Arab Americans:
quote:Arab-Americans in predicament;
Attacks heighten struggle with complex identity
BYLINE: By Jonathan Tilove; Newhouse News Service
BODY:
The aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States has crystallized the dilemma of Arab-American identity. Misjudged, maligned and forever seen as more Arab than American, they find themselves united by events beyond their control.
They are seen as white, but not quite. They are discriminated against, and yet are not counted an official minority. They are consistently typecast as terrorists in movies and other media, and often hold opinions on Mideast policy against the grain of popular opinion. They are, in fact, a very diverse group.
Most are American-born. They are, on average, better educated and better off than other Americans.
Many of the best-known Arab-Americans are not particularly recognized as being Arab-Americans -- Ralph Nader, journalist Helen Thomas, radio personality Casey Kasem, quarterback Doug Flutie, former Majority Leader George Mitchell, former White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Teacher Christa McAullife, who died in the Challenger explosion, was an Arab-American.
There is not a good, agreed-upon count of the Arab-American population. The Census Bureau estimates there are about 1.2 million, but without a separate category on the census forms, this is an imprecise figure. Most scholars of the Arab-American world put the figure at more than 3 million.
An Arab is someone from the nations of the Middle East and North Africa where Arabic is the primary language. Iran, where the predominant language is Farsi, is not an Arab nation.
The vast majority of the world's Muslims are not Arabs. Most Muslims in America are not Arab. About two thirds of Arab-Americans, especially those whose families have been in the United States the longest, are Christian.
According to Michael Suleiman, a Kansas State University political scientist and the editor of "Arabs in America," Arab-Americans began to coalesce to fight negative stereotyping of their people in the aftermath of the humiliating six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
In the popular imagination, Arab-Americans suffer terribly. In several books, most recently "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People," Jack Shaheen, a retired professor of mass communications at Southern Illinois University, documents the relentlessly negative images of Arabs in the movies, which he likens to the way Nazi filmmakers depicted Jews.
A 'recurring dilemma'
In a piece in Suleiman's book, Suad Joseph, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, argues that the "recurring dilemma" of Arabs in America is that they are viewed as "not quite American," as "against the grain of the nation."
And now they find themselves brought together by a terrible predicament: Even as they are grieving for their country, they find themselves fearing some of their countrymen.
"We're grieving. We're Americans, too. We're grieving like everybody else, and to be grieving and afraid at the same time, that's a very hard place to be," said Helen Hatab Samhan, executive vice president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, which was founded in 1985 to represent Arab-American interests in government and politics.
The institute's office is a block-and-a-half from the White House, and James Zogby, its president, said that first they wondered, "Could we be hit? Then the phone calls came -- 'We'll slit your throat,' 'We'll kill your kids.' "
When Ray Hanania, an Arab-American writer in Chicago, heard on the radio about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, he prayed it was an accident. When word quickly came of another plane crashing into the second tower, his horror as an American was compounded by a "feeling of guilt, like I did something."
He found himself relieved when he later learned that at least 100 Arabs died in the inferno, and then found himself wondering, "Why do I have to feel like that?"
Hanania is Palestinian, the author of "I'm Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing Up Arab in America." His mother was born in Bethlehem, his father in Jerusalem and he in Chicago. His wife is Jewish, but for the first time this year he did not go with her to synagogue for Rosh Hashana services Tuesday. He didn't want to deal with the looks he now gets, everywhere he goes.
His advice to other Arab-Americans: "Just sit tight, pull back, don't stick your head up, give it some time."
In Huntington Beach, Calif., Nidal Ibrahim, who publishes Arab-American Business Magazine, was catapulted through his own cycle of doubts.
Ibrahim, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian, wanted to tell his mother not to wear her head scarf out, "But I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to give in to fear."
He is flying up and back to San Francisco today to do two cable television shows about what is happening, and he knows -- even understands -- the scrutiny he will have to withstand.
He will arrive three hours early each way. He could drive in less time but again, "I don't want to give into fear." And yet, he said, he finds himself in the ludicrous position of a journalist wondering whether it is wise to go to the airport carrying a pen.
In the current climate, that feeling, common to many Arab-Americans, is a chilling source of pan-Arab-American unity.
"When you're in the foxhole like the community is now, nobody is Syrian or Palestinian or Iraqi," Ibrahim said. "Everybody's an Arab."
Like Samhan at the Arab American Institute, Ibrahim said the overwhelming response from other Americans has been supportive. But, he reports, like many other very Americanized Arabs, "I've always noticed here that people look at me and see me as being Arab; I've never been fully accepted as American."
"People are afraid of saying anything, or even leaving their homes," said Merit Mikhail, a junior at the University of California, Riverside, and herself an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian.
No box to check
Moreover, Mikhail, who last year was chairwoman of the United States Student Association's Middle Eastern and South Asian caucus, said that Arab-Americans lack the pulpit or respectful hearing granted other minorities.
Even on the census, she said, "There isn't a box for us to check."
According to current census instructions, Arabs are white, but that did not suit Mikhail, even though she is light-skinned.
(bold is mine)
[ 28-09-2001: Message edited by: grant ] |
