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THE COSTS OF FULL CITIZENSHIP: NAVIGATING SITES
OF CONTRADICTION IN ARAB DETROIT POST 9/11

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Rachel S. Yezbick

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THE COSTS OF FULL CITIZENSHIP: NAVIGATING SITES OF CONTRADICTION
IN ARAB DETROIT POST 9/11

By
Rachel S. Yezbick

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Anthropology
2009

ABSTRACT

THE COSTS OF FULL CITIZENSHIP: NAVIGATING SITES OF
CONTRADICTION IN ARAB DETROIT POST 9/11

By
Rachel S. Yezbick

Since the events of September 11, Arab Detroit (AD) has figured prominently in
the US. govemment’s war against terrorism. AD spokespersons have attempted to
mediate the government presence in order to protect AD residents’ from acts of
government brutality. Eight years post the events of 9/1 1, Arab Detroit’s relationship
with the government intimately shapes how spokespersons lobby for their rights as Arab
American citizens; a project of representation I refer to as the full citizenship project. In
order to obtain ‘fiJll citizenship rights,’ spokespersons encourage AD residents to become
active members in all aspects of society, including service in the very federal agencies
that monitor AD. This project has come with numerous costs for AD. Defined against an
unquestioned hegemonic backdrop of American citizenship, this project reinforces rigid
canons of minority inclusion in the US. In spokespersons’ efforts to combat dangerous
misconceptions about Arab Americans, they fashion the discourse pertaining to Arab
American rights around what the ethnic group is often excluded for: perceived moral
difference. By examining how spokespersons’ narratives speak to a larger constructed
consciousness of American citizenship, I analyze how spokespersons account for the
contradictions embedded in the project of full citizenship. Here, I pinpoint what is at the
heart of this project: disciplinary acts of inclusion that shape the intimate sensibilities of
Arab Detroiters by empowering them to take charge of their identities in acts of self-

determination.

Copyright by

Rachel S. Yezbick

2009

This thesis is dedicated to all the minority constituent groups in the United States
of America. May your fights for equality and justice genuinely be recognized and met by
the US. government.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first and foremost want to thank all the participants of this study. Without all of
your help, time, and generous contributions to this study, this thesis would not be
possible.

I want to give a special thanks to all of the faculty and professors that spent large
amounts of time helping me with this project: Beth Drexler, Ph.D., Mindy Morgan,
Ph.D., Andrea Louie, Ph.D., Bob Hitchcock, Ph.D., and last, but not least, Andrew
Shryock, Ph.D.

I wish to thank the IRB for their ethical research guidance and for making this
research possible.

This study was also made possible by the generous scholarship awarded to me
from the MSU Center for International Business Education and Research. This study
would not have been possible without the Institute’s funding.

Finally, I wish to thank Cedric Tai for all of his input, love, and support. I wish to
thank all of my family members for their love and encouragement as well as their
numerous contributions to making this thesis theoretically and grammatically sound.

Lastly, I wish to thank my friends for their compassion throughout this writing process.

TABLE OF CONTENT

List of Figures ........................................................................ viii
Abbreviations ......................................................................... ix

Introduction: Crisis, Discipline, & Citizenship..................................... 1

1. Defining “Arab Detroit” .................................................. 4

2. Arab Detroit Demographics .............................................. 4

3. Arab Detroit Spokespersons .............................................. 8

4. Full Citizenship in Arab Detroit ........................................ 12
5. Arab Detroit and the Government: Post 9/11 Politics ............... 15
6. Inclusive Discipline ........................................................... 18
7. Framing Doubt ............................................................. 20
8. Denoting Difference in Arab Detroit .................................. 21
9. Methodology 23
10. Personal Admissions .................................................... 27
1 1. Conclusion ................................................................. 28

