To be white or not to be white? That is the question.

[karla_stephan]

I found the ​​Gualtieri and Maghbouleh readings very interesting and intersect in ways that are important for understanding the concept of white and the context in which Middle Eastern people exist in/out of that concept. Considering my experience and knowledge of the United States Census, I found it particularly interesting. These readings provided the necessary background to the current debate on representation. My mom has been one of the main people working on adding the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) checkbox to the question on race/ethnicity in the US Census for as long as I can remember. Currently, all Arabs and Middle Eastern people are classified as “white,” no matter what they look like or how different their experiences differ from the white people around them. Our community has been trying to get this passed and our fair representation for quite some time.

Interestingly, in the 2020 census, the box would be added with all the necessary petition signatures, yet Trump vetoed it. This box is crucial to the identity and representation of the Arab American community. At the end of the article, Gualtieri discusses this by explaining that “minority status would render Arabs eligible for federally funded programs and provide greater protection under anti-discrimination laws.” Also, there is a “basic disconnect between their own self-perception as a people marked as outsiders and ‘un-American.’” Forcing people to identify this way leaves them invisible under the law while still hyper-visible to attack. This summer, I worked on a project with data on the changing Arab American demographics to help us understand how the different countries of origin and communities change over time in relation to the Census and lack of representation.

That's why I find this even more interesting: I was doing all this work without even knowing its history. It is incredibly crazy with my experience as a Syrian and Lebanese Christian. Crazy because my identity is rooted in white supremacy. It was used to uplift the Syrians who fought for naturalization against the “Other” of Black and Asian citizens. It was used to create a divide within the Arab community with both racial and religious differences. They argued that they were more civilized than even their neighboring countries. They threw everyone under the bus and did everything in their power to show how they could be considered similar to the Europeans. I get that it was for survival, and it was deemed necessary when it was a competition for the best fit to enter the US, but it's just crazy. Being not white was insulting to the Syrians. The religious division of the Middle East was making its way to the US to explain the hierarchy systems further. It really was a dog-eat-dog world, and even though in the eyes of a white person, a minority is a minority, in the eyes of a minority, there is a ladder to be climbed to whiteness. This also connected in exciting ways to Maghbouleh’s chapter on the Iranian community not wanting to be considered Arab and changing their language to be more European. These systems of hierarchy control the world and have seeped their way into damaging the solidarity of communities with each other, which is so harmful because, in the end, the whiteness that they fight so hard to achieve will never protect them.