Synopses & Reviews
In the years since 9/11, national security laws, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment influenced public policies, leading to hate violence and criminalization of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants. In
An America for All, Deepa Iyer blends first-person accounts with profiles of young people remaking the American racial landscape while facing the effects of racism. These young activists use creative resistance to build multiracial solidarity and shape a new America in which the other” belongs. This generation of activists, Iyer argues, is igniting a twenty-first century racial justice movement with an intersectional approach that draws on faith, immigration status, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
As the United States transforms into a majority-minority nation, racial anxiety will continue to influence peoples lives. Iyer deftly analyzes the forces of the new racism in the United States and offers practices for multiracial solidarity and inclusive racial narratives. An America for All is a powerful and timely book about the more than ten million South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants that are remaking America—for the better.
Synopsis
Many of us can recall the targeting of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh people in the wake of 9/11. We may be less aware, however, of the ongoing racism directed against these groups in the past decade and a half.
In We Too Sing America, nationally renowned activist Deepa Iyer catalogs recent racial flashpoints, from the 2012 massacre at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to the violent opposition to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to the Park 51 Community Center in Lower Manhattan.
Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be considered domestic terrorism and explores the role of the state in perpetuating racism through detentions, national registration programs, police profiling, and constant surveillance. She looks at topics including Islamophobia in the Bible Belt; the Bermuda Triangle” of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim hysteria; and the energy of new reform movements, including those of undocumented and unafraid” youth and Black Lives Matter.
In a book that reframes the discussion of race in America, a brilliant young activist provides ideas from the front lines of post-9/11 America.
About the Author
A leading racial justice activist, Deepa Iyer served for a decade as the executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), focusing on community building in post-9/11 America. She teaches in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.