Between Arab and American

Like many immigrants, Arab Americans negotiate the complexities of existing in a "hyphenated" identity. Since 1944, Arabs in the U.S. have been officially labeled as White, which the Census defines as anyone with "origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa." This legal designation was made when Whiteness equated with citizenship rights and was a classification that Arab immigrants successfully sued for in court. However, Arabs in the U.S. have never enjoyed the many privileges associated with Whiteness, particularly in the post-9/11 context when being identified as Arab left one susceptible to racial profiling, surveillance, and attack. Refusing this conflation of the Arab identity with Whiteness, civil rights groups successfully advocated for the creation of a MENA category on the 2030 census.

Like many in our community, our Mawtini narrators contend with the daily realities of being Arab in America, and of navigating both identities. Some express what it is like to "pass" as White, while others assert that their physical appearance, like wearing a hijab, always marks them as an "outsider." Some narrators lament their parents' desires to assimilate into American culture, never teaching them Arabic, while others discuss how they pass on their Arab culture and heritage, including their language, to their children. The timing of migration to America—both in terms of the historic period in which migration occurred and the phase of one's own life—plays a role in this process. Not all narrators negotiate the space between being Arab and being American the same way, but all engage with these questions as part of their daily lives.