Containing (un)American Bodies: Race, Sexuality, and Post-9/11 Constructions of Citizenship
by Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen Lugo-Lugo
New York, Rodopi, 2010

Words matter. Especially when a U.S. president utters them, the corporate media echoes them, and other ideological institutions put them into practice as "official discursive tools," as Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen Lugo-Lugo argue succinctly in their new book Containing (un)American Bodies: Race, Sexuality, and Post-9/11 Constructions of Citizenship. After 9/11 Bush used his immense social, cultural, and political power to promote a dangerous dichotomy between "true Americans" and those whom he decided posed a threat to America – not just to its physical security but also to what he and much of the political far right saw as its cultural norms and values. This book will help contemporary readers and future students of this era make sense of the U.S. political and cultural landscape since September 11, 2001.

As is well known, Bush gave voice to and legitimized anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiments which led easily and deliberately to an atmosphere of hate toward and fear of all "brown" bodies (to use the books term) suspected of being un-American and/or anti-American. As Bloodsworth and Lugo explain, this official arousal of fear was aimed at expanding the notion of anti-American not just to those who supported terrorism but those who opposed the war in Iraq and questioned blind patriotism, to immigrants, LGBT people and their allies, and even to the incoming President.

While the reader may initially view this subject matter as far too diverse to draw such connections, Bloodsworth and Lugo succinctly and convincingly make their case. Bush successfully used the September 11th terrorist attacks to amplify an existing dichotomy of good and evil as American and un-American that included a notion of "heterosexuality (articulated as 'family values') – associated with what is patriotic and American, and homosexuality (articulated as 'anti-family values') – associated with that is threatening and un-American." This rhetoric translated into official government action, reflected unquestioningly by the mass media, as well as well-funded, highly-motivated right-wing political action. It is no accident that subsequent to Bush's promotion of this rhetoric, right-wing backed groups in numerous states succeeded in banning same-sex marriage (despite existing federal laws on the matter). Bloodsworth and Lugo successfully demonstrate how this rush to contain sexual difference flowed almost naturally from the same rhetoric that promoted fear and the need to contain anti-American threats at home and abroad.

While it is evident that Bush and the Republicans hyped fear and anger about same-sex marriage and terrorism as a means to energize their political base and attack their opponents as "un-American" in the 2004 election, Bloodsworth and Lugo do not reduce this political strategy simply to the use of "wedge issues." The political right's main aim was to transform legal structures to further entrench inequalities as part of an anti-LGBT agenda. Even as public support for the Iraq war collapsed in 2004, Bush and the Republicans easily shifted their anti-terrorism rhetoric to anti-gay rhetoric, and some analysts attributed Bush's slim victory in 2004 to his reclamation of "moral issues" (meaning anti-LGBT policies and rhetoric).

The chapter on immigration is a crucial historical study that is also particularly relevant for today's political landscape. As right-wing moralizers identified LGBT activists with terrorist threats, anti-immigrant activists worked to construct immigrants as a similar threat. In addition to the typical (though false) charge that immigrants "steal" jobs, xenophobic voices characterized them as criminal and illegal. Groups like the Minutemen, with extremist ties to skinhead and neo-Nazi groups, sprang up and threatened violence against immigrants – especially along the border with Mexico. FOX News commentators waged a ceaseless rhetorical war on immigrant communities, especially those from Arabic-speaking and predominantly Muslim countries and Latin America.

Republicans viciously attacked the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008 by mobilizing this same rhetoric and fear-mongering. Republican Party operatives, as well as the mainstream media, located Obama within the same field of understanding about what constitutes a "real" American that was operative under Bush post 9/11. As Bloodsworth and Lugo state, his attackers sought "to render the body of Barack Obama as threatening and in need of containment" in the same manner as LGBT people, terrorists, and immigrants. In fact, it is no accident that right-wing pundits continued to identify President Obama with each of these categories, e.g., the "birther conspiracy" and repeated claims that Obama is a Muslim who supports terrorists and seeks to undermine America as a "Christian nation."

President Obama's election marked an important turning point away from the manufactured climate of fear and hate that Bush and the Republicans utilized to advance their pro-corporate, pro-war, and anti-democratic agenda. For its cataloguing of hundreds of statements from right-wing sources that created this atmosphere and mobilized this agenda, as well as the careful analysis that links the confluence of these incendiary "wedge" issues in the post 9/11 period, Containing (un)American Bodies deserves wide readership and discussion.

The immediacy of the historical lessons in this book provides are starkly apparent. In today's wave of anti-immigrant threats and rhetoric surrounding Arizona's anti-immigrant law, Republicans are seeking to revitalize stereotypes of immigrants as dangerous and potentially terroristic. However, more and more Americans are strongly resisting this new tide of hate, however. People in all walks of life, from the labor and civil rights movements, religious organizations, artists, activists, and sports figures have stood up against reactionary laws like Arizona's SB 1070. Notably, even prominent police officials in Arizona and elsewhere have resisted these moves, pointing to the fact that communities with large immigrant populations have not seen rising crime rates, and charactering anti-immigrant laws like SB 1070 as potentially dangerous for communities, where cooperation between the immigrant residents and the police has succeeded in preventing crime.

In addition, the need to end the military occupation of Iraq quickly and to pursue non-military alternatives to the current war in Afghanistan are today majority points of view, on which few pro-Republican pundits now waste time characterizing as "un-American." Increasing social movement pressure on the government to reverse or alter key government policies that impact LGBT people, such as the military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule, laws that allow job discrimination against LGBT workers, and unjust and irresponsible limits on marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnership rights, may see positive results soon – with favorable election results for the Democrats. While none of these changes alone will bring about a fully just and equal society, the vocal and active movement for this change signals that a new political terrain, far different from that of the Bush years, is steadily taking shape.