Arabic language education in the United States has the potential to celebrate and engage thoughtfully with the diversity of Arabic language varieties and their speakers. An Arabic language classroom that embraces diglossia has many benefits, not least among them opportunities to engage heritage learners of Arabic. One of the challenges of this approach is that it requires teachers and students to confront the hierarchies of varieties of spoken Arabic as perceived by native speakers. Some varieties of spoken Arabic enjoy prestige, while others are stigmatized and considered “broken.” The language varieties prevalent among Black native speakers of Arabic tend to fall into the latter category. The curricula in most Arabic programs in the United States do not address this issue at all, putting heritage speakers of historically marginalized varieties of Arabic at a disadvantage in the Arabic language classroom. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of considering blackness in the context of Arabic language education. It draws on my experiences as a teacher of Arabic language and literature and the experiences of students, heritage and non-heritage. It reflects on language ideologies as they manifest themselves in Arabic language education, such as the practice of overtly or implicitly encouraging students to unlearn their home language. It also reflects on students’ experiences interacting with Arabic literature by modern and contemporary Black writers, including but not limited to highlighting the plurality within Arabic literary culture. Our experiences showcase the benefit of intentionally exploring modern Arabic literature beyond the Egyptian-centric canon and amplifying the voices of Black Arabic writers. Authors like Al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ, Amīr Tāj al-Sirr, and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Baraka Sākin invite students to engage with difficult knowledge, exploring themes of marginalization, oppression, and discrimination within local contexts. Reading Muḥammad al-Faytūrī’s poems invites global themes of Black solidarity. It also deals with issues of representation of the Arabic language, its speakers, and its cultural products, within the Arabic language curriculum.