Booze

[timotee_allouch-chantepie]

The men were arguing about “religious, racial and political matters,” but liquor played a big role. (Curtis, 91) I find this line not only hilarious, but also quite revealing. I think it leads us to the point of the general racial dynamics when it comes to the way Arabs were treated in America, in this case Michigan City. While it obviously points out the racialization of Muslim Syrians in contrast to Christian Syrians, who were both trying to claim their whiteness in the eyes of European Americans, it also shows the attitudes of the press and public opinion on Arabs in that period. The mention of “race riots” by the Cedar Rapids Gazette to explain the event illustrates the lack of interest attributed to understanding Syrians. By characterizing it like such, it throws the confrontation under the etiquette of “just another fight between minorities”, depriving it, and so Syrians of any substantial weight in society.

This as well as the more blatant racism like the fear of Trachoma spreading because of Syrians are proof that no matter how much Syrians fought between each other for a limited number of “white cards”, they were never truly considered as anything else than Arabs/Turks, or like Indiana newspapers wrote, Asiatic, further orientalizing Arabs to appropriate them the image of the more easily indentifiable darker skinned minorities.