Twenty years ago, America experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history, triggering a “War on Terror” against Muslim communities. Today, our nation is undergoing a moment of racial reckoning. Tens of millions of Americans, especially our youth, are recognizing that systemic racism is pervasive. Their attempts to upend such systems offers an important insight: words matter.
How we describe a particular act can skew public opinion in support of government programs designed to subordinate specific minority communities.
Take the word terrorist, for example. For the 97 percent of Americans who are not Muslim or Arab, the word is a seemingly accurate description of a Muslim who engages in political violence — not a racial slur. In the past twenty years, terrorists has been written countless times in news articles, indictments, government press releases, and court cases on terrorism. Politicians repeat them frequently in campaign speeches, States of the Union, media interviews, legislative hearings, and any discussion on national security.
The word, however, is not uttered in a power vacuum. Terrorist almost always accompanies pictures of Muslim men who ‘look’ Middle Eastern and North African. Terrorist is often stated when Mohamed, Ahmed, Omar, Osama, Khaled, Hussain, and other common Muslim male names are in the same sentence.
— Read the full article published on September 2, 2021 at the American Constitution Society’s Expert Forum here.