Chapter 1, Crisis Begets Inclusion: Embracing America’s National Myths... 30

1.1 Intersubjective Constructions of Being ............................... 30
1.2 Sensory Perceptions Speak to the Deportment of Instability ...... 32
1.3 AD Duality: Inclusion &Exclusion as Generative Themes. . . . . 37

1.4 Crisis & Contradiction Promote the Politics of Inclusion .......... 43
1.5 Bifurcating Arab American Identity ................................... 48
1.6 Constructed Consciousness and the American Dream. . . . . . . 51
1.7 Conclusion ................................................................ 55

Chapter 2, Engaging the Government in AD: Where Contradiction Meets

Both Gain and Doubt .................................................................. 58
2.1 Discursive State Actions: Rationalizing an Overt Government
Presence .................................................................... 58
2.2 Vignette 1: BRIDGES ................................................... 63
2.3 Vignette 2: The Arab American International Festival .............. 69
2.4 Vignette 3: Selling Ads to the Federal Government ................. 73
2.5 Conclusion ................................................................ 78

Chapter 3, Memory Work at the Museum: Discursive Arrangements and
American Values ....................................................................... 80

3.1 The Arab American National Museum ................................ 81
3.2 Cultural Competency and Narrating the Socially Dispossessed. .. 88
3.3 Museum Layout, Artifacts, and Attempts to “Authorize the

‘Real”’ .......................................................................... 95
3.4 Conclusion ................................................................ 113

Chapter 4, Accounting for Difference in Arab Detroit: The Political

and the Personal in the Full Citizenship Project .................................. 117
4.1 “It’s Personalz” Representation & Americanization in Zones
of Contradiction .............................................................. 122
4.2 “Beyond Vulgarityz” The Ultimate Perversion of Society ......... 139
4.3 Conclusion ............................................................... 144
Concluding Chapter .................................................................... 148
5.1 Theoretical Deductions .................................................. 148
5.2 Concluding Thoughts ................................................... 153
Appendices ............................................................................. 15 5
References .............................................................................. 161
vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 .......................................................................... 80
Figure 1.2 .......................................................................... 87
Figure 1.3 .......................................................................... 93
Figure 1.4 .......................................................................... 97
Figure 1.5 .......................................................................... 99
Figure 1.6 ......................................................................... 106
Figure 1.7 ......................................................................... 108
Figure 1.8 ......................................................................... 110
Figure 1.9 ......................................................................... 112

viii

ABBREVIATIONS

AAN M - Arab American National Museum

AD — Arab Detroit

ADC — American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

BRIDGES - Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity
CAIR - Council on American-Islamic Relations

CIA — Central Intelligence Agency

DAAS - Detroit Arab American Study

DHS - Department of Homeland Security

FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation

ICE - U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement

ix

Introduction: Crisis, Discipline, and Citizenship

It was near 3 pm. in the afternoon as I arrived for an interview I had
scheduled with Kareema Hadad in the South end of Dearbom Michigan. She
didn't really remind me of the jokester I had met on the phone the week prior.
She seemed much more cautious, distant, and brief with me, something she
would later apologize for.

Kareema did not want me audio record her interview for my own personal
use, a first. I had told her that I had been robbed in a petty theft and that
some of my research was stolen. It made her weary, rightfully so. She
knows she is a government target, so she took the appropriate measures to
protect herself. “OK, there will be no audio recording.” What if it got into
the wrong hands? An unfortunate reality she has come to accept. She
paused, lowered her head and voice, glanced slightly around the room and
said in a hushed whisper, “I have been a target of the FBI for being an
activist. Years ago they would come up to me, my kids on the street and ask
questions. It was ridiculous... I know a man who was put in jail for his
activism. I feel like I am sometimes going crazy for having to think that that
could be me...but Rachel that is crazy...1 shouldn’t have to think like that. It ’s
insane that I do have to think like this though! There is nothing that I am
doing that is wrong, yet I must watch my back! ”I At this point I realized the
degree in which Arab activists are monitored, especially for those