The Brown Threat: Post-9/11 conflations of Latina/os and Middle Eastern muslims in the US American imagination

Abstract

In the post-9/11 American imagination, stereotypical images of the terrorist from the Middle East and the illegal migrant worker from south of the US border consistently appear in media and rhetoric. Dominant US representations of Latinos and Middle Eastern Muslims shape not only how US government and media construes them as “Brown Threats,” but also how citizens in the US interpret these minority groups as dangerous, foreign, inauthentic and brown(ed) Americans. By analyzing law, rhetoric and visual culture, the concept of the Brown Threat interrogates contemporary conflations of Latinos and Middle Eastern Muslims