amateur ramblings

A few reflections on calling ourselves Arab versus Arab-American, and the responsibility that is demanded of us as beneficiaries of American imperialism either way

Is the name of our identity something we should be comfortable with? For those of us who are the children of immigrants, especially from parts of the world that are currently feeling the brunt of our parents’ new home country (and if we consider more than direct military action, this means most countries not in Europe), the question often looms: do we keep the hyphen-American, or do we drop it? Further, what does it mean to do one or the other, both within our current location, and in relation to the distant group of people we identify with?

It seems to me that this politics of naming is lost in a complicated intersection of various beliefs and attitudes that have the common property of inducing a feeling of alienation from what one considers the norm. For many Arabs or Muslims in such a position, this has been extenuated by domestic marginalization (especially the sort of racial profiling we see by police and in public discourse) that complements the strong and just objections we might have to American foreign and domestic policy. The fact that we are overwhelmingly against the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as unconditional US support for Israeli dispossession and abuse of the Palestinian people, among other things complements the fact that secondary security checks at airports and similar measures are a test of our patience in a country that is supposed to be our home.

Of those of us who do retain an Arab or Muslim identity, whether it is political or cultural or both, there are at least two camps: those who emphasize the fact of their Americanness (and thus opt to hyphenate themselves) in order to impart some sort of legitimacy upon their participation in this country’s politics, since calling oneself an American apparently is an act of patriotism in and of itself these days; and those who are sickened by the ever-smaller distance between ‘patriotism’ and unconditional support for the US’ imperial economic and military policies, in times when other countries are busted open for our markets and our troops. The first assertion is something that allows Arabs or Muslims to enter discussions about politics, since their intent is untrustworthy unless they open every opinion with an oath of allegiance. The second variant is more interesting for those of us who recognize already the vapid nature of such a requirement–as if only people considered to be ‘patriotic’ have first amendment or voting rights.

In my personal experience, I have always hesitated before choosing one or the other label (Arab/Arab-American), deciding quickly to move on with my day before the choice and all its ramifications gets too overwhelming. So my purpose in writing this, really, is to sort this question out for myself. What does it mean to say I am an Arab-American versus simply an Arab or otherwise? The answer to this question, I think, points to some of the central tensions of our lives, which, if we take the time to think them through, might allow us to see some of the potentials they allow us, as well as the responsibilities they bestow upon us.

I have often felt that for many the decision to call oneself an American or not is tied very closely to one’s “accepting” or “rejecting” the political system as we see it. In that sense, the refusal to associate with the name is also a refusal to “accept” the system or, maybe, to be seen as “agreeing” with it in some sense of the term. It is a distancing mechanism. This includes with it a variety of other ramifications: an activism which tends to be non-participatory in the electoral system; actions, positions, and attitudes which are more self-gratifying than they are edifying for the issues or even for the community; and, finally, the illusion that we are actually separate from the system simply by saying we are.

A few years ago, Chiquita banana was exposed for financing murderous militias in Colombia. Workers in Central and South America, especially on farms that end up exporting to the United States, are frequently at risk for their lives, as this story about a murdered Guatemalan Union Worker shows.

The truth is, for anybody who lives in this country, for anybody whose family owns a car, can afford food, pays taxes, attends school, has a mortgage, has access to electricity or clean water, or even has a house, etcetera, there is no escaping the fact that we are part of that system. Furthermore, we are part of that system in a way that fundamentally distinguishes us from the other side of our identity, the one formed around our families and friends who live in other countries. Our lifestyle is supported by their very suffering and there is, in truth, no way to avoid that conclusion or connection. As Dr. Hatem Bazian once alluded in a talk he gave in Berkeley, if you buy bananas in December, you are inescapably a part of a certain set of transactions that place you in a position of privilege, and others in a position of exploitation. That privilege is attached to our lives in this country; and I don’t mean ‘privilege’ here in the way that patronizing “love it or leave it” folks do, or even to suggest that we should be vaguely “grateful” to “this country” for what we have, but rather to say that that ‘privilege’ is the very fact that our lives ride on the backs of those with whom we claim to identify.

