Arab- and African-Americans: Race and Inequality in the New Millennium

Introduction: Two Minority Experiences in One Nation

America is one of the most unique nations in the world from many angles. It is by far the wealthiest nation on earth — wealth accumulated through both moral and immoral, violent and nonviolent, justified and unjustified means. Yet amidst that wealth exists the reality that America is a melting pot. The nation's founding motto draws people from every corner of the world to its shores seeking a better life, and often a better life is exactly what they find.

The flip side of the melting pot is the unfortunate tension and complications that inevitably arise from bringing so many different people together in one place without designating a "master race" — as the Nazis infamously attempted to do in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Different groups are impacted differently, but throughout American history, the recurring pattern has largely been each individual ethnic minority's clashes with the white majority over a wide range of issues. By the middle of this millennium, whites in America will actually constitute a minority themselves, making it an open question whether these historical trends will change.

Individual minority groups in America face distinct challenges. A compelling example is the contrast between the experiences of African-Americans and Arab-Americans. African-Americans were enslaved for generations, and even after slavery was abolished, they were subjected to de facto discrimination for decades — followed by de jure discrimination for decades more. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, however, African-Americans had come closer to equality than at any previous point in their history. Although a large socioeconomic gap between African-Americans and the majority persists across nearly every relevant measure, the trend continues moving toward equality — however gradually.

Arab-Americans, by contrast, had generally experienced only the ordinary difficulties encountered by ethnic groups immigrating to the United States. Since September 11, 2001, however, they have faced severe challenges to their fundamental freedoms and privacy. Unlike the challenges facing African-Americans, those confronting Arab-Americans on a racial level are more sociological than economic. Where African-Americans struggle to find employment that keeps them above the poverty line, Arab-Americans encounter hatred and suspicion — from their fellow citizens and from the government alike. And unlike the gradual progress visible in the African-American experience, Arab-Americans in America are trending toward less racial equality.

Arab-Americans and the Erosion of Civil Liberties After 9/11

"Before September 11 we had almost succeeded in eliminating racial profiling. After September 11, it's a whole new world," says Michel Shehadeh of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in the western region of America. "One thousand Arab-Americans have already been detained and we don't know who they are or what charges have been brought against them." (Davis, 2001)

Of those 1,147 Arabs and Arab-Americans detained at the time Davis conducted her research, precisely zero had been charged with any formal offense connected to the tragedies of September 11. That number skyrocketed during the remainder of John Ashcroft's tenure at the Justice Department. (St. Petersburg Times, 2003) Yet this awareness did nothing to slow the pace of detentions. What it did do was provide moral, political, and — for the moment — legal sanction to stop, search, and detain any person who appears to be Arab.

Prior to September 11, a full 80% of Americans opposed racial profiling. Since that day, "There has been an immediate reversal of public opinion," laments Michelle Alexander of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. (Davis, 2001) Opinion polls now show that a disturbing 70% of Americans believe some form of racial profiling is necessary, desirable, and acceptable in order to ensure public safety.

In the weeks following September 11, The New York Times, Newsweek, and other mainstream publications ran articles quoting scholars and ordinary citizens alike who admitted — sometimes with embarrassment — that racial profiling seemed necessary and acceptable. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted on September 13, just two days after the attacks, revealed that 43% of respondents said they were more likely to be suspicious of people they believed to be of Arab descent. (Davis, 2001)

In later polls, 58% of respondents favored more intensive security checks for Arabs, and 49% supported special identification cards. Thirty-two percent alarmingly endorsed "special surveillance" of people of Arab descent. (Davis, 2001) Alexander also noted that "What was most disturbing was that African-Americans and Latinos agreed" that some form of racial profiling was acceptable. She cautioned, however, that few polls had been taken after the immediate week of the attacks, leaving open the question of whether those numbers shifted as the initial shock and fear subsided.

