SAN FRANCISCO — A coalition of Arab-American cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area have launched a grassroots organizing campaign designed to send a clear message to Washington: that they, along with every other Arab in America, are in fact Arab, and not white.
At issue is the format of the 2010 Census form, which has boxes for more than a dozen different racial categories but no racial or ethnic category for people of Arab descent.
In response, community activists have launched a grassroots canvassing campaign to encourage Arabs living throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to complete the 2010 Census by checking the “other” box in Section 9 and write in “Arab.”
The drive was launched at an organizing meeting last Sunday that brought together representatives and volunteers from local Arab social service and cultural organizations.
Loubna Qutami, a coordinator with the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC), one of the organizations behind the campaign, said for far too long, Arabs have been classified as “other,” “Caucasian,” or “white.”
“We don’t want to be subsumed under the category of white,” Qutami said. Arabs “don’t identify as white, and don’t identify as black either,” she added. “We’re still so misunderstood.”
I understand their motivation is to get Federal Funds to Muslim programs, but this is one issue where they are right. We could motivate Jewish communities to do the same, but our community has been co-opted by Holocaust era people who think that everything that came out of Hitler's mouth was garbage. Jews are genetically alike, but that isn't bad. Like usual Jewish people accept the terms of abuse. Race is an artificial term. I once took a 'C' in Jewish History at Carnegie Mellon University for refusing to acknowledge that there was no Jewish race ...but Jewish people are more likely to share genetic similarities then any people of a specific color. We wouldn't be so worried about the Arabs receiving Federal Funds if George W. Bush had not blurred the line between church and state. It remains questionable if we can consider hate speech a religion in the first place, but many of the well intending loons will say that Jew Hunting behind Gharkad trees is in fact an ancient faith. Since we know how this is going to break down we should remind ourselves that such things as Race and Religion are less about concrete concepts and a lot more fluid. when you agree to terms they must reflect the reality of the situation and not any narrow argument of logic. Arabs are indeed a group that needs to be accounted for.
