This is a letter from an Arab-American guy to an Arab newspaper, very interesting because it raised a very good issues about racism (Arabs vs Arabs and Arabs vs African-Americans), since I don’t live in the US so I don’t have any idea about the background of the problem but I could see that his argument can fit even here in Europe.
Greetings and I hope you are well and in good favor.….….….…Having lived in the U.S. for the past 24 years.….….
Yet in most Arab American circles an observer would note our excessive criticism of American society as one in which anti Arab racism prevails. Our criticism of American society as a racist one became particularly evident ever since 9/11, and while it remains a solid fact that Arab Americans became feared, hated, accused, harassed, interrogated, and feared in American society post 9/11, it also remain a solid ironic fact that the multitude of Arab Americans still practice covert and overt acts of racism against African Americans in particular despite our bitter brush with racism after 9/11.
It is well known to the African American communities that Arab Americans have the same superiority complex which European Americans had in the past. We Arab Americans choose at free-will not only to disassociate from the African American communities, but also contribute to some great extent to the destruction of these communities. Note for example that the majority of the liquor-store small businesses in the economically depressed African American neighborhoods are owned by Arab Americans. It is worthy of mentioning that most of the Arab American owners of these liquor stores view these communities with a loathing eye of contempt and choose to reside away from these African American neighborhoods on whose destruction they contribute!
It must be noted for the sake of fairness however that it is the Muslim Arab Americans who adopt and practice racism. It is rather ironic that post 9/11 we as Muslim Arab Americans became more concerned with the various elements of bigotry that is directed towards our communities with out ever having the courage to face-up the racism that comes out of our own communities in particular one that is directed towards African Americans. Having lived in the U.S. for a long while now, I can say with accuracy that I have witnessed American society take very positive legal and social measures to do away with racial discrimination. But I have also witnessed that among the very first things Arabs acquire when they come to America is racism.
M. K
Berkeley, CA
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Great post Ladybird…I’m so happy you brought this to my attention. So true, so true…
lim.
->hypocrisy in believing that we practice high measures of a higher moral code while in reality our social ways and practices are the very antithesis of the moral standards we advocate<- this must be a human defect. i see where this discourse fits in to dutch and other surroundings, indeed a post that would require a follow-up. interesting sii!
sorry, something went wrong. i was trying to say that the first part of my comment, cited from the post, is to be seen as THE greater human defect. fits in analyzing dutch society too indeed, and lots of other countries, closeby and far away, history. this post would require a follow-up, me think. let’s work on the future.
Cecile
One day I was walking around minding my own business a child, she was about 6–7 years old spited on me because I am a foreigner what I did is continue walking and laughing about what she did.
dear lady,
did you ever see numbers on how many people in the netherlands would indeed ‘welcome’ the death penalty? many more than one would think, really. i was kinda flabbergasted when i came to know that.
in many (most?) cultures exists the idea of the ones (we, us) being better than ‘the other’, the ‘unknown’. your neighbor, the people from ‘the other village’ or the people from ‘the other country’, or that weird ones with the pink and green curly hair; the idea that we are not made of the same species somewhere seems always to flip in this discussion, but, how much i do try, i can only see so many similarities: arms, legs, other arms, lots of brains being used in contradictive ways, for art and love, or for warfare, or confusingly for both.
as to the childrens comment you mentioned, i heard something like it, but the other way around: an old man (dutch yes) lives in the osdorp suburbs of amsterdam. he had lived in that neighborhood for all his life. on a day two immigrant children, same age of the kiddo’s you mentioned, saw him walking and told him: you don’t belong here. after which the old man cried.
so i guess we are all just ‘knoeiers’ (dabblers) as an old friend of me liked to say, and i suppose we need to do it much better. well, we can try. we have to.
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