This panel examines the ways that Trump era policies represent both continuity and change for Arab and Muslim Americans, and the ways in which their treatment increasingly convergences with other racialized US populations. One paper traces the emergence and normalization of the national surveillance state under Bush and Obama, distinguishing Trump policies that represent consolidation and those that signal departure, highlighting the ways these policies also target other US populations. Another paper demonstrates the continuities of US Empire and anti-Arab racism from the Bush Administration through Obama to the current moment through a comprehensive overview of Obama era policies. Such policies include systematic discrimination in immigration and border policy and refusal to speak out against Islamophobia. Obama maintained pro-Israel policies, pioneered the extrajudicial executions of US citizens on presidential order, conducted mass deportations, and avoided public association with Muslims or other people of color. The similarities and differences between Middle Eastern American civil rights advocacy efforts during Bush, Obama, and early Trump eras are explored in another contribution. The Bush era and much of the Obama era were characterized by a "color-blind" approach, favoring religious freedom to fight discriminatory policies. More recently, race-conscious advocacy emerged as recognition that Islamophobia was a form of racism grew. The paper explores potential solutions as the Trump era threatens to close off civil rights avenues of relief. Census data on persons from the Middle East is examined in another paper, framed in historic and present day contexts of immigration, race and identity and providing a critical consideration of the pros and cons of including a MENA ethnic category in the decennial Census. The final paper sets the proposed MENA Census category within the history of counting racialized populations and Arab/Muslim American securitization. Since Arab advocacy for such a category began in the 1990's Arab and Muslim Americans have been on all kinds of lists: no-fly lists, special registration lists, persons of interest lists, FBI lists, and so on, institutionalizing their racialized status as a threat to American interests. More recently, now President Trump advocated for a Muslims registry and ordered immigrant and refugee bans. This context alters the proposed MENA Census category's meaning and renders compliance questionable and risky. More broadly, the Trump Administration's unabashed, open championing of white privilege has brought convergence to the distinct racialized histories of all people of color, positioning them under the singular umbrella of brown/black threat.
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Dr. Louise A. Cainkar
Arab American and Muslim racialization are socio-political processes tied to the rise of US empire, Zionism, and the notion of foreign threat. These processes differ in timing and pretext than those experienced by Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, who were racialized as part of a domestic, white colonial settler project. This difference produced a number of socio-political outcomes. When the list of officially recognized minority groups in the US was produced in 1977, Arabs were not on it, largely for these historic reasons and because access to white privilege left them comparably advantaged. Their “American experience” was thus not subject to government mandated statistical monitoring for disadvantage and progress. In the 1990’s Arab American activists starting “lobbying” the US Census Bureau to create a statistical category allowing for data collection and monitoring. This quest for recognition was widely supported by grassroots Arab American organizations who faced barriers to funding due to their inability to demonstrate “need.” Some twenty years later, in 2015, the Bureau signaled that it was considering the creation of a MENA category. In the intervening years, however, Arab and Muslim Americans were increasingly “counted” by being placed on all kinds of security lists: no-fly lists, special registration lists, persons of interest lists, FBI lists, and Census zip code lists, firmly institutionalizing their racialized status as one thing: a threat to American interests and to Americans, a position mirrored in public opinion polls. President Trump’s advocacy for a Muslim registry and bans on Syrian refugees and immigrants from 7 Muslim majority countries must be placed in this line of continuity. This sequence alters the original meaning of the 2020 MENA Census category, from one that monitors disadvantage and progress to one that measures threat, rendering compliance with it both questionable and risky. At the same time, the Trump Administration’s unabashed, open championing of white, straight, male, Christian privilege has brought convergence to the distinct histories of all US people of color: a singular umbrella of brown/black threat encapsulates them. This climate has changed the organizing context for Arab and Muslim Americans, who stood alone much of their American history. Furthermore, little has changed for members of these groups, despite statistical monitoring, signaling that state indexing serves the myths of fairness and racial progress under white privilege. This paper traces these histories, the meaning of being counted, and Arab American centrality to a new awakening.
