My life as an Arab American means loving a great nation that fears people like me | Opinion

In the sweltering summer of 2009, I entered my broadcast designer suite nestled in the basement of the historic NBC News building in Washington, D.C. This was home to “Meet The Press,” the longest-running show on American television.

Tacked to the glass door of my suite, a photograph of a scruffy, disheveled man against a crumbling wall greeted me. The man in the picture was Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Opinion

The photograph had my name printed underneath. I found myself not only likened to the world’s most infamous terrorist, but, arguably, the ugliest, too.

That night, I poured my heart out to my father who was 2,000 miles away, in San Francisco. The wound of betrayal from coworkers I considered friends was enormous. My mind wrestled with reporting my new terrorist-themed decor to Human Resources. Yet, my father cautioned me against doing so, calling it a joke made in poor taste. He underscored the value of having a great job at a reputable company and the risk of jeopardizing it if I reported the incident.

“For people like us, it’s best not to create waves,” my father said before ending the phone call. Heeding his advice, I masked my pain and returned to work the next day, pretending that the world hadn’t shifted beneath my feet.

From Middle Eastern sands to American lands

As an Arab-American who’s seen more random airport security checks than NFL fans have heard Taylor Swift references, I am writing this to highlight the escalating discrimination endangering not only our community, but the fabric of our diverse society.

In 1986, my family embarked on an immigration journey from the Middle East to the San Francisco Bay Area. My mother, a Christian from Iran, and my father, a Muslim born in Saudi Arabia, united to pursue the American dream for their two small children. My younger brother and I are proof that people from two countries that vehemently hate each other can coexist.

As a Middle Eastern immigrant growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I embraced the all-American childhood experience. I assimilated to Western fashion faster than you can say “fanny pack,” even testing the waters with an eyebrow piercing and bleached hair as a teenager, earning weeks of silent treatment from my parents.

Yet, my journey has taught me that feeling American doesn’t invariably equate to being American. I endured the greatest hits of clichéd stereotypes, microaggressions and the obligatory comparisons to Apu from “The Simpsons“ (even though Apu was supposed to be East Indian). This was the entry fee for living in the greatest country on Earth.

After 9/11, toll fares for Middle Eastern Americans rose sharply. My father, fearing bigotry-driven violence, suggested we identify as Hispanic. My old man’s apprehensions received a nod of validation as anti-Islamic hate crimes had soared 1600% from 2000 to 2001.

Grasping these statistics fails to unveil the true depth of the issue, as individuals from the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) regions are classified as “white” in the U.S. Census, rendering about 4 million people as footprints in a sandstorm — statistically invisible. “White, but without the privilege” is a common sentiment echoed by the Arab community. It took until January of 2023 for the Office of Management and Budget to propose adding a new combined race-ethnicity category for “Middle Eastern or North African” to the 2030 census.

The six-thousand mile long shadow

Amid the current upheavals in the horrific Israel-Gaza conflict, Arab American communities find themselves caught in a rerun of the post-9/11 era. The resurgence of Arab xenophobia is sweeping through political realms with the same nostalgia as a Creed reunion tour.

The situation is worsened by media outlets that scream, ‘Hide your kids, hide your wife; the Arabs are coming!’ This rhetoric turns public perception into a ‘War of the Worlds ‘-type hysteria, as seen in a recent, explosive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled ‘Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,’ portraying Dearborn, the city with the nation’s highest Arab population, as a terrorist enclave where hipsters drink cappuccinos and plot holy war at the local Jihad Java coffee shop.

Meanwhile, Fox News paints Arabs as Lord Voldemort riding a camel en route from the southern border to their audience’s white picket-fenced suburban home.

Predictably, divisive rhetoric carries tangible consequences. It has led to the murder of 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al Fayoume in Illinois, who was brutally stabbed 26 times by his family’s landlord, and the shooting of Hisham Awartani, a Brown University student of Palestinian descent, who is left paraplegic. As a parent to 10- and 8-year-old children who share both similar complexions and an Arabic last name, the visceral fear gives rise to a new generation of anxiety, echoing the apprehension that haunted my father over two decades ago.

To dismiss the prevailing bigoted rhetoric as a unilateral phenomenon would be a display of ignorance. Antisemitic incidents, including vandalism and physical assaults, surged in the same period.

Both Jewish and Arab communities find themselves unfairly burdened by guilt through association with a conflict in which they bear no responsibility.

A regrettable narrative outside their boundaries suggests a simple dichotomy that all Arabs hate Jews and vice versa. This characterization displays a fantastical portrayal, akin to labeling one community as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the other as The Foot Clan, their sworn enemies.

In a memorable scene from the 2009 mockumentary “Bruno,” comedian Sacha Baron Cohen plays Bruno, a flamboyant Austrian fashion reporter who confuses “Hamas,” the Islamist political and military organization, with “hummus,” the chickpea dish, during a discussion with ex-Mossad chief Yossi Alpher and former Palestinian Authority Minister of Labor Ghassan Khatib. This mix-up leads to an awkward but humorous clarification of the differences between Hamas and hummus.

Khatib later concedes, “We both (Khatib and Alpher) agree hummus is very healthy.” prompting Bruno to optimistically note, “So, we’re making progress!” This absurd scene underscores the essential truth that engaging in dialogue and fostering understanding among varied cultures is not merely achievable but also vital for cultivating harmony within society.

Years from now, should my son embrace fatherhood, my deepest wish is that he remains untouched by the ghosts that plagued his father and grandfather before him. If the journey begins with a bowl of hummus, so be it — I’ll take the first bite.

Sohail Al-Jamea is a creative director at McClatchy. He was part of the Miami Herald team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for covering the Surfside condo collapse. His 2017 documentary, “Hollywood’s Greatest Trick, “ an exposé on the plight of visual effects artists, was screened at six international film festivals.