Arab American Heritage Month: Being White

CNN's Race Deconstructed newsletter (via msn.com), analysis by Mirna Alsharif and Brandon Tensley, CNN.com, 4/28/22; Crystal Quintero, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(Summer Elbardissy/Ayia AlMufti/Danny Hajjar/Mo Madboly/Nooralhuda Sami/Nour Farrag)

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Arab American Heritage Month: "Being counted as white doesn't reflect our day-to-day experiences"

What does it mean to be "white"? Social construct

"You ask 10 different people what it means to be Arab, and you could get 10 different answers."

That's how 31-year-old Danny Hajjar, who's Lebanese American and grew up in Boston, describes the diversity and richness of Arab and Arab American identities.

I'm actually a Black African.

"People from Lebanon, for example, have a different idea of what it means to be Arab compared with people from Morocco," he told CNN. Hajjar now lives in Washington DC. But with that complexity can come frustration, especially in a country such as the US.

Because of slavery and the system of racial caste that it created, US society tends to view race and ethnicity through the limited categories of Black and White. "I always tick 'other' and then write in Middle Eastern, Lebanese or Arab," Hajjar said.

We're white, right, Honey? - The whitest!

"I remember, distinctly, when I was applying to high school -- I went to a private high school -- I ticked 'other' and the admissions person asked me what I was, and when I told them, they changed it to White. I still can't believe that happened. That was really something."

Put a little bit differently, while the treatment of identity in the US is robust and rigorous in some ways, it's impoverished in others. And there are consequences. More