This is, unfortunately, not necessarily the case. The government has done little to dispel the notion that Arab-Americans should be regarded with suspicion, instead randomly imprisoning thousands of Muslim Americans of Arab descent without cause, holding them in secrecy, and separating them from their families. (ACLU, 2001)

Racial Profiling: From 'Driving While Black' to Targeting Arab-Americans

What gave the "Driving While Black and Brown" campaign its immediate resonance with so many supporters was its focus on the institutional dimensions of racism. The goal was not simply to discipline individual police officers who unfairly targeted drivers because of their race, but to dismantle an entire system of law enforcement premised on racial stereotypes.

The campaign's success resulted in part from its narrow focus on racial profiling during automobile stops — a strategic decision by its proponents to address the way race was used by law enforcement ostensibly to fight the war on drugs.

Today, the war on terror is generating a similar dynamic. "The war rhetoric is giving license to law enforcement to engage in racial profiling, just as it did in the war on drugs. Both wars create a 'by any means necessary' attitude that encourages law enforcement to target people based on race," says Alexander. She also recognized the need to broaden the campaign's focus in light of the increased profiling of people who appear Arab. "Many Arab-American organizations were not involved in the fight against racial profiling as we defined it before September 11 because we were not addressing the form of profiling that affects those communities." (Davis, 2001)

According to Davis, Michel Shehadeh was himself recently subjected to racial profiling while traveling to Washington, D.C. He was pulled out of line at the Orange County, California airport, questioned, and searched. "It was done in front of everyone's staring eyes," he said. "That made it a humiliating experience. They want to give a message to non-Arab-Americans that they're doing something about 'it.' This has nothing to do with security." (Davis, 2001)

Both President Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly condemned hate crimes against those who appear to be Arab, but the concurrent anxiety surrounding national security effectively sanctioned racial profiling in practice. Passengers deemed "Arab looking" — a category that has included South Asians and Latinos — have been asked to leave aircraft because fellow passengers and crew refused to fly with them. Sikh men, who have no connection to the Middle East, residing primarily in India and practicing a faith entirely distinct from Islam, have been denied the right to board aircraft because they refused to remove their turbans. Harmeet Dhillon, co-founder of the Sikh Communications Council, compared this to asking a woman to fly without her skirt. "It's humiliating and degrading," she said. (Davis, 2001)

African-Americans and Persistent Socioeconomic Inequality

The problems facing African-Americans are not traceable to recent history. From the moment Africans were brought to America as enslaved people against their will, that original injustice set in motion hundreds of years of inequality that have followed the community into the twenty-first century.

One of the most striking domains in which the gap between African-Americans and the majority persists is health. The legacy of racial and ethnic health disadvantages suffered by African-Americans — the second-largest minority group in the United States — constantly forces patients, health practitioners, and policymakers to reckon with the enduring effects of America's "slave health deficit." Infamous episodes like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study — in which African-Americans were exploited for scientific gain and their health deliberately sacrificed — continue to shape the healthcare choices of both African-Americans and their providers, against a backdrop of racist, classist, and paternalistic medical conduct that is publicly condemned throughout the industry but implemented in subtler, subversive ways. (Williams, 2002)

Conclusion: Diverging Trajectories, Shared Injustice

Both Arab-Americans and African-Americans face significant and compounding racial challenges as they move further into the new millennium. For African-Americans, the problems extend back to the era of slavery: reduced economic power, diminished social acceptance, and, as a direct consequence, reduced access to quality healthcare, as documented above. Yet the overall trend for African-Americans, however slow and uneven, is positive.

For Arab-Americans, the challenges are more recent but worsening. They are tied less to economics than to fundamental civil liberties — privacy, freedom from suspicion, and due process — as documented in the racial profiling research above. These challenges show no signs of abating and are likely to persist through a significant portion of the new millennium's early decades. Both communities deserve a national reckoning with the systems — legal, medical, and cultural — that sustain racial inequality in its many forms.