Reaction Statement
Module 6: Constructing Difference and Deculturalization
By now, you should have a grasp on ideas that influenced the foundational structures of United States schooling. We are going to look at a lot of different perspectives of difference this week. After reading the pdf for this module, I ask that you review the series of media clips from UnNatural Causes. This is a critical moment in the semester because we start making historical connections to the current moment and it prepares us for the upcoming modules that zones in on the ideas of equality and equity.
References
Spring, J. (2014). The American school: A global context from the puritans to the Obama administration (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Tozer, S., Senese, G., & Violas, P. C. (2013). School and society: Historical and contemporary perspectives (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Module 6: Reading Expectations
The reading expecations for Module 6: Constructing Difference – Politics, Economics, and the “Science” of Inequality, Part II are:
Choose one of the following pdfs: “Race, Politics, and Arab American Youth” by El Haj pdf or “Reclaiming the Gift” by McCarty;
? View all of the media clips associated with UnNatural Causes;
? Listen to the This American Life audio Act 1: If you are not able to listen within D2L, please copy and paste the following link into your web browser:
? http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/322/shouting-across-the-divide
Read El Haj_Race Politics and Arab American Youth the second attachment
Listen to article http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/322/shouting-across-the-divide
Watch videos
Description of Assignment:
Reflective reaction paper and questions/comments for discussion (3 pts. each) – Approximately one-page paper (single spaced, 10-12 pt. font) in response to the assigned readings and daily content that includes at least two critical questions for discussion. Please do not provide a mere summary of the readings. Instead, please provide a thoughtful, scholarly reaction to the readings/content. Your reaction may include but is not limited to areas of agreement/disagreement, affirmation (or you can offer a counter argument with outside academic resource support), or other influences/connections. Your reaction statements should represent critical reflective thought.
http://epx.sagepub.com
Educational Policy
DOI: 10.1177/0895904805285287
Educational Policy 2006; 20; 13
Thea Renda Abu El-Haj
Race, Politics, and Arab American Youth: Shifting Frameworks for Conceptualizing Educational Equity
http://epx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/1/13
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Section 1: Politics and the
Human Context
Race, Politics, and
Arab American Youth
Shifting Frameworks for
Conceptualizing Educational Equity
Thea Renda Abu El-Haj
Rutgers University
Educators concerned with creating equitable school environments for Arab
American students must focus on how contemporary global and national politics
shape the lives of these youth and their families. Arab immigrants and
Arab American citizens alike experience specific forms of racial oppression
that hold implications for school curricula, practices, and policies. Practitioners
committed to social justice must assess how schools teach about culture, educate
students for knowledgeable deliberation of global politics, and support
students and teachers to explore the passions of patriotism. The questions
raised by the education of Arab American youth have profound implications
for teaching for social justice in a world characterized by global interdependence
and increasing transnational migration. No longer can national boundaries
mark the limit of concern for social justice. Educating for social justice
requires that we teach youth to confront racial, economic, social, and political
injustices within and beyond the borders of nation-states.
Keywords: Arab American youth; social justice; marginalization; violence;
cultural imperialism
On April 8, 2005, The New York Times reported the story of two 16-yearold
Muslim girls (one Bangladeshi and one Guinean) who were being
held in a detention center for undocumented immigrants after an investigation
by the FBI asserted that the girls posed an imminent threat to U.S.
security and were planning suicide bombings (Bernstein, 2005a). The government
based its case on secret evidence that was being withheld from the
girls and their legal representatives, a practice that has become increasingly
familiar in the post–September 11, 2001 era. On June 17, 2005, The New York
Times reported that the Bangladeshi girl, Tashnuba Hayder, had been deported
to Bangladesh on immigration violation charges (Bernstein, 2005b). The FBI
Educational Policy
Volume 20 Number 1
January and March 2006 13-34
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10.1177/0895904805285287
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continued to refuse to reveal details of the case against her or her peer.
Instead, the girls were charged with immigration violations.
These items in The New York Times resonate with another story, this one
about a U.S. citizen, a Palestinian American student in a large, urban public
school where I have been conducting qualitative research with Arab
American youth for the past 3 years.1 Adam, one of the young men in the
study, arrived home one afternoon to find Secret Service agents searching
his house; his mother, confused and terrified, was unable to communicate
with the agents because she did not speak English. Apparently, the school
had called the secret service after charging that Adam’s brother, Ibrahim,
had threatened to kill the president. According to the brothers and other
students present at the time of the alleged incident, in the midst of a heated
argument in which some students, referencing recent kidnappings and
assassinations of foreigners in Iraq, were accusing Arabs of being prone to
violence, Ibrahim (who was still struggling with English proficiency) asked
the group how they would feel if one of their leaders were killed. The
teacher waited several days to report the incident to the dean’s office;
according to her account, Ibrahim had threatened to kill the president. It
was at that point, several days after the alleged threat occurred, that Ibrahim
was suspended and the Secret Service was called.
I begin with these parallel stories to emphasize the political context that
is a reality for Muslim Arab and South Asian youth in these times: Indefinite
detentions without access to evidence, the threat of house searches, and
even the fear of extrajudicial rendition have all become part of the landscape
for their communities in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001,
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These stories suggest
the extent to which the lives of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian youth,
immigrant and citizen alike, are circumscribed by contemporary global politics.
I start with these stories to state the obvious: The frameworks for conceptualizing
social justice for Muslim, Arab, and South Asian youth in the
United States must be radically reconstructed in the post–September 11,
2001, political context.
