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Title: The Invisible American Half: Arab
American(1) Hybridity and Feminist Discourses in the 1990s
Author: Mervat F. Hatem, 1998
The Invisible American Half:
Arab
American(1) Hybridity and Feminist Discourses in the 1990s
Mervat F. Hatem
In the middle of the Gulf War, Bob David, a Michigan Republican congressman
used Arab women to offer an anti-Iraqi joke He asked: "What is the difference
between a catfish and Iraqi women?" In answer, he replied: one was a
fish and the other had whiskers and smells bad. Activist Arab American women
reacted very quickly to David's offensive joke by holding a press conference
the next day with a crate of catfish which they held up to photographers to
correct what the congressman knew about both catfish and Arab women.(2)
The joke showed the intersection of sexism and racism in U.S. attitudes toward
Arab culture and/or Arab women. The quick and assertive reaction by Arab American
women showed that in 1991 a new generation of Arab American feminists understood
the reciprocal effects of the devaluation of women and the racist denigration
of Arab culture. In this short essay I want to trace briefly the history of
Arab American feminism prior to the Gulf War. Next, I ,want to show how racism
and sexism during the war and its aftermath left their imprints on the agendas
of the community leading to post war reassertion of Arab American feminism.
Finally, I want to examine these different discourses. Conscious of the impact
that racism and sexism had on women, they developed a double critique of their
"Arabness" and "Americaness." This position placed Arab
American women firmly but uneasily within the camp of "women of color."
Arab American Consciousness and Arab American Feminism
Up until 1990, Arab American(3) political consciousness had been shaped by
the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its different wars. During and
after the 1967 war, overwhelming U.S. Support of the Israeli military effort
against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan galvanized the Arab American in middle class
and pushed its organizational effort. First, the Association of Arab American
University Graduates (AAUG) was formed in 1967 to speak for the group and
to educate the U.S. public about the Arab world.(4) In 1972, the National
Association for Arab Americans (NAAA) emerged as a political lobbying group.(5)
The American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC) followed in 1980 to
fight against the prevalent public defamation of Arab Americans in the United
States.(6)
U.S. support of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 unsettled the oldest
and most established Lebanese American community and challenged their belief
in a common Christian bond as a means of assimilation into the American mainstream.
For Lebanese Americans, both Christian and Muslim women, who were becoming
active in the U.S. womens movement, the attempt to mobilize opposition against
the war brought a rude awakening. In 1982, they asked the Third World caucus
of the National Women's Studies Association to condemn the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon. The caucus unanimously recommended such a resolution to its overwhelmingly
white delegates, who rejected it.(7) Subsequently, an article written by a
prominent(8) Euro-Jewish-American(9) member of the feminist establishment
for Ms. magazine accused Arab and Arab American women, along with other critics
of Israel, of being anti-Semitic. Despite many responses by Arab American
women to the article, the magazine, which served as a voice of the white mainstream,
did not acknowledge or publish any of their reactions.(10)
These encounters with different institutional representatives of the women's
movement persuaded Arab American women of the racist tendencies within the
feminist establishment. As one of them suggested, Arab American women were
treated as an inferior "other." Their right to express a different
view of Israel and of U.S. foreign policy towards the region was denied. In
discussions of the Middle East, Euro-American feminists imposed on Arab and
Arab American women an emphasis on the veil and cliterodectemy. These issues
were forced on Arab and Arab American women by Euro-American women who also
lectured them on the oppressiveness of their culture, establishing American
women's authority on how the liberation of women should proceed.(11)
The frustration and rejection felt by Arab American women were behind the
creation of the Feminist Arab-American Network in 1983. It represented a loosely
organized group of Arab American academics and activists who were committed
to increase public awareness of issues affecting Arab American feminists,
to eliminate negative stereotypes of Arabs particularly within the American
feminist community and to work in a coalition with our sisters in Arab countries
and to share resources and support among ourselves.(12) The Network also debated
how it could carve a space for itself within the American feminist community.
