Surveillance Culture

            After 9/11, Americans did not see the peaceful side of Islam anymore. The Bush Administration had taken many steps to protect Americans from terrorism. This had an effect on not only Americans but also Arabs as well- they were all stereotyped as one negative group.  The DHS’s Transportation Security Administration agreement with the ATA allowed Americans to stereotype people and quickly make an assumption about them. This person’s life can be changed so quickly, just from the judgment of someone else, even if they are simply driving their truck and glance over. America was in a paranoid state, which catered to extreme assumptions and assumptions made out of fear. We only have the pictures and videos that someone reported which can interpreted in many different ways. What really qualifies as being “out of the ordinary?” How do people really know what this person is going to do in the future? This allows people to assume and imagine the worst, which can take things way out of proportion. “‘In the rational west’, writes Edkins (2003: 13), ‘we tend to seek certainty and security above all. We don’t like not knowing. So we pretend that we do’.” The story that we do “know” is often times irrational and jumps to the conclusion that there may be danger on the near future. Imagine being in a predominantly Arab country and people taking pictures and reporting you- just because you are driving with someone or buying a specific thing at a store. This reminds me of events we see today. We have the problem of stereotyping black Americans as criminals simply when they are just living their own lives. There have been countless videos of white people reporting black people to the police just for sitting in the car, or walking down the street- not doing anything wrong. “For Michael Shapiro (1997: xi) it is ‘architectures of enmity’, projected via images and stereotypes, that make threat and antagonism possible. ‘People go to war’, writes James Der Derian (2002: 5), ‘because of how they see, perceive, picture, imagine and speak of others’. “ I liked this quote because I think it portrays the Iraqi War. There was no reason to go to war with the Iraqis, and the weapons of mass destruction were used to justify it. America went to war with Iraq because they grouped all Arabs with terrorism. The stereotype that all Muslims/Arabs are terrorists was very prevalent in society at that time which helped fuel the war.