Although as these two stories point out there are similarities between the
current experiences of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian youth, in this article,
I focus on fundamental questions about power, equity, and schooling in relation
to Arab Muslim youth.2 I have chosen to narrow the scope of this article
to Arab Muslim youth for two reasons. As an ethnographic researcher,
I have been documenting the lived experiences of Arab American Muslim
youth for the past 3 years. This article draws on examples from the qualitative
study to support a broader set of claims I am making about creating
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just, responsive educational environments for Arab American youth. Equally
importantly, although the framework for understanding power and equity
that I propose in this article has implications for educating Muslim youth
from a variety of ethnic communities, I am intentionally working against a
general lack of knowledge by many people in the United States that erases
the different histories, cultures and languages of the widely variable Muslim
immigrant communities.3
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, educators need a new framework
for understanding the particular equity issues that Muslim Arab youth face
in U.S. schools. The dominant framework for understanding the experiences
of Arab American youth in U. S. schools has been an ethnicity model
that focuses on cultural differences (Adeeb & Smith, 1995; Banks, 1997;
Suleiman, 2004) or on the processes of cultural transformation through
immigration (Sarroub, 2001). For the most part, the problem for Arab youth
in U.S. schools has been defined primarily as a problem of what Charles
Taylor (1992) calls “misrecognition” and “nonrecognition.” Explicating the
problem caused by misrecognition of nonrecognition, Taylor writes,
The thesis is that our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence,
often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people
can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them
mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves.
Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of
oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of
being. (p. 25)
Knowledge about Arab culture has been absent, stereotypical, or misinformed
with the result that Arab youth feel alienated and misrecognized in
their classrooms and schools (Adeeb & Smith, 1995; Suleiman, 2004).
Responding to the particular needs of Arab youth, then, demands that the
collective identities of these youth are accurately and visibly included in the
curriculum and that educators are informed about culturally appropriate
ways of interacting with Arab family and community members (Adeeb &
Smith, 1995; Suleiman, 2004).
In this article, I argue that focusing on understanding culture is an important
but insufficient framework for addressing the needs of Arab American
youth. I suggest that to develop strategies for educational equity for Arab
American Muslim youth, educators must move beyond a model of cultural
understanding and attend, instead, to the particular processes of racial subordination
to which these youth are subjected within and outside of schools.
As other critical multicultural educators have argued (see for a few examples,
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Fine, 1997; Nieto, 2004) focusing on cultural differences is insufficient for
addressing institutionalized processes through which schools produce racial
hierarchies.Although the processes of racial subordination share characteristics
with other racially subjugated populations, Arab American Muslim youth also
face specific forms of racial oppression that are intimately interwoven with
contemporary global politics that lend their community permanent status as
the enemy within.
I begin this article by exploring the processes of racial subordination to
which the Arab American communities are subjected at this historical
moment. This context is critical for understanding the lived experiences of
Arab American and Arab immigrant youth in schools. After discussing the
political landscape shaping Arab American communities today, I suggest
three important issues for educators to consider when building responsive
and equitable educational environments for Arab Muslim students. I examine
and critique approaches to teaching about Arab culture. I argue that it is
essential that schools in a democracy educate not for political conformity
and consent but to foster deliberation and dissent. Finally, I suggest schools
must explore how they address violence and racial harassment directed at
Arab and other Muslim students. Education that hopes to stand against violence
directed at Arab and other Muslim youth must confront the passions
of patriotism that limit possibilities for peace and social justice.
Arabs in U.S. Society: Contextualizing
the Experiences of Youth
Arab Americans have occupied an ambiguous position in the racialized
landscape of the United States (Naber, 2000; Samhan, 1999). Officially,
Arabs are classified by the federal government as part of the racial category
White that includes persons of European, Middle Eastern, and North African
origin. This classificatory system based on residual notions of race as a biological
concept rather than an outcome of mutable sociohistorical processes
(Omi & Winant, 1994), positions Arabs invisibly within the boundaries of
Whiteness and flagrantly conceals the racialized discourses and practices to
which this community is subjected (Abu El-Haj, 2002, 2005; Naber, 2000;
Samhan, 1999). These racialized discourses and practices take a variety of
forms. Violence against people perceived to be of Arab, Muslim, or Middle
Eastern origin constitutes an ongoing, although rarely recognized, problem
in the United States (Ahmad, 2002; Naber, 2000; Volpp, 2002) Legislative,
legal, and policing practices deny many Arabs even the most basic civil rights.
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At the same time, within the public imagination, Arabs occupy unenviable
positions as, for example, enemies of the state, opponents of freedom and
democracy, and oppressors of women.
In this section, I address three key factors that contribute to the racial
subordination of Arabs and Arab Americans: violence against individuals
perceived to be of Arab, Muslim, or Middle Eastern origin; state policies
that target Arab and Muslim communities; and discursive practices that
“Other” Arabs and Muslims. The political philosopher Iris Young (1990)
offers a useful topography of the conditions through which the systemic
oppression of groups of people is accomplished. Borrowing from her analysis,
I argue that Arab Muslims in the United States are racially subordinated
through violence, marginalization, and cultural imperialism.