According to the founder of the Network lack of funding and clerical support
were behind its demise.(13)
Without discounting the importance of the reasons listed above for the demise
of the Network, its statement of purpose suggested others. With the negative
reaction of the U.S. feminist establishment, the Network was unable to consider
working with other women's groups that were similarly marginalized. Other
than educating the American public and the feminist community about Arabs
and Arab American feminists, the only coalitions that it considered were with
women in Arab countries. While in and of itself this was a worthy goal, it
shifted practical attention from the specific experiences of Arab American
women in the U.S. to the experiences of women in the Arab world whose social
and political conditions were different and distinct.
The rejection and lack of recognition experienced by Arab American feminists
were collectively felt by the larger community during the 1984 presidential
campaign. The Democratic contender, Walter Mondale, returned campaign contributions
from Arab Americans. (14) His democratic rival, Gary Hart, repaid a loan from
a Washington, D.C., bank that had Arab financial interests to dispel any connections
to the group. These experiences led to the creation in 1985 of the Arab American
Institute whose goal was to work towards greater Arab American participation
in the U.S. political system.(15) In its search for support of the Arab American
agendas at the local and national levels, the Institute found in African American
political figures and organizations, such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and
the Congressional Black Caucus, valuable allies during the 1988 elections.
At a time when no one within either major political party would support the
principle of a Palestinian state as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict,
Reverend Jackson's Rainbow Coalition put that issue on the agenda of the Democratic
party.(16)
It gave Arab Americans visible positions in its campaign. In exchange, the
community raised $700,000 for the campaign and delivered the votes of 50 delegates.(17)
Finally, the alliance between the Jackson campaign and the Arab American constituency
placed the community for the first time within the rainbow of colors that
included other "minorities." This was where the community and its
feminists stood when the Gulf crisis and then the War broke out.
Race and the Gulf War
Setting aside the Palestinian-Israeli question, the Gulf War concerns provided
an opportunity to focus attention on the troubled relations between Arab Americans
and the hegemonic culture and its political institutions. The Gulf War(18)
was the first regional war that did not involve a military confrontation between
Israel and other Arab states. The war pitted the U.S., backed by an international
alliance that included Arab states like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco,
against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait. In this sense, the war was
an American-Arab war: it pitted the U.S. against an Arab country (Iraq), but
cemented the alliance of some Arab states with the U.S. American policymakers
viewed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait as a threat to the security of the Arabian
Gulf's oil resources and their control by friendly Arab states. The U.S. led
international alliance successfully liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation
and reduced an industrial Iraq to preindustrial status.(19) It also dramatically
displayed the United States' political and military strength as the world's
only superpower. In the aftermath of the war, an unstable Pax Americana was
set up in the region.(20) It was supported by unpopular and undemocratic Arab
governments whose legitimacy was contested by their Islamist opponents. This
new level of U.S. military and political involvement in the affairs of the
region had ominous political consequences for Arab Americans.
At the outset of the Gulf crisis, the public discourse that mobilized the
American public for war initially focused on the past and present horrific
record of the Iraqi regime. The anti-Iraqi political discourse very quickly
deteriorated, however, into a broad anti-Arab one. The daily reporting, analysis,
and discussion of the crisis denigrated Arab culture, history, politics, and
character. The new anti-Arab discourse was both old and new. It tapped into
an existing latent reservoir of prejudice against Arabs (as treacherous, warlike
and cruel to women and children)(21) to describe the Iraqi regime as an enemy,
thus reasserting the public belief in the unflattering views of the entire
region and its people.(22) The fact that the governments of Egypt, Syria,
Morocco, and Saudi Arabia condemned Iraqi actions and supported U.S. war against
Iraq did not yield differentiated views of the region and its people. The
"Arabs" continued to be homogeneously represented as a cultural
and political "other."