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Dr. Kristine Ajrouch
Immigration to the United States continues to elicit debate and interest among policy makers and researchers alike. Of particular significance is the historical tie of immigration policy to national origins and to the evolving racial dynamics of politics in the United States. This paper will focus on the sociological meanings of identity and the importance of context to provide a critical analysis of links between immigration and race in the U.S. The analysis will begin with a historical overview of immigration and resulting policies, comparing and contrasting the Trump era stance to earlier time periods as a means to situate the current status of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern Americans. Next, drawing from a series of multivariate statistical analyses using data available from the U.S. decennial Census and American Community Surveys, an overview of recent findings around topics of gender, immigration and socio-economic achievement, identity, ethnic heterogeneity, and health of Arab Americans will be presented. Novel findings include: 1) region of origin matters for men, and not women, concerning socio-economic achievement; 2) immigrant and citizenship status predict whether Arab Americans identify with Arab-only ancestry; 3) ancestry influences identity so that those who report Syrian and Lebanese ancestry are most likely to also report being mixed with ‘whites’ as opposed to ‘blacks’ if they ever mixed with non-Arabs; 4) contrary to the healthy immigrant effect hypothesis, immigrant Arab Americans aged 65 and above report worse functional health than their U.S. born counterparts. Discussion of these findings will include the strengths and challenges inherent to using currently available means to identify Arab Americans. In sum, this paper will draw from historical and present day contexts of immigration, a social constructionist approach to the politics around race, as well as the current availability of U.S. Census data on Arab Americans to end with a critical consideration of the pros and cons of including a separate Middle East and North African (MENA) ethnic category in the decennial Census questionnaire.
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Dr. Danielle Haque
This paper analyzes the historical, immediate, and continuing impact of the US surveillance state on Muslim and Arab Americans, immigrants, and refugees. Utilizing feminist and critical race theoretical frameworks, it examines how mechanisms of state surveillance are tied to systemic forms of discrimination with regard to gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, legal status, and nation of origin. Foregrounding recent events such as Trump’s January 27, 2017 executive order or “Muslim Ban”, documented plans to focus domestic Countering Violent Extremism programs exclusively on Muslims, and systems of identification and registry including the no-fly list, this paper works at the intersection of legal and surveillance studies, looking at the immediate, legal, and material impact on Muslim communities and individuals under the Trump administration. By analyzing the language of Executive Order 13769, CVE and Homeland Security program rhetoric, and legal registration systems, I look at how enhanced surveillance techniques on Muslim populations enact socio-political disciplines inflected by Christian-secular values of appropriate modern religious practices. I argue that recent policies enforce an exclusionary citizenry through racialized immigration policies, Islamaphobic political rhetoric, and the promotion of specific economic forms. It traces their emergence and departure from earlier Bush and Obama era policies that further normalized and consolidated the national surveillance state, as well as their interactions with policies that target other US populations. Finally, I look at how these mechanisms are being critiqued and co-opted as tools of performance in social and artistic frameworks.
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Dr. Erik Love
This paper offers an analysis of Middle Eastern American civil rights organizations’ efforts to confront racist Islamophobia over the past decade and a half based upon qualitative research including interviews and content analysis. It describes the strategic “racial dilemma” posed by the racial politics that have dominated US elections and policymaking throughout this period. This racial dilemma comes about due to the lack of mainstream acceptance of Islamophobia as a reprehensible form of racism, meaning that civil rights advocates cannot easily make claims that discriminatory policies and programs are morally wrong as well as ineffective. As a result, even amid the rapid expansion of policies and practices that systematically discriminated against Middle Eastern Americans, civil rights advocates struggled to find a foothold in political or policy circles. Tracing the similarities and differences between advocacy efforts in three periods—the Bush, Obama, and early Trump eras—shows that this racial dilemma has precluded several strategic options for advocates as they tried to expand civil rights protections for Middle Eastern Americans. Civil rights advocacy in the Bush era largely conformed to “color-blind” ideology, with advocates turning to religious freedom and other frames instead of racism to argue against discriminatory policies, and this enabled some victories. For much of the Obama era, this “color-blind” approach remained dominant, but some race-conscious advocacy began to emerge in its later years. Finally, the Trump era threatens to close off some of the avenues that had been available for advocates in the Bush and Obama eras. State agencies may reconfigure or cancel their so-called outreach and civil rights enforcement efforts, while extending their so-called counterterrorism and national security efforts. This may necessitate significant strategic shifts among Middle Eastern American advocates in the years ahead. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of potential strategic solutions to the racial dilemma presented during and after the expansion of Islamophobic racism seen in 2016 US elections.
