The Arab American Institute has revamped its website, and it looks great. The previous layout was rather lame, this one is modern looking and easy to use. Check it out, and take this quiz on Arab-Americans. I got 14 out of 14 correct, try your luck. It isn't hard, but should be informative if you don't know too much about the population.
The AAIUSA website is a great resource to learn about Arab-Americans. It has its biases, but it is also a treasure trove of information on what Arab-Americans, Democrat, Republican, and independent are up to. For instance, I had no idea that James Zogby, the AAI's president, spoke at the "Save Darfur" rally recently. I hadn't heard anything about this at all. I was under the impression that Arab-American group had sort of put their heads down on that issue and just ignored it. But Dr. Zogby went out and took it on head on. It's amazing to see what little attention Arab-American get from their country's media. It seemed as if it was a big deal that Jewish and black groups and stars were protesting the Darfur issue, while Arab-American condemnation of the violence was ignored in toto. I mean, even though there were probably fewer Arabs at the protest (I've heard from friends, Jews in fact, that they thought the protest was about 75% Jewish and maybe 15% black, and the rest generic white people), I think the fact that one of the major leaders in the Arab-American community came out and spoke against it is something worth mentioning. Isn't it Arabs that are in Sudan doing the bulk of the killing and "ethnic cleansing"? I'm always hearing Americans (whites, blacks, Jews, etc.) telling me that Arabs should look at their history and world objectively (something I totally agree with, as you can see here and elsewhere), yet when Arabs actually do this, these same people are indignant, un-informed, or don't pay attention. Checking out the AAI website once in a while would do these sorts of people some good.
Dr. Zogby's remarks afterwards are quite moving.
With no other Arab speaker on the program, I understood what might be interpreted either by my absence or my presence at the rally. After consultations with several Arab friends and a number of experts on African affairs, I resolved to participate.
It was important that Arab Americans make clear our deep concern with the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Our presence in this multi-ethnic multi-religious coalition sends this message.
Where were the Arabs? I sometime joke that Arabists ask this question whenever they get themselves into trouble. But I think this is a valid question on matter of Darfur. I don't believe in making collective apologies for the actions of others who behave like uncivilized miscreants, and I am not going to advocate doing so here or ever. But Arabs have made their entire region, people and culture look like the scum at the bottom of a coffee pot by ignoring the plight of the people in Darfur --not just the non-Arabs there but also of the Arab civilians killed by non-Arab militias.
People have noticed. Last summer I attended a youth conference on diplomacy that took me to three Western European countries with a host of American youths from all over the United States. The contingent was overwhelmingly white, though there were four or five Arabs (all from Virginia, or New Jersey, with the exception being myself from Connecticut), a Persian (from LA), and perhaps two or three American blacks, each from different states.
At this conference we participated in a United Nations simulation. The couple of hundred odd mass of youths was divided into the various organs and committees of the UN. I was given China's seat on the UN Security Council, which was tasked with dealing with the genocide in Darfur. Before each meeting we were given briefings on debate procedure and resolution writing, as well as the background of the issue we were covering and our countries' backgrounds.
Obviously, it would not be in China's interest to have a resolution passed in the SC that would allow for the oil flow to be disrupted, discontinued, or modified negatively. This meant that I was supposed to oppose military intervention and economic sanctions.
Following my orders from the briefing I opposed the resolutions put forward by the US, the Romanian and French delegates that would have put troops on the ground or put huge punative sanctions on Sudan. I did my best to prolong debate on the definition of "genocide," why sovereignity was good and why the UN had no right to tell Sudan how to handle its internal affairs. Standard Third World regime preservation talk. I banded together the Russian and Algerian delegates, together with the African/Third World representatives and made my own resolution that merely condemned the violence without actually calling for any sort of action. This reslution did not pass (it was vetoed by, I believe, either France or the US). The final resolution we worked on was sponsored by the US, France, and all the "do gooder" states on the SC. It had overwhelming support verbally from most delegates. I gave a lengthy speech voicing China's commitment to peace and security, without actually embracing the resolution.
When it was time to vote, the placards went up around the table in favor. Algeria's voted no. Russia abstained. Some small African state's abstained. I asked the moderator to come back to me after going around the council. A few others voted nay. The vast majority voted "yes," including all the major heavy weights. I voted "no". It was dead.
After being consoled by the moderator (the French delegate cried at how "unfair" it all was to the people of Darfur), we begane to discuss our own views of the conflict. I kept quiet for a little while, before the delegate from Benin addressed me directly.
"You're racist," she said. She was black from Missuri.
"What?" I was confused.
"You Arabs hate Africans, you make slaves of them, rape them, commit genocide, and look how you voted on the resolution just now!"
I wanted to explain to her that I was not voting based on my opinion, I was voting on how I thought China would react to it. She should have known that. But she did not seem to. I instead told her something less acedemic.
"I enslave African people?" I inquired.
"Not you, but Arabs like you do. Just like white people enslaved us back when!" She shouted.
"I am African," I said, sort of half laughing. "I'm Berber, native African. Algeria is in Africa. Don't yell at me over that, shout at Saddam or Yemna about that," Yemna was one of the other Arabs at the conference, she was Yemeni.
"You're not African! You're Arab!" I'm thinking, WHAT?? "Arabs are doing to people in Darfur what they always have done to us!"