Nowhere was the U.S. public's repudiation of the Arab "other" clearer
than in the way it asked Arab Americans to respond to the war. According to
one radio commentator, "In war there are no hyphenated Americans, just
Americans and non-Americans."(23) Given this view, it was not coincidental
that the media only sought "Arab protestors ... to voice opposition to
war."(24) In either case, Arab Americans' questionable loyalties were
highlighted. Arab Americans could not define themselves in nuanced or complicated
terms reflecting their greater familiarity with and sensitivity to the reality
of U.S.-Arab relations. Only crude choices and definitions were available.
One could support the war and in this way prove one's nationalist credentials
as an American. Or, one could oppose the war and be identified as un-American/
traitor/ enemy/ Iraqi/Arab. There was no place for the many Arab Americans
who simultaneously disapproved of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the U.S-military
plans for its reversal. Those who wanted the liberation of Kuwait through
political negotiations were considered at best foolish or, at worst, unwitting
agents of the Iraqi enemy. These views indicated the deeply held belief that
being both Arab and American was an oxymoran to the mainstream: one negated
the other.
The only groups to break with this public discourse on the war were activist
people of color. Due to the diminishing opportunities for advancement available
to this segment of the population, "many women as well as Blacks, Asians,
Latinos and Native Americans opted for the military as a road for professional
advancement and education."(25) As a result these communities were over-represented
in the U.S. army in comparison to the rest of the population. For example,
thirty percent of troops serving in the Gulf were African American and eleven
percent were women nearly half of which were black.(26) For the major representatives
of these groups and their kin, the political settlement of the conflict made
social and national sense.
Unfortunately, the premium put on nationalist reactions to the war prevailed.
It contributed to the dramatic increase in the number of hate crimes against
Arab-Americans. According to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC), there were five violent attacks against Arab Americans during the period
from January to August of 1990.(27) This number rose to forty from August
to December; it escalated to sixty incidents during January and February of
1991 when the fighting broke out.(28) Equally significant was the FBI's decision,
before the war, to interview/ interrogate two hundred Arab American business
and community leaders across the country. The stated purpose was to offer
members of the group protection and to also ask them if they personally knew
any terrorists! Here, the stereotype of "Arabs as terrorists" became
the basis of the FBI's interviews. The political views and beliefs of individual
Arab Americans were no longer private matters protected by the law. The leadership
and other members of the community were suspect as representatives of a group
whose loyalties were suspect. They were suspected of knowing recruits for
"terrorist" operations by the opponents of the U.S. and/or of giving
them support. In either case, Arab Americans were a national security concern.
This discourse continued to define Arab Americans in the post-war period.
Islamist attacks on the Arab states that supported the Pax Americana in the
Middle East led to the suspicion that Arab Americans could become surrogates
of these new international enemies. The group was misrepresented as homogeneously
Muslim and anti-American. This disregarded the fact that many Arab Americans
were Christian (e.g., Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Christians, and Iraqi Caldians)
and that many American Muslims were not Arab (e.g., African Americans, Asian
Indians, and Pakistanis) and that many who were opposed the Islamists. The
arrest of Arab American Muslims of Palestinian and Egyptian origins in the
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York seerned to lend credence
to the U.S.'s suspicious and narrowly defined views of Arab Americans as American
Muslims and as internal enemies.
Two years later, the investigation of the bombing of the federal building
in Oklahoma City showed how these deep suspicions contributed to the very
precarious political standing of Arab Americans. Without much evidence to
support their claims, the early reports by the U.S. media and a variety of
local and national public figures blamed Middle Eastern terrorists for the
incident. Some in the American public suggested putting Arab Americans in
internment camps, just as the government did to Japanese Americans in World
War Two.(29) A Palestinian American computer programmer was held as a suspect,
freed, then reapprehended because he happened to be traveling from Oklahoma
City to Jordan on the day of the bombing.(30) The homes of Arab American families
in the Oklahoma City area were attacked. Arab American school children were
taunted by classmates who told them to go back to where they came from.(31)
Even after the arrest of white Americans with no links to Muslims, some callers
to a radio talk how in the area refused to believe that Muslims were not responsible!(32)
Not only did this indicate the depth of American suspicions of Arab Americans
and American Muslims, but it also showed how these suspicions persisted even
when contradicted by the facts.
