Arab American students, faculty discuss identity, discrimination, representation


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Senior Mahum Hakim (from the right) asks panelists the question about Arab American community in Michigan on Wednesday, April 26, in Anspach Room 161, on the campus of Central Michigan Univeristy, Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

An Arab American panel took place on Wednesday, April 26, which featured Arab Central Michigan University faculty and students who shared their culture, experiences and stereotypes they face, in Anspach Hall, Room 161. 

Over 60 students attended. The event was organized by the Multicultural Academic Student Services Office. 

Salma Haidar and Rawia Khasawneh are CMU faculty members, both from Syria, who led the panel with a presentation. The professors talked about Arab culture, language, music, food and architecture. 

An important thing to know about Arab heritage, Khasawneh said, is that it is diverse. 

“Arabs … is a cultural ethnicity rather than racial ethnicity,” Khasawneh said. “Many people think that all Arabs are Muslims … and use there terms interchangeably even though that is incorrect … We have many other religious minorities … (and) statistically out of every five Muslims you see, only one is called Arab.”

Arabs are people from 22 countries from Middle East and North Africa whose main language is Arabic such as Kurdish people, Turkmans, Kalians, Assyrians and others, she said. 

However, here in Mount Pleasant, it is hard to find people of the Arab community, panelists shared. 

Establishing Arab American identity

Jackson Corey is a CMU student whose heritage comes from Palestine. Corey grew up as an American, but “in the back of (his) mind,” he always knew who he was, he said. 

“Being Palestinian is something I've always been proud of,” Corey said. “It's something that I've always been taught to (be proud of).”

Haidar shared Corey’s pride in her identity. 

“I feel like I accomplished a lot and (I am) highly educated, I’m a good person,” Haidar said. “I know I’m different, … but I’m proud that I’m different.”

An important part of the Arab identity, panelists shared, is being close to their family. 

“We come from countries that have developed a lot of war,” Corney said. “Coming from that we have a lot of very strict values. We are very well put together, we keep our heads high … It's very important to be able to keep that and be able to stay together.”

Forth-year student Jeniya Dabish was one of the panelists. Until she went to high school, Dabish said, she didn’t realize how close her family was. 

“Community is very important, family is very important,” Dabish said. 

However, with establishing their identities come struggles. 

Dabish shared, as a person who grew up with Chaldean and Greek roots in America, she faced that people didn’t believe she was “Arab enough.” 

When Dabish was preparing for her relative’s wedding, the makeup artist started talking Chaldean. Dabish said she was Chaldean too.

“She said I was a ‘straight white girl,’” Dabish said quoting the makeup artist. “And I get that a lot.”

Arab American children who grew up in the United States now are establishing their own identity, which is different from Arab traditional identity, but still captures Arab values, Haidar said.

“It’s easier for (me and Khasawneh) because we grew up in (Syria),” Haidar said. “I definitely see the struggle, and I saw that before with my kids. My kids grew up in a city … (where) they knew they're different. But they're also the same so they just didn't know (who) they are.”

Haidar remembered when her children were younger, they wanted to blend in. Around Christmas time, Haidar’s family celebrated Eid, her kids at school said that they received gifts for Christmas.

“I got so heartbroken,” Haidar said. “You should be proud, but then I realize that (he) just wants to be the same like the other kids.”

It took her children years until high school and college when they started wearing traditional clothing, talking about Syria and designing art in Arabic writing, she said.

“They know that they have good values and yeah, they are different, but they're the same,” Haidar said. “At the end we're all humans, and they can see that we are good humans.”

Discrimination faced for Arab identity 

Khasawneh said she shows “additional layer of (her) identity,” when she wears hijab.

“I do experience some of the things related to Islamophobia,” Khasawneh said. “I've been through incidences … I think it's the most difficult part of my identity.”

When experiencing Islamophobia, Khasawneh said, “the question is not whether it happened or not, but how many times.”

Dabish said she personally never experienced any sort of discrimination towards herself, but she watched it happen to her family. For example, in an airport her brother was in a wheelchair. The airport staff checked his wheelchair for bombs, she said. 

“The biggest thing people should know is that you can’t judge an entire population based on … a few people,” Dabish said. 

A part of the problem, Dabish also shared, when she was in high school Dabish didn’t feel that people were educated on who Arab Americans are.

In her history class, Arab American history was discussed only briefly in the end of the academic year.

“Once we got to Arab Americans, we spent one class period on it,” Dabish said. “And then the first half of the class (teacher) showed us the opening scene from the original Aladdin…”

Corey shared times when he faced discrimination at elementry school as well. Corey was giving a presentation at class and showed a Palestinian flag. A teacher made him turn off the presentation and sit down. Later Corey remembered how a boy at school told him he was going to put his “Arab butt back to Saudi Arabia.” 

Importance of representation for Arab American identity

Corey said some things people should know about Arab countries is, they have “delicious food” and “great events.”

“With having all of these conflicts that you can only really hear about in the news … it's very important to be able to get personal insight into the actual cultures, into what's going on, so that you don't think that ever it's just a war torn country … full of corruption,” Corey said. “It's very easy to get that idea from watching the news.”

Corey said the Arab American community is not portrayed fairly in the news media. 

One of the things Haidar said the news media doesn’t show is how generous Arab American people are and how hospitable their culture is. 

“I believe one of the biggest things that the media … are pushing their own message about what's happening in Middle East,” Haidar said. “People are looking for democracy, not conflict. It's not a conflict. It's people wanting democracy, seeking democracy, just like American people. 

“They want the same thing. They want freedom. They want democracy … Instead of supporting these people and seeing them as people who are fighting for democracy and human rights, you're introducing them as terrorists who are involved in trouble and conflicts, which is very wrong.”

Jewel Larkins, an assistant director of MASS, who helped facilitate the event, said that representation of Arab Americans matters, because it reflects the student population.

We need to be able to celebrate the students for their culture, for their identity,” Larkins said.

This years Arab American Heritage Month has been filled with MASS programed events, having been around for several years and will return next April, she said.

To learn more about the Arab American Heritage Month, visit MASS’s website.

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