the language and policies of the Trump administration. Trump’s speeches, in addition to the Islamophobic language, also prominently features xenophobic and racist language. Trump’s presidency is focused on the perceived threat foreigners pose to our country’s safety. The dangerous narrative surrounding Islam and terrorism established and popularized through the Bush and Obama administration feed perfectly in the story Trump is telling.

Like Bush, Trump describes America as the only thing standing between free democracy, and authoritarian rule under a Muslim dictatorship. Unlike Bush, Trump does not emphasize the moral and religious prerogatives to defend the free world but rather justifies America’s actions through America’s superiority. Trump also concentrated less on the liberation of oppressed people from authoritarian regimes with Muslim leaders, and more on the importance of the violent eradication of these leaders.

Although there are clear stylistic differences between the speeches examined here, they all build upon the narratives of their predecessors. Bush began these narratives by glorifying American action. Obama made the narratives his own by shifting the emphasis to American success. Trump co-opted Obama’s narrative to paint a picture of a fallen America attempting to recapture former glory. None of the presidents’ narratives are essentially about Islam, but

rather America. They use Islam as a foil and a scapegoat with which to write off America’s problems and establish America’s greatness. The rhetoric they use to do this justifies problematic American involvement overseas and feeds into sometimes violent anti-Muslim hate at home. This research shows Islamophobic rhetoric, while not blatantly obvious, is present in presidential speech, and does function to serve their policy agendas. Whether wielded consciously or subconsciously, presidential Islamophobia demonstrates how hate and fear can be used to further political agendas and justify otherwise unjustifiable acts. This rhetoric is indicative of the larger patterns of oppression the United States enacts on Muslims both within and outside of its borders. While this research shows a connection between Islamophobic rhetoric on a formal national setting and individual Islamophobia, more research is needed to examine how these two settings influence each other. More research is also needed to determine how purposefully harmful rhetoric in State of the Union Addresses is crafted. The 2002-2020 State of the Union Addresses provide a rich platform for the discovery of pervasive, purposeful, and harmful rhetoric in the American consciousness.

Records Administration, National Archives and Re cords Administration, 14 Nov. 2001, georgewbush-whi tehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/ speeches/vp20011114-1.html.

“Field Listing: Terrorist Group - Home Based.” Central Intelligen ce Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 1 Feb. 2018 , www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbo ok/fields/397.html.

Hardy, Colleen E. The Detention of Unlawful Enemy Combatants during the War on Terror. LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2009.

Huntington, Samuel. “Clash of Civilizations?” Council of Foreign Relations, vol. 72, no. 3, 1993, pp. 22-49.

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Jackson, Richard. “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse.” Government and Opposition, vol. 42, no. 3, 2007, pp. 394–426., doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x.

Kumar, Deepa. “Framing Islam: The Resurgence of Orientalism During the Bush II Era.” Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 34, no. 3, 2010, pp. 254–277., doi:10.1177/0196859910363174.

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