An American Muslin, summed up the dilemmas facing the community in the following
way: "Thank God it was not a Middle Eastern person this time, but even
if it had been that does not mean that we are all terrorists anymore than
violence by members of the Irish Republican Army makes all Catholics dangerous."(33)
Unfortunately, discrimination against Arab Americans and American Muslims
in the U.S. worked by setting Arabs and/or Muslims apart as different from
the rest of us. In this way, one could make statements about them that would
be considered ridiculous or slanderous had they been made about any other
groups. In short, the Gulf War and political developments that followed it
showed the proliferation of old and new forms of racism against Arab Americans
in the United States.
Gender and the Gulf War
Anti-Arab racism camouflaged sexism as another important component of the
contempt Americans feel for Arab culture. It made it difficult for Arab American
women to begin the exploration of the difference gender made in the position
one had in the community and the formulation of its agenda. The politically
precarious position of the Arab American community during the war led to feelings
of anxiety, fear, and danger among its members. In response, the community
relied on group solidarity and the privileging of collective concerns as defense
mechanisms. Racism was the defined as the primary problem while there was
silence around the sexism with which the hegemonic culture and its institutions
viewed and treated Arab American women, or the way men and women were given
very gendered roles in the defense of the community. The result, conscious
or unconscious, was continued patriarchal control of Arab American institutions
arid definitions of the group's agenda, problems, and strategies.(34)
The Gulf War presented members of the community with a major ethnic dilemma.
It pitted their Arab and American identities against one another. Arab American
men and women reacted to this development in simultaneously shared and distinct
ways. While most disapproved of the Iraqi regime and its policies, they were
divided about what the U.S. should do about it. Some supported U.S. military
intervention against this repressive regime, putting American interests ahead
of any ethnic sentiments. Most were opposed, however, to U.S. military intervention
and stressed the potentially devastating military and human costs of the war.(35)
For Iraqi Americans, in particular, the prospect of having relatives fighting
in both the Iraqi and the U.S. armed forces constituted a form of fratricide
that provoked unbearable anxiety.(36) Many in the larger community voiced
fear over how the war would precipitate a backlash against Arab Americans
in the United States. For some, this was a question of personal safety; for
others, the primary concern was the safety of their small businesses.(37)
The FBI's "interviews" of Arab Americans before the war broke out
reinforced the group's sense of danger. In media discussions of this event,
which underlined the implication this action had for the civil rights of the
group, there was silence on why the FBI agents chose to interview Arab American
business and community leaders along with their wives. It could be said that
the FBI considered Arab American men and women to be equally suspect. In most
of the cases, the wives were not politically active. As both Arab and/or American
women, they were considered by the FBI as extensions of their husbands. Only
in one case was the wife the president of a local chapter of the Arab-American
Discrimination Committee and could be considered a separate source of information.(38)
What is clear is that these Arab and American women were questioned because
of their relation to these men. The FBI did not treat these Arab and American
wives as separate individuals. The American social construct of wife, which
guided the FBI's behavior does not accord a woman separate legal standing
but assumes that she is an extension of her husband. By not acknowledging
such sexist connotations, the U.S. media seemed silently to accept them.
