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