Violence: Racial Hatred and Patriotic Fervor
Many groups suffer the oppression of systematic violence. Members of some
groups live with the knowledge that they must fear random, unprovoked
attacks on their persons or property, which have no motive but to damage,
humiliate, or destroy the person. (Young, 1990, p. 61)
Perhaps the most vivid illustration of the reality that Arabs and other
immigrant Muslims are a racialized minority in the United States rests
in the violent attacks following September 11, 2001 on people across
the country who appeared to fit the generic mold of Arab, Muslim, Middle
Easterner—and therefore enemy alien in the public imagination (Ibish,
2003). The victims of these attacks represented a wide range of ethnic
and religious groups; the dead alone include people who were Christian,
Muslim, and Hindu, of Arab, Pakistani, Sikh, and Indian descent (Ahmad,
2002; Ibish, 2003; Volpp, 2002). After September 11, 2001, fear of violence
swept through Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities. Many in these
communities draped their homes and businesses in flags, hoping this patriotic
symbol would act as a protective shield. Sikh taxicab drivers in New York
City displayed signs informing others about their religious background and
explaining that they were neither Arabs nor Muslims. Many Muslim women
who cover their hair remained indoors and some made the decision to
uncover their heads in public rather than take the risk of incurring someone’s
misplaced ire.
The racial violence that occurred in the aftermath of September 11, 2001,
reflected and reinforced racial oppression to which Arab, Middle Eastern,
and South Asian communities were already subjected. Violence against
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these communities is not a new phenomenon; it has often accompanied
international conflicts such as the Iranian hostage crisis and the first Gulf
War (Abraham, 1994). This violence draws on existing racist ideologies
that led the perpetrators to target entire groups of people for the actions of
individuals. There is, perhaps, no more dramatic illustration of this point
than to note that after the Oklahoma City bombing, White men were never
targeted or racially profiled for the actions of Timothy McVeigh (Volpp,
2002); in fact, in the days following the explosion before McVeigh had
emerged as a suspect, Arab Americans faced racial harassment (Morlino,
2004). However, although the violence directed at Arab, Middle Eastern,
and South Asian communities after September, 11, 2001, reflected existing
racial ideologies, it also marked a turning point after which there has been
a redrawing of national and citizenship boundaries in such a way as to exclude
these communities, both literally and figuratively.
Marginalization: The Policies of the State
Marginalization is perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression. A whole
category of people is expelled from useful participation in social life. (Young,
1990, p. 53)
Although the violence directed at Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian
communities was perpetrated by individual citizens, it must be understood
as part of a context in which state-directed policies create a new category of
persons who fall outside of the rights and protections afforded to citizens.
Indefinite detention, secret evidence, and extrajudicial rendition of suspects
to countries that routinely practice torture have become part of the political
landscape that circumscribes the lives of Arab and Muslim immigrants and,
in some cases, citizens after September 11, 2001. Although the precedents
for these policies were created well before the fall of 2001 (see Akram &
Johnson, 2004; Moore, 1999), the actions of the U.S. government since 2001,
including the passage of the USA Patriot Act, have created a new sense of
peril for Arab (and other Muslim) immigrants and citizens, alike (Murray,
2004; Volpp, 2002).
Fear and distrust in Arab American communities emerged in response to
numerous government actions in recent years. For example, immediately
following September 11, 2001, the government quickly detained more than
1,200 noncitizens, refusing to release their names, whereabouts, or the charges
leveled against them (Ahmad, 2002; Murray, 2004; Volpp, 2002). Government
officials also sought interviews with thousands of Middle Eastern and Muslim
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noncitizen males (Ahmad, 2002; Murray, 2004; Volpp, 2002). Secret evidence,
no-fly lists, and the fact that the Department of Homeland Security requested
the Census Bureau to release data on Arab Americans, including the zip
codes in which they reside4 reveal the precarious position that Arabs, Arab
Americans, and other Muslims occupy in relationship to national belonging
in the United States today.
My intention here is not to conduct a comprehensive review of state
policies that affect the Arab American community (see Akram & Johnson,
2004; Moore, 1999; Murray, 2004; Volpp, 2002) but rather to emphasize
two points. First, educators must be aware that Arab and other Muslim
youths’ lives are deeply affected by these state policies as evidenced by the
stories with which I began this article. The fear of detention and expulsion
without due process is palpably present in their communities. Moreover,
educators must understand that Arabs and Arab Americans have had reason
to fear that the government may at times blur the line between speech and
action, raising anxieties about the limits of political dissent in a time of war
(Akram & Johnson, 2004; Moore, 1999; Volpp, 2003). How educational
communities address conflicting perspectives and political dissent is, as
I argue later, critical to creating equitable educational environments for
Arab American students and is intimately connected to Young’s idea that
marginalization—the expulsion of groups of people from “useful participation
in social life” (1990, p. 53) is a key form of oppression. Moreover,
political dissent is at the heart of maintaining the ideal of public education
as a site for democratic deliberation (Giroux, 2002; Gutmann, 1987).
Cultural Imperialism: Racialized
Discourse in the Public Sphere
To experience cultural imperialism means to experience how the dominant
meanings of society render the particular perspectives of one’s own group
invisible at the same time as they stereotype one’s group and mark it out as
the “Other.” (Young, 1990, pp. 58-59)
Racial and ethnic subordination is accomplished not only through the
everyday practices of individuals and the state but also through discursive
practices that construct our understanding of what race is and what it signifies
(Omi & Winant, 1994). In the discursive realms of politics, popular
media, and academia, the notion of culture continually recasts Arabs and
other Muslims outside of the confines of civilization, enemies of freedom,
tolerance, and pluralism. Of significance for this historical moment is the
extra burden that Islam bears within this discourse of culture, a burden
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imposed in both popular and academic venues. For it is Islam that is posited
as most culturally “Other”, inimical to Western values and traditions in an
essential clash of civilizations (see Lewis, 2002; Huntington, 1996; and for
critique, Said, 2001; Mamdani, 2002, 2004).