Arab American civil rights organizations did not question this assumption
or action either. Like similar U.S. organizations, the Arab American ones
largely had men as their official spokesmen. They assumed the important patriarchal
role of public protectors of the rights of the community. (39) The Arab American
men in charge of these organizations took on the tricky task of pressuring
the patriarchs of the majority to uniformly respect the definition of the
rights of citizenship. With the FBI, the policing arm of the state, they protested
the use of ethnicity to deny members of their groups their right to privacy
and the presumption of innocence until guilt was established. With the larger
public, they argued cultural differences should not be used to undermine these
legal rights. Yet, it was clear that cultural difference was the reason why
minority patriarchs, as protectors of the community, were less able to defend
their community against the attacks of the majority. As minority patriarchs,
they had a subordinate status to white, Anglo-Saxon patriarchs who set the
cultural standards of masculinity and who were able to provide better protection
to members of their community.
The dilemma for these Arab American spokesmen/patriarchs, which was presented
as that of the community as a whole, lay in how they could reconcile their
minority status with the majority cultural (patriarchal) views and roles.
As a second generation Yemeni American factory worker at General Motors in
Michigan put it: "We are looking out of two windows. We love our people
here, but we love our people there too. We are existing in two worlds, but
one of the things that hurts the most is how little people in our world here
really know about the world there." (40) In this statement, a hybrid
masculine perspective of the problem is offered – a product of male experiences
in two cultures. Clearly, there was equal identification with and comfort
in these two cultural/patriarchal worlds even in the midst of the Gulf crisis.
Despite their difference, Arab American men felt at home in both. The threat
to this doubly privileged masculine existence came from the devaluation of
one by the other. The goal was to eliminate the sources of misunderstanding
and tension to preserve the privileged masculine gaze that these windows offered.
Although this problem was described as a collective one, the interests of
Arab American women would not be satisfactorily attended to through a simple
elimination of cultural misunderstandings. Because they occupied subordinate
positions in both cultures, their problems required the critique of these
cultural systems of meaning, and then effective change.
For some Arab American Christian men, whose families had immigrated to the
U.S. at the turn of the century, the solution to the above problems facing
Arab Americans was assimilation. The patriarchal anxiety that resulted from
the negotiations of different cultural definitions of masculinity was eliminated
by emphasizing Christianity as the common bond with the hegemonic American
culture and accepting the U.S. view of Arabness as synonymous with an alien
and antagonistic Islam. For example, a prominent lawyer declared his full
support of President Bush and, as proof of his cultural assimilation, reiterated
the U.S. view of Saddam Hussein as an international thug.(41) A similar reaction
came from a car salesman who, in addition to declaring his love of the U.S.,
volunteered the following assessment of the problems facing Arab Americans:
"If there is a misperception of Arab, I think it is our fault. It is
not the WASP's fault. I think it is the Arab Americans of today, who some
of them can be awfully obnoxious. I do not even like them and they are my
people." (42)
For many Arab Americans, the condemnation of Saddam Hussein's repressive regime
was not particularly problematic. The demonization of Hussein as a Hitler
or an international thug was. It evoked the stereotypical image of Arabs and/or
Muslims as outlaws or terrorists. These were problematic views that many were
not very interested in reinforcing in the imagination of the U.S. public.
For many older immigrants, who were Christian, assimilation into WASP culture
was desirable. It was the historical strategy used by that generation. It
was not workable for Muslim Arab Americans for whom assimilation was hard
or not desirable. The hegemonic views of the Muslim Arab Americans as responsible
for their own victimization was used by some Christian Arab Americans to differentiate
themselves from this hated group. It revealed the cultural and the generational
divisions within the community and how some Christian Arab American men used
the hegemonic definition of Arabness to devalue their Muslim counterparts.
By setting themselves apart, they hoped to be treated differently. Unfortunately,
the cost of this form of assimilation was alienation from other Arabs and
the diverse Arab cultural heritage.
For Arab American women, a different set of dilemmas shaped their response
to the war and the attacks against the community. Many women experienced both
conflicts through the effects that they had on their families, neighborhoods,
and communities. While many Arab American men negotiated with the majority
groups and the government on behalf of the community or debated the regional
and international politics of the war, most Arab American women placed their
energies at the service of families that were traumatized by these events.