"Who is 'us'?" I asked her.
"Africans, all over the world" at this point I was thoroughly irritated. There is nothing that I can stand less than pan-ethnic or racial nationalism. Her reasoning stunk of Négritude. Remember that stuff that Marcus Garvey and Leon Damas used to talk about? That's what Négritude is. It's like black pan-Arabism, only it makes less sense because it bases membership in the grand African nation on skin color. Not to mention that it was started and propogated largely by blacks from the Americas who did not speak African languages, follow African religions, belong to African ethnic groups, or have famlies in or live in Africa. It was totally romantic and nonsensical in every way. It vilified white people and Arabs (to a lesser extent, more so nowadays) as evil slave traders whose civilizations were inferior and detrimental to African life in ever way they could be. How do you reason with a romantic? I might as well have been trying to explain to Michel Aflaq or Sati al-Husri why Berbers and Kurds are not Arabs.
"You're not African," I said. The other kids went silent. "I'm more African than you. I think in Berber. I speak it. I have family living in Africa, and that fought for liberation from colonialism. I have citizenship in the African Union. What do you think you're doing telling me I'm a slave trader?"
"You're not African," she said again. "You're Arab."
"Sure, I'm Arab. And you're English. Being conquered by an Arab doesn't make you Arab."
She had no idea what I meant. I was just a swarthy Arab of uncertain origins to her.
"I'm African because I'm black," she blabbered. "You're not because you aren't black. It's simple, your people didn't come from Africa."
"My people sure as hell did come from Africa. Where do you get off being African because you're black? Is George Bush European because he's white? No, he's American, like I'm African and you're American."
She was mad. "You're only African because you people killed all the black people," this makes sense, huh?
"No, I'm African because my passport is Algerian, my family is from Africa and Berbers are African, not Arab," I told her.
"That's not African. That's white."
I asked the French delegate, "Am I white? She says I am white. How white am I to you?"
She said "You don't look white...no" I made my point.
Benin persisted. "So what, you're not black."
"So I'm African. Are you American?"
"Yes."
"So you're not African. You're American."
"African-American."
"You cannot say you are American and then say you are African like it is your country," I told her.
"I'm African first."
"Have you been to Africa? Where is your citizenship? Where does you family say they are from?"
"No I have not and I'm American and my family is from Missuri, so what?!"
"So you're American. You are black from America. There is nothing African about you other than that somebody in your family some time came from Africa to America. That does not mean you get to tell African people that they are slavers and not from Africa. How can you be African without having been there?!"
"You're not African," she said again. "You're Arab."
"I am not Arab, and my people say the same thing of Arabs because they conquered us. Other African people say this about other people too, Africans in South Africa say it about Zulus, Tutsis about Hutus, everybody hates some body in Africa for things Africans do to Africans. It is not so simplistic. Only a non-African would think in black and white like that."
"Whatever, you Arabs are the new white people in Africa," she groweled. "That's why they don't help black people."
"So is Mugabe and the Hutu and Ibo. Black people aren't the only Africans and they aren't the only victims."
"They are in Sudan," she fired back.
"No, black people kill Arabs there in the villages and camps. You cannot be serious."
"There are never Arabs in the camps on TV," Arab Sudanese are black as night often times. I've never met a Sudanese Arab that was lighter than me, and I'm pretty dark by North African standards. I don't think it'd be so easy to pick out an Arab in one of those camps by looking at them.
She was smart. She had obviously opened a few books before, which was why I actually engaged her instead of talking off or ignoring her. I had to wonder what kind of books she had read though.
My point with this anecdote is not that black people are not African or anything to that effect. Rather it is to show that Arab indifference, and silence has had a negative impact on how Arabs and those ruled by Arabs are viewed in the world. This is just one example of how I have seen black people turn against Arabs as "the new White Man," even thought most of the slaves in North Africa were white, and many Arabs are Africans and fought the same enemies as Africans south of the Sahara.
I am really glad that Dr. Zogby spoke at the rally. I wish more Arabs would show that they care about humanity. Arab-Americans are largely invisible when it comes to national politics, especially on issues that effect them, with weak leadership that is largely accountable more to large polical parties (Democrats, Republicans) than to Arab-Americans or to themselves as individuals. So Arab-Americans are pretty much politically irrelevant compared to other minorities like blacks, Jews, and even Chinese or Japanese Americans, despite the fact that many hold appointed and elected positions throughout the nation. Even with the existance of the American Arab anti-Discrimination Committee (founded by former US senator James Abourezk) and the AAI, negative perseptions of Arabs persist, and little is done to effectively combat this. Arab-Americans must take a greater stand on issues like Darfur, and make it known that they are not the US's branch of the janjaweed (as the girl mentioned early asserted later in our conversation).
Check out AAI, and the ADC website, and if you are an Arab-American, let people know that you do not condone heathen like behavior anywhere, even if they are Arabs, Muslims, Maronites, whatever. It is imperative. Not that "Arabs" don't, but that you don't, apologizing for the group is insincere, clarifying your own position is.
"We can't change the black color of the abaya, so we work on the design," he said.Nouraei, whose displays include dazzling hand-made abayas fetching between 1,000 and 2,000 dollars apiece, said many customers choose their own designs, and the price depends on the load of precious metals they want sown on their garment.
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