Arab culture is represented as a static set of traditions, values, norms,
and practices to which Arabs adhere. Culture becomes the explanation for
all kinds of behaviors from the exotic to the inexplicable. Culture explains
everything from Arabs’ legendary hospitality to their alleged hostility to
democracy. Myriad articles and talk shows have sought to explain the cultural
roots of suicide bombers. After the photographs revealing the torture
of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the media emphasized that the
interrogation practices were particularly humiliating and degrading to Arab
males because of cultural prohibitions against nudity, sexuality, and homosexuality.
If these actions had been perpetrated against U.S. citizens, would
they have been any less degrading? Should we understand the degrading
nature of these interrogation practices in terms of cultural differences or is it
more fruitful to probe the ways that these practices violated the boundaries
of internationally recognized legal practices that serve to protect and honor
the basic humanity of detainees everywhere? I raise these questions here to
suggest a point to which I return later: focusing on cultural differences can
obscure more critical discussions about politics and power.
Public discourse in the media and politics is replete with pronouncements
that purport to explain the culture of Arabs and Muslims in ways that
allow us to dismiss their humanity, diversity, and agency. With one encompassing
gesture, the language of culture and civilization wipes out diversity,
conflicting perspectives, structural inequalities, histories of imperialism
and colonialism in the name of “Other” people’s uniform adherence to a
way of life that seems incomprehensible to “us.” Thus, culture, a concept
that is deeply contested among anthropologists, has been put to the service
of what Omi and Winant (1994) term a racial project—an interpretation
that reorganizes and redistributes power.
Educating for Social Justice: Policy Implications
It is, then, within this broader context of racialized oppression of Arab
Muslim communities through cultural imperialism, marginalization, and
violence that educational policy for Arab American students must be conceptualized.
In this section, I examine three key issues that educators
should consider as they work to create safe, equitable school communities
for Arab and Arab American students.
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Resisting Cultural Imperialism: Considering
Culture From the Standpoint of Production
Rana called to relate the following story:
A teacher yelled at one of the other Arab girls who was eating in the classroom,
telling her she looked like a pig. When she got upset with him for calling
her a pig, he began screaming at the whole group of Arab girls, “I’ve
visited your country. I know how men treat women in your country.” The
girls were upset responding, “What country is that? This is our country.”
Bill Johnson (a school administrator) confidently informed me that Arab girls
and women are silent and never assert themselves. I challenged his assumptions,
but he remained unshaken in his conviction. “It’s a cultural thing,” he
told me.
Given the dominant ways that Arab Muslims are visible in U.S. society,
it is not surprising that Arab youth in schools often find themselves confronting
negative and monolithic images of their cultural or religious practices.
In response to what they experienced as a pervasive climate of
ignorance about or hostility toward Arab culture, youth in my study often
sought both formal and informal opportunities to educate their peers and
teachers about their religious practices, cultural traditions, and political perspectives.
Through these actions, they worked hard to provide alternative
vantage points from which their peers and teachers could view and evaluate
Arabs. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks and the ensuing
violence against Middle Eastern and South Asian communities, Arabs
and Arab Americans have looked to education as a vehicle for reducing
prejudice and racial hatred. In community centers and schools across the
nation, Arabs and other Muslims have sought opportunities to educate others
about their cultural and religious practices. In the face of the silencing
effects of cultural imperialism (Young, 1990), Arab youth, educators, and
their allies find ways to resist harmful, degrading, and inaccurate images
that deny the richness and complexity of Arab communities.
Educational literature that addresses the concerns of Arab Americans has
noted the problems of both visibility and invisibility for these communities.5
Negative images and stereotypes of Arabs and Arab Americans abound in
the United States (Al-Ani, 1995; Shaheen, 1984; Stockton, 1994; Suleiman,
2004). Even before September 11, 2001, popular media promoted numerous
harmful images of Arabs and Arab Americans: most prominently, as terrorists,
rich oil sheikhs, and oppressed women. Across the nation, a majority of
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non-Arab students and teachers are likely to have gained many of their
beliefs about Arabs from popular movies that tend to portray exoticized,
degrading, or distorted images of Arabs, Arab Americans, and the Arab
world (Shaheen, 1984; Volpp, 2002). Students and teachers are also likely to
encounter news reports about Arabs and the Arab world almost exclusively
in relationship to political conflicts, women’s oppression, and terrorism
(Seikaly, 2001; Volpp, 2002). If negative images and stereotypes represent
one problem for Arab Americans, invisibility has been another. Educators
often have faced difficulties in learning about Arabs and Arab Americans as
many discussions of cultural diversity in U.S. schools fail to include information
about Arab Americans. Despite a long presence in the United States—
the first wave of Arab immigration began in 1880—the significance of Arab
Americans as a minority racial and ethnic group has rarely been recognized
in the area of multicultural education (For exceptions, see Adeeb & Smith,
1995; Al-Ani, 1995; Banks, 1997; Nieto, 2004; Suleiman, 2004).