In some cases, the war took parents away from their children and pressured
other women to act as surrogates for the absent caretakers.(43) In other instances,
women experienced the war as the personal trauma of sending daughters, sisters,
sons and/or husbands to fight in the Gulf.(44) The possible loss of sons,
husbands, and now female kin, along with the disruption of their lives and
the doubling of their family responsibilities took their toll. At the same
time, adults needed to be available to younger children who were feeling the
disruption just as intensely.
On the home front, many Arab American professional women provided specialized
care to the community as psychologists or physicians. Academics and community
activists chronicled the way the community was reacting to events connected
to the war. They reported and explained the feelings of anger, fear, hurt,
and despair that made the war and its aftermath part of their durational collective
memory.(45) They also defended the culture against numerous attacks. Community
activists were particularly sensitive to the hostility shown to Arab American
women by the American public. One reported how some of her women relatives
in Michigan, who adhered to an Islamic mode of dress, feared that their appearance
in public places during the war would provoke male violence against them as
women and as visible symbols of their culture. (46) These Muslim women's fears
clearly indicated that male violence against women in the U.S., combined with
cultural prejudice was a problem that was specific to them as Arab Americans.
Once the war was over, Arab American women called for healing the divisions
within the community.(47) In all the above ways, they emerged as an important
voice for the community during its hour of need.
In short, the war and the anti-Arab attacks against the community that accompanied
it made it possible for U.S. and Arab American institutions not to acknowledge
or to react to sexist actions and views that affected Arab American women.
The problems that were specific to women went largely unacknowledged, unreported,
and unaddressed. The war also reinforced the gendered roles that Arab American
men and women played in serving the community During the crisis, most of the
energies of Arab American women have been devoted to taking care of traumatized
families and communities. While this delivered important emotional and social
resources needed to survive the Gulf crisis, it also contributed to enhanced
patriarchal control of community agendas. With women busy taking care of families,
neighborhoods, and communities, the men and their organizations proceeded
to define the problems facing the group. In claiming to speak for a community
that was not differentiated by gender, they unconsciously as well as consciously
maintained existing gendered relations of power. U.S. reporting of the FBI's
interrogation of Arab American wives as extensions of their husbands did not
question its sexist assumptions. In the discussion of nation or international
crises, the reporting of and commentary on the sexist behavior of the security
apparatusof the state took a back seat. While the war highlighted the conflict
of interest between the majority (Anglo) patriarchs and their Arab American
counterparts, cultural nationalism reinforced the patriarchal control that
bothmaintained of their community agendas.
Hybridity and the Quest for New Directions: Arab American Feminist Discourses
in the 1990s
Following the end of the war, there were numerous attempts by Arab American
women to examine how the war had influenced their self definition, the analysis
of their problems, and possible strategies of social change. In this debate,
generational, cultural, and political differences contributed distinct discourses
on what Arab-American feminism stood for. The earliest feminist attempt to
analyze the way the war influenced Arab American women's definition of themselves
came from the older and more established segment. It offered a U.S. nationalist
perspective on what it means to be Arab American. Elmaz Abinader, a self-proclaimed
feminist who traces her family history to Lebanese Christian immigrants who
came to the U.S. before the Second World War, presented her own experience
as a paradigm.(48) While she noted how an Arab surname and complexion led
to harassment by the authorities at U.S. airports, she highlighted her identity
as a native-born American. The Arab part in Arab American signified being
knowledgeable about the region and having sympathy for the woes of its women.
