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Being “Brown” in Post 9/11 America

Courtesy of Kumarini Silva

This year marks the 15th anniversary of 9/11, an event that sparked dramatic shifts in global policy and international relations. 

Scholar Kumarini Silva argues that it also led to a fundamental transformation in what it means to be brown in America, and created a situation in which anyone who is not white has the possibility of being labeled as both un-American and a so-called “brown threat.” 

In her new book “Brown Threat: Identification in the Security State” (University of Minnesota Press/2016) Silva interweaves her own personal experience with ethnographic research and popular culture analysis to understand how a shifting understanding of “brown” identity shapes the treatment and control of brown bodies in post-9/11 America. Host Frank Stasio talks with Kumarini Silva, professor of communication at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

 

Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.