Arab Americans have fought to counter both their visibility and invisibility
by developing curriculum that reflects accurate information, important contributions,
and positive images about the history and culture of Arabs and Arab
Americans. Major Arab American political organizations such as the Arab
American Anti-Discrimination Committee and social services organizations
such as the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services—
located in Dearborn, Michigan, which is home to the largest community of
Arab Americans—recognize a necessary relationship between advocacy for
the rights of Arab Americans and the need for educational materials about
Arabs, Arab Americans, and the Arab world. Curriculum that educates accurately
about Arabs and Arab Americans can be viewed as an important vehicle
for lessening the prejudice and misconceptions that non-Arab students and
educators hold; at the same time, it plays an important role in educating Arab
and Arab American youth who also need access to such information.
Arab American educators have proposed that in addition to developing
curriculum that educates Arab and non-Arab students alike about Arab
culture and history, schools must learn more about Arab cultural norms,
values, and expectations to provide Arab American students with culturally
responsive classrooms (Adeeb & Smith, 1995; Suleiman, 2004)—that is,
combating hostile, inequitable educational environments for Arab American
students takes more than accurate knowledge and representation. Educators
cannot hope to provide equitable schooling experiences for Arab American
students if they fail to recognize cultural patterns and values that are particular
to the Arab American community. Teaching that is culturally responsive
asks that educators focus on, rather than ignore, cultural differences.
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Equitable education for Arab American students must address the need
for better information about the cultures and history of Arabs and Arab
Americans. This demands that educators develop in-depth, nuanced knowledge
about Arab history and culture. However, focusing on culture is fraught
with the risk of reinforcing, rather than dislodging, cultural imperialism. As
I argued earlier, discourse about culture has been a primary vehicle through
which racial subordination of Arabs and Muslims has been mobilized. The
issue, then, is not simply that practitioners need more and better information
about Arab culture; it is a question of what view of culture is offered.
Many multicultural programs aimed at helping educators understand
a particular group of students offer a view of culture as, in a sense, a set
of possessions and traditions (values, beliefs, customs, behaviors) that
students bring to school (Erickson, 2001). From this perspective cultural
change is a matter of the attrition of these traditions (Erickson, 2001).
Although this view of culture has been resoundingly critiqued by many
in the fields of educational anthropology and multicultural education
(see Erickson, 2001; Levinson & Holland, 1996; Nieto, 2004; Varenne &
McDermott, 1998), literature and programs for teachers often continue to
employ this idea of culture. Educators are encouraged to learn about the
cultural traditions, values, customs, and norms of the communities from
which their students come to be able to interact with students and families
in culturally appropriate ways.
This view of culture can be detrimental when teaching about any ethnic
group; however, given the contemporary political discourses about Arab and
Muslim cultures, it is critical to pay careful attention to how educators’
understanding about Arab Muslim cultures is developed. One major problem
is that the focus on Arab culture can create a static picture of Arabs and Arab
Americans, and at its worst, sustains, rather than dismantles, cultural imperialism
through what Said (1978) has called orientalism. For example, in
Banks’s (1997) Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies, one of the few multicultural
texts that includes a chapter on Arab Americans, Adeeb and Smith6
portray Arab social life as bound by religion and Old World traditions that
emphasize patriarchy and family honor. Their analysis implies that where
Arab and Arab American families experience a loosening of these traditional
patriarchal bonds, it is because of processes of Westernization and assimilation
to U.S. society, respectively. This kind of analysis risks subtly reinforcing
the simplistic clash of civilizations hypothesis that posits modernization
and the West against traditionalism and the East. The Arab world is, in a
sense, viewed as stranded in some bygone era, clinging to a set of outdated
practices and beliefs.
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Adeeb and Smith (1995) suggest that teachers need to be aware of
cultural practices of Arabs and Arab Americans that include rules governing
gender roles, family honor, hygiene, and diet. Teaching educators about
Arab cultural practices in this way denies the complexity and heterogeneity
of Arabs and Arab Americans and obscures processes of cultural change.
Can one really teach, for example, about ‘gender relations’ in Arab communities
as if they can be easily described? Arab Americans in the United
States are highly diverse in terms of religion, socioeconomic class, national
origin, and immigration patterns. All of these factors contribute to widely
variable gender roles. Arab American families, similar to other American
families, represent a full range from highly patriarchal to equitable gender
relations. However, this variability is often rendered invisible by educational
programs that appear to reinforce the dominant public discourses
about Islam—discourses that emphasize Muslim culture and tradition as
rigidly patriarchal. When the administrator quoted earlier insisted to me
that Arab girls and women are silent and passive, he was drawing on this
pervasive discourse that emphasized fundamental cultural differences.
I suggest it is more fruitful to think about culture in terms of process and
production. Levinson and Holland (1996) wrote, “Emphasis has been placed
on culture as a continual process of creating meaning in social and material
contexts, replacing a conceptualization of culture as a static, unchanging
body of knowledge, ‘transmitted’ between generations” (p. 13). Viewing
culture from the standpoint of production reveals the processes through
which cultural meanings are reproduced, negotiated, and transformed. This
perspective on culture holds enormous implications for how practitioners
learn about Arab students, families, and communities. It suggests opportunities
for educators to learn about Arabs and Arab Americans must be structured
to elicit the range and variability of these communities. It means
educators must learn from Arab and Arab American students and their
families in ways that make visible the diversity of practices, values, beliefs,
and histories in the community.
Resisting Marginalization: Developing Critical Citizenship
Today [in our after school club], students generated a list of “stupid” statements
others have said to them about Palestinians. “You’re all terrorists.”