She resented, however, the way other Americans treated Arab Americans as Arabs
who were not different from those in the old world. She took pride in how
other Arabs identified her as an American. As an Arab American woman, she
set itself apart from that of other Arab and/or Muslim women (49). Their traditions,
religion and patriarchal culture were not hers. She considers American-born
Christian women of Arab ancestry as more liberated than those who were born
in Arab countries, including many recent Muslim immigrants. This school of
Arab American feminism internalizes U.S. views of Arab culture as patriarchal/
restrictive and of Arab women as its submissive victims and legitimate objects
of U.S. criticism and attack. Assimilation into U.S. society has been seen
as a means of combatting Arab sexism and of claiming for Arab American women
the privileged status of Western feminists.(50)
In contrast to this older, but nevertheless still current definition of American
feminism as the solution to the problems of Arab women, the anthology of Arab
American and Arab Canadian feminist writings titled Food for Our Grandmothers
(1994) offers the novel perspectives of a new generation of women, including
many Christians. It questions the feasibility of assimilation or passing for
white.(51) Many of the contributors recognize that in a race-conscious American
society, Arab Americans are always identified and treated like people of color
and that some of their struggles with the hegemonic culture that has devalued
them are similar to the experiences of other minorities.(52) This self-conscious
definition of Arab Americans and Arab American women as members of an ethnic
minority represents a break with older attitudes and strategies. It represents
a new emphasis on their hybrid cultural character as at once Arab and American.
The Arab component is not only shaped by the past and present history of their
countries of origin, their diverse ethnic/cultural traditions, but also by
the history of Arabs' immigration to the U.S. and the positions they occupy
here. The American component is largely shaped by widespread intercultural
marriage, the experience of being a cultural and a religious minority, and
the treatment of Arabs and/or Arab Americans by the hegemonic culture as a
cultural "other."
Because of this distinct history and position, Arab American feminism has
not sat comfortably within either of these cultures. It offers a hybrid perspective
with all that this adjective signifies: the ambiguous cultural character,
the multiple cultural mutations, and the equally diverse politics. As such,
it promises a conscious double critique of both the Arab and the American
determinants of women's experience/identity. By focusing on the analysis of
the "conflicted interaction of Arab and American cultures"(53) and
the particular forms of intersection between sexism and anti-Arab racism,
Food for Our Grandmothers promises a new agenda.
This new discourse on what it is to be Arab American highlighted the rewarding
potential of forming alliances between Arab Americans and other people of
color, especially with African-Americans. This will not be an easy alliance
because of historical and cultural factors.(54) Many African Americans associate
Arabs with the East African trade in slaves and view them as participating
in the historical exploitation of Africa and its people. Some Arabs have been
equally shaped by the existence of white and black slaves in their pre modern
societies into very race-conscious individuals. For those who are more conservative
on race- and class-conscious, an alliance with other minorities is hard to
accept in their quest for mobility. On the question of Islam, there are bases
for both alliance and conflict: since approximately fifty percent of Muslims
in the U.S. are African-American, Islam represents a common bond between two
communities; yet many African-Americans share the American stereotypes about
Islam and its treatment of women. Some African-American nationalists consider
Islam not to be an African religion. It is instead the religion of the Arabs
who are outsiders to the continent. In a similar vein, many Arab Muslims are
puzzled by the racial views and positions taken by the Nation of Islam. In
short, while American racism and sexism might provide the basis for strong
alliances with other people of color, there are many historical, cultural,
and political considerations that make sympathy more difficult than one might
think.
Finally, a naive liberal feminism, in the name of celebrating cultural diversity,
has attempted to romanticize the Arab American experience, including its history
of racism and cultural stereotyping. In Arabian Jazz,(55) the author
Diana Abu-Jaber revelled in a fictional account of the imperfections of Arab
American experiences including the celebration of the hegemonic cultural stereotypes
of the groups and its racist portrayal.(56) In using many of the cliched representations
of Arabs, Arab Americans and/or Muslims as aspects of their reality that have
entertainment value,(57) she claimed that these fictional accounts celebrated
cultural diversity. She also claimed to follow in the footsteps of Toni Morrison
and Alice Walker in offering different perspectives on the community and its
experiences.(58) In invoking Morrison and Walker as literary models, she was
significantly silent on how their fictional works also offered powerful critiques
of racism in the U.S. Not only is this critique absent from her accounts of
the Arab American experience, but she viewed the attempt by one critic to
refocus attention on racism(59) as an appeal to political correctness i.e.
