In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been more than 1,000 incidents of hate violence reported in the United States. How do we understand this violence, and in particular, its emergence in a context of national tragedy? What are the seeds of this violence, and how has the political climate following September 11 allowed them to grow? Of course, there are no easy answers to these questions. I would suggest that September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear “Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim.”1 This consolidation reflects a racialization wherein members of this group are identified as terrorists and are disidentified as citizens. The stereotype of the “Arab terrorist” is not an unfamiliar one. But the ferocity with which multiple communities have been interpellated as responsible for the events of September suggests there are particular dimensions that have converged in this racialization. I offer three: the fact and legitimacy of racial profiling; the redeployment of old Orientalist tropes; and the relationship between citizenship, nation, and identity.