“Are you carrying a bomb?” “Is your uncle Bin Laden?” These were all statements
that had been made to them.
To come out to people with your beliefs you know very calmly, not calmly,
I do get heated, I’ll have to say. You come out when it’s appropriate in class
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and still meet a resistance, you know. To even say something like I have
Palestinian friends, which, like, sparks some people really badly. It’s a
shame almost. I’m to a point where I just don’t want to deal with it. And I,
that’s one of the things that disappoints me about myself, should I be speaking
or saying more? It just gets tiring after a while; you have to just accept
what people say and put a smile on your face and then walk out. You can’t
even say, like that pisses me off or something. Because, it’s like, why? It’s
almost like get out of the country then. Like I hate when—that gets me mad
the most. You can’t disagree, and you know, I don’t want to kill Americans
because I don’t agree with what’s going on or something. (Karam)
I used to record from Al-Jazeera, and I would take it to my teachers in school
so they could see. I brought them stuff with the war with Iraq when they
killed the guy from Al-Jazeera. (Zayd)
Arab youth in my study repeatedly reported being framed by the image
of Arabs as terrorists. Moreover, in a climate exemplified by President
Bush’s admonition that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”
(2001), Arab youth find little room to voice dissenting opinions about
contemporary Middle Eastern politics and U.S. foreign policy. In this section,
I argue for the importance of addressing politics in the curriculum in such
a way that complexity and disagreement can emerge. It is essential that all
students (and their teachers) acquire deep knowledge about the politics and
history of the Middle East and the role that U.S. foreign policy has played
in shaping the region. This requires that students and teachers learn to consider
multiple perspectives from which it is possible to understand contemporary
global politics. Moreover, I argue the aim is educating for what Giroux
(2002) has called “critical citizenship”—developing students’ capacities to
be politically engaged in the struggle for global justice.
To suggest why I argue such an approach is crucial, I relate in more
detail one of the stories with which I began this article—that of the brothers
whose house was searched by the Secret Service. Ibrahim, a Palestinian
American student, was suspended from his high school on charges of
having threatened to kill the president; the Secret Service was called in
response to this charge. Ibrahim was subsequently expelled from the school
for having verbally threatened to get the person who had reported him.
Adam, Ibrahim’s brother, told the following story about what had occurred
in the English as a second language (ESL) class in which he and his brother
were enrolled. According to Adam, the incident started when the teacher
noticed a student reading a newspaper in class. Speaking in English and
Arabic, Adam recounted,
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She took [the newspaper] from him, and she put it up like she said the
newspaper is good to read and learn how to write and speaking. And they
started talking about American and Arab people. Like, why do we [Arabs] do
what we do to Jewish and Israeli people. So everybody was talking like in
groups. [They were talking] about Nick Berg. Somebody, I don’t know if it was
a kid, but he was saying that the Arab people cut this guy’s head. And some
people said that Arab people are gay because, you know, there was in the newspaper
[the Abu Ghraib photographs]. So Ibrahim, he was [agitated]. He got
mad. He said. He was asking the teacher how you feel if something happens
to one of your big ones [leaders]. So, the teacher said that—after 1 week she
said that—my brother said that how you feel if I go cut George Bush’s head?
I relate this incident not to adjudicate the debate between the Arab
students and the teacher about what was actually said in that class regarding
the president. I do so to observe that the students and teacher were engaged
in a volatile political discussion about global current events in which
students appear to have been reacting to extremely disturbing and explicit
media coverage in ways that reinforced totalizing and stereotypical images
of Arabs as killers (specifically, of Jews and Israelis) and that mobilized the
systemic oppression of homosexuals to insult Arabs by calling them gay. In
this incident and several other similar ones in my study, the opportunity to
educate Arab and non-Arab youth alike about difficult, contentious issues
such as the U.S. war in Iraq, occupation and resistance, international law on
human rights, and homophobia was lost; instead, Ibrahim and other Arab
boys were suspended or expelled as a result of these arguments.7 These incidents
raise several crucial questions: What kinds of knowledge do students
and their teachers need to make sense of current events across the globe in
ways that do not simply elicit racialized assumptions and ideologies? How
do we create educational environments in which students can consider complexity,
nuance, and multiple perspectives in ways that deepen their knowledge
and thinking rather than push them into dichotomous positions?
Creating educational environments in which students and their teachers
are encouraged to develop complex, in-depth knowledge about international
politics, sociology, and history is no small task, especially in a national educational
policy environment in which social studies and history take a backseat
to literacy, mathematics, and science education. However, education
about history, politics, economics, and culture has perhaps never been more
essential than at this historical moment. Globalization, with the increasing
mobility of peoples across the world, has resulted in nation states that are
ever more diverse (Castles, 2004; Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Transnational
identifications mean that new immigrants often feel connected with the
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political and economic struggles of the countries from which they come.
Moreover, current U.S. foreign policy with its focus on the “global war
on terror” suggests ongoing involvement in the affairs of other nations. As
the demographics of the United States are reshaped by globalization and
this nation’s involvement in other countries expands, it is ever more imperative
that students acquire in-depth knowledge about world history and
politics and learn to evaluate the role the United States has played on the
world stage.
Teaching about the Middle East in ways that emphasize complexity and
nuance is extremely difficult in an educational climate in which core curricula,
textbooks, and tests too often drive what is taught. U.S. textbooks
that address the Middle East have tended to reproduce stereotypes and inaccuracies
(Barlow, 1994). Reviewing the 7th- and 9th-grade texts on world
history and the 12th grade U.S. history text8 that are currently adopted by
the school district in which I am conducting this study with Arab youth
revealed a narrative emphasizing the role of the United States as a peacebroker
and defender of democracy. These textbook narratives gloss the
complex role the United States has played in the Middle East, supporting,
at times, dictatorial regimes and destabilizing popular movements that did
not suit U.S. interests (Khalidi, 2004; Mamdani, 2004). As one example
from the U.S. history textbook used in the senior year, there was a complete
erasure of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan prior to the invasion in 2001.
The narrative paints a picture of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979,
followed by the development of the Islamist resistance, with particular
attention to the emergence of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. There is no
mention of the Cold War context in which the United States supported the
Islamic resistance movement. Moreover, the description of the U.S. war in
Afghanistan emphasized President Bush’s assurances that “Islam and the
Afghan people were not the enemy and he announced that the United States
would drop food, medicine, and other supplies by parachute to Afghan
refugees” (The American Vision, p. 1036). There is no mention of any
Afghan civilian casualties; in fact, the only casualties mentioned are U.S.
soldiers. This narrative—one that is not unfamiliar in textbooks—makes
invisible the costs of all wars to civilian populations, focusing instead on
humanitarian relief, and reinforces the idea that the only lives that matter
are those of U.S. soldiers.
These kinds of narratives do not help students (or educators) make sense
of the extent and complexity of U.S. involvement in the Middle East during
the course of the past century. They do not foster an educational environment
in which Arabs and Arab Americans can offer a different view on the
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relationship between the United States and the Middle East without being
accused of being unpatriotic or of supporting terrorism. However, it is
precisely this kind of alternative perspective on the U.S. foreign policy that
a majority of students in my study, such as Zayd and Karam (quoted earlier)
tried to infuse into their schools. Drawing on different media and print sources,
these youth often found themselves at odds with the dominant perspectives
of their peers and teachers. Numerous times these dissenting perspectives
were silenced and disciplined. However, at times, they were also welcomed,
discussed, and deliberated.
It is those moments in which deliberation was welcomed that there is
hope for what Giroux (2002) calls “critical democratic education.” Thinking
about education after September 11, 2001, Giroux wrote,
Educators need to provide spaces of resistance within the public schools and the
university that take seriously what it means to educate students to question and
interrupt authority, recall what is forgotten or ignored, make connections that are
otherwise hidden, while simultaneously providing the knowledge and skills that
enlarge their sense of the social and their possibilities as viable political agents
capable of expanding and deepening democratic public life. (p. 1155)
In the place of schools that promote conformity and consent, Giroux reminds
us of the import of public education that develops citizens capable of deliberating,
questioning, and taking political action to reinvigorate democratic
public life.
Resisting Violence: Addressing the Emotions of Patriotism
Like, one time, like, later on [after September 11], this White kid, he harassed
an Arab girl, and, like, somebody came to me and told me that there’s a kid
downstairs; he’s in the Dean’s office with a Arab girl cause he slapped her.
And I was, like, “Which girl?” “She wears a scarf.” At the time, there’s only
three girls at the school with scarves. So I knew whose sister it was, so I went
to that person’s cousin. I was, like, “Your cousin’s in the Dean’s office with
the kid that slapped her.” This guy got all mad. He got all his cousins and went
down to the Dean’s office. They were like 20 guys, and they went inside the
Dean’s office, and they’re, like, “Where’s he at? We’re gonna kill him.”Well,
not kill him. They said they wanted to hurt him. And then they see it was like
a little guy and they just talk to him, like, “What the hell were you thinking?”
He’s like, “No, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” “Alright, but
why did you do it?” He’s like, “Cause, I don’t know.” And he told the Dean’s
office people a different story. “Cause they did that to our towers and stuff.”
It’s like, “That’s no excuse.” (Zayd)
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Ibtisam reported that a teacher yelled at an Iraqi boy in her class, “Go
back to your country.”
In these stories, Zayd and Ibtisam describe a school climate in which
students and teachers position Arabs (citizen and immigrant alike) as outsiders
to the nation. In such a climate, it is no wonder that Arab and Arab
American students have faced verbal assaults and threats of physical violence.
As Zayd’s story indicates, they have also, at times, sought to meet
violence with violence. Educators who are concerned with addressing the
physical and verbal threats directed at Arab and Arab American students
need to confront notions of patriotism (held by both students and teachers)
that limit empathic connection with people defined as outside the boundaries
of concern.
Policies that aim to reduce violence without addressing the intersecting
ideologies of racism and patriotism that give rise to these threats will do little
to increase the security of Arab and Arab American students and will fail to
create safer school communities for everyone. For example, in the high school
in which the incidents Zayd and Ibtisam recounted, verbal and physical
harassment were addressed through an official school policy of “zero tolerance
for the language and behavior of intolerance.” However, zero-tolerance
policies often focus on disciplinary actions in the aftermath of racially and
ethnically charged incidents. Without a concomitant commitment to address
the emotions evoked by patriotism and racism directed at Arab American
youth, these policies cannot create a safe school environment especially in
the event of political crises that are connected to the Middle East.
Instead of treating incidents of harassment and violence that emerge
from a misplaced sense of patriotism as primarily a disciplinary matter,
schools should educate students and teachers to explore and question the
ideologies of patriotism that create boundaries of inclusion and exclusion
into the nation such that they position Arabs (and others) as enemies within.
Education that might truly prevent verbal and physical assaults on Arab
American students must interrogate ideologies of patriotism not only at the
level of critical analysis but also by addressing the emotions these ideologies
evoke. Zemblyas and Boler (2002) argue for the importance of a pedagogy
of discomfort that engages students in an analysis of the emotional
investments made in service to patriotism. Preventing violence against Arab
and Arab American students requires educating teachers and students alike
to interrupt the feelings that the boundaries between us and them are clear:
feelings that suggest they are our enemies.
Moreover, I suggest that educating to break down these notions of us and
them cannot be limited to the boundaries of the nation—that is, I propose
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an education that does not limit itself to the empathic inclusion of Arab
immigrants and Arab Americans but expands our concerns beyond the
borders of the nation-state. Arguing for the development of critical cosmopolitanism,
Zemblyas and Boler (2002) wrote,
Critical cosmopolitanism sets out from the assumption that it is necessary to
give equal value to human life, irrespective of belonging to “our” or “their”
political and social community. . . . Patriotism might make Americans (or others)
better citizens (if citizen is defined as more likely to defend one’s country and
to abide by established laws and customs without dissent), but it will not make
the world a more peaceful or generous place. Critical cosmopolitanism suggests
an alternative to the narrowness of patriotism and involves learning to
see outside of dominant nationalist discourses that shape such educational
sources as textbooks and media.
The violence targeting Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities
(similar to the violence directed at individuals by virtue of their U.S. citizenship)
is rooted in this failure to value human life equally. Resisting
school violence rooted in patriotic fervor, calls for educational experiences
that develop all students’ understandings of our global interconnectedness
and foster their concern for social, political, and economic justice beyond
our national borders (Banks, 2004).
Concluding Thoughts: Expanding Our
Community of Concern
Educators concerned with creating equitable school environments for
Arab American students must focus on how contemporary global and
national politics shape the lives of these youth and their families. It is impossible
to maintain the fiction that Arab experience fits within the White ethnic
experience as federal guidelines imply. Arab immigrants and Arab American
citizens alike experience specific forms of racial oppression that hold implications
for school curriculum, practices, and policies. Practitioners committed
to social justice must, as I have argued, assess how schools teach about
culture, educate students for knowledgeable deliberation of global politics,
and support students and teachers to explore the passions of patriotism.
The questions raised by the education of Arab American youth have
profound implications for teaching for social justice in a world characterized
by global interdependence and increasing transnational migration.
Nation-states continue to wield significant state powers; however, shifting
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demographics trends resulting from globalization highlight that humanity is
intimately interconnected as people, consumer goods, technologies, culture,
politics, and conflicts travel across these national borders. Globalization
and the complex transformations that it engenders suggest that now, perhaps
more than ever, national boundaries cannot mark the limit of concern for
educators working for social justice. Educating for social justice requires that
we teach youth to confront racial, economic, social, and political injustices
within and beyond the borders of nation-states.
Educating youth to confront the oppressions wrought by violence, marginalization,
cultural imperialism and exploitation of racialized others, demands
that we all recognize a fundamental allegiance, not to the nation-state, but,
as Martha Nussbaum (1996) suggests, to “the moral community made up
of the humanity of all human beings” (p. 7). Nussbaum argues for the critical
import of a cosmopolitan education that teaches youth that above all,
we are all citizens of the world and that although we may maintain our local
identifications, we must make all persons part of our community of concern,
not in some abstract way, but through active deliberation and concrete
action (see also Abowitz, 2002). This is a tall order for educational activists
but one that we cannot afford to ignore if we are to have any hope of confronting
environmental, social, cultural, and political conflicts that recognize
no national borders.
Notes
1. This research was funded by a National Academy of Education, Spencer foundation
postdoctoral fellowship.
2. Although I focus on Arab Muslim communities, it is important to remember that many
Arab Americans are Christian. Arab Americans of all religious faiths are often framed by the
pernicious images of Islam that pervade public discourse in the United States.
3. Even to make statements about Arab Americans is to make generalizations about a
group that includes peoples of different national origin, religion, and immigration patterns to
the United States.
4. This cooperation with the Census Bureau is particularly frightening because of the history
of the Census Bureau’s role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
5. Brayboy (2003, 2004) examines the ways that visibility and invisibility both perpetuate
racism against Native American Indians and how some indigenous students use invisibility
strategically as a resource for resistance.
6. This chapter originally appeared in Educating for Diversity: An Anthology of Voices,
edited by Carl Grant (Adeeb & Smith, 1995).
7. School district zero-tolerance discipline policies allowed school administrators to expel
some students on the grounds that what might reasonably be seen as political arguments
constituted racial harassment or threats (see Abu El-Haj, 2005).
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8. The American Vision, Glencoe-McGraw Hill, 2005; World History: Patterns of Interaction,
McDougal Littell, 2005a; World Cultures and Geography: Eastern Hemisphere and Europe,
McDougal Littell, 2005b.
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Thea Renda Abu El-Haj is an assistant professor of social and cultural foundations of education
in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her
research interests include everyday concepts of educational justice in relation to difference and
citizenship and education in the context of globalization. Her recent publications include “Global
Politics, Dissent and Palestinian-American Identities: Engaging Conflict to Re-invigorate
Democratic Education,” in L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race and
Gender in United States Schools (revised edition), and “Practicing for Equity From the
Standpoint of the Particular: Exploring the Work of One Urban Teacher Network” in Teachers
College Record.
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