"to prescribe on specific approved tale." (60) Instead, she offered
Arab American critics the liberal promise "of celebrating the many ways
that people can open up and write their lives." (61)
While the discussion of racism does not preclude the opening up of a community
for internal critique, laughing at its imperfections or giving its members
agency, all are necessary for a complex appreciation of a collective social
experience. The idea of individuals freely writing their lives without reference
to the social relations of power that shape their experiences is at best naive
and at worst a defence of the hegemonic liberal ideology and its strategy
of domination.
In a review she offered of the feminist anthology Food for Our Grandmothers,
she offered another problematic liberal position designed to contain the subversive
and critical insights of the new discourse which defines Arab American women
relation to "whiteness" and its system of power relations. In discussing
the political dilemma faced by Arab American feminists who are asked to align
themselves with "white women" vs. "women of color," Diana
Abu-Jaber observes: "No one points out that such categories are social
constructs, the kind that form the underpinnings of prejudice. In other words,
thinking in terms of race may be inherently racist. The challenge ... is how
to celebrate heritage without participating in the same form of classification
and racial otherness." (62) In this view of liberal society, it is possible
to treat the category of "white women" and that of "women of
color" as equally racist. Relations of power captured by these categories
are lost in this equation. More seriously, Abu-Jaber's view entertains the
possibility that it is possible in U.S. liberal and racist society to escape
thinking in racial terms. In fact, the fight against racism requires one to
critically uncover the relations of power implicit in the dominant categories
as part of the effort to challenge them. For liberal feminism, the question
of power is skirted by upholding the illusion that individual choices can
transcend problematic categories and realities.(63)
Conclusion
During the last ten years, the Arab American community and its women have
begun to move in new political and intellectual directions. Through the Rainbow
coalition in the 1988 presidential elections, politically minded Arab American
formed successful alliances with other people of color and through them were
able to further their community's agenda. Two years later, the Gulf Crisis
then the War served to highlight the common interests and views that Arab
Americans shared with other minority groups. Despite the participation of
large numbers of African American and Latino soldiers in the war, these groups
were also significantly represented among the anti-war activists who underlined
the human costs of the war and the disproportionate share of these costs their
communities were asked to shoulder. Following the war, a new generation of
Arab American feminists, who pondered the impact that the war had on their
community and other communities of color, began to develop a new discourse
that theorizes the similarities and differences that they shared with women
of color.
This is a development that some segments within the community and its women
do not view with favor. The advocates of a liberal feminist discourse have
already tried to disarm this new discourse with the claim that the identification
with women of color perpetuates racial thinking and politics. There is also
evidence that Arab American men have used the racist attitudes within the
community to discredit the mobilizing effort of this new feminist group.(64)
If you add to this the fact that some women of color are reluctant to acknowledge
Arab American women as members of a distinct minority with its own concerns,(65)
then one can have a clear appreciation of the difficult struggle ahead. This
is a struggle that is nevertheless worthwhile. The discourse that defines
Arab American women as women of color gives a new impetus for the discussion
of racism not just as a problem facing the community, but also as a problem
within the community. The fight against the racist attitude and practices
within opens the door to the discussion of homophobia and the hostility some
members of the community show towards Arab American gay men and Lesbian women.
These problems which are internal to the community undermines its ability
to mobilize against the racism of the hegemonic culture and to build successful
coalitions with other groups and communities with the U.S. political system.
The fight against these problems provide important levers for overcoming the
"partitioned"(66) and "ghettoized"(67) existence that
have dissipated the collective and intellectual energies of Arab Americans
as people of color in the U.S. The attempt to establish historical and representational
connections without ignoring the differences that make each singular promises
to enhance the ability of the group to effectively develop new discourses
and alliances capable of challenging the hegemonic culture and forces they
face in the U.S.