Racism by Designation: Making Sense of Western States’ Nondesignation of White Supremacists as Terrorists

Abstract

How can we make sense of Western states’ nondesignation of white supremacists as terrorists compared to other actors engaged in similar political violence? This article offers three arguments and supports them with rich case studies of designation in the United States and the United Kingdom. First, the racially disparate impact of designations can be understood as a form of institutional racism. Second, within the Western racial order, Arabs/Muslims are stereotypically seen as terrorists, whereas whites benefit from the presumption of not being terrorists. The result is a racial double standard at the core of the norm against terrorism, such that white supremacists are disproportionately less likely to be designated as terrorists than other groups. Third, we caution against viewing the few recent white supremacist designations as transformative and overestimating their ability to deracialize counterterrorism.