Ignoring that exploitative ‘privilege,’ I think, is a means of suppressing a confusing contradiction in our lives, namely that in some way we might think we are against a system at the same time that we prop it up and benefit from it immensely at the often devastating expense of others. What our parents may have seen and introduced to us as a land of opportunity is not so much that, as it is a land where the chain of cause and effect explaining our relative wealth and the rest of the world’s poverty is concealed behind fanciful ideas that “we work hard and love life” while the rest of the world is “lazy,” “underdeveloped,” “developing,” “ignorant,” or “backwards.” To pretend that if we do not call ourselves hypen-American that we are somehow removing ourselves from the exploitative position that defines what it means to be an American (because we, unlike many other Americans who are our allies, have that alternative identity as a potential refuge) is simply delusional and grossly irresponsible.

Granted, there are many levels of privilege that stratify American society itself; but there is also a collective privilege which advantages almost all Americans, to different degrees, with respect to the rest of the world. It is important to check both of these types of privilege. As the Blue Scholars say it, we people who already bear a certain consciousness about our condition are “neck deep in contradictions in the gut of the beast.” We can neither pretend that we have nothing in common with what we imagine to be America, because we are beneficiaries of American imperialism in the same way that other Americans are, and many if not all of our activities contribute to it; and we cannot claim to be totally identical to our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters around the world, precisely because they are the ones who are abused for our benefit, whether we like it or not. As long as this systematic oppression exists while we benefit and contribute to it, it will remain an insurmountable barrier that at best we can intentionally ignore, and at worst can neglect for its implications.

This internal tension at the very core of our existence and consciousness in this country should not be paralyzing. Paralysis, in this sense, is the suppression of one identity over the other: to deny that we have anything to do with this exploitation, or to insist that there is nothing that can be done over here, leaving it up to the folks “over there” to handle it. We must learn how to synthesize these conflicting identities (Arab or Muslim or otherwise and American) along with their conflicting realities (being both a beneficiary of the system, as well as its victim).

For that reason, it is important to recognize the particularities of our relationship to “the system” and our “rejection” of it namely by avoiding fatalistic notions both about that system and our relation to it. Both can change, but not simply by voicing our opinions. The type of activism and consciousness that rejects the electoral system altogether overlooks an important vehicle for change and, furthermore, leaves us in a position of permanent marginalization, where we are always asking or demanding via petition, letter, or blog posting, and never in a position where we can actually do it ourselves by taking back decision-making mechanisms. This does not mean voting simply because voting is an option or because there is inherent value or goodness in doing so; it doesn’t mean latching on to political campaigns for the sake of building relationships and connections which will prove unreliable and do not actually serve our interests; it means building communities, alliances, and coalitions that can work together to build an electoral bloc that has the power to fundamentally re-shape the system here and thus its actions abroad.

It is only by leaping directly into this schismatic contradiction in our identity that we can attempt to close it and resolve it. This is where our dual privileges, both within the American system and with respect to the rest of the world, can find their reconciliation. For “international” solidarity, you go “local.” It is time to stop neutralizing our positions, experiences, and opinions in order to appeal to some notion that we have constructed of “the average person” and what we believe that person wants to or is willing to hear. Communicating with others who may not identify or agree with us is one very important element of activist work, but it is not the only element. If we treat it as such, we resign ourselves to a politics of demanding, and the act of demanding produces an inherently uneven field of participation. In the end this very dependency reflects a power dynamic which re-affirms the disadvantaged, dislocated, and marginalized position we are ultimately seeking to escape. In order to do this, we mustn’t confirm the logic of exclusion by arguing that we have a right to speak because we are Americans, but rather, why as people who benefit from American imperialism, we have instead an unavoidable responsibility to speak, organize, and act in order to expose the framework that makes our ‘privilege,’ which has proven to be anything but honorable by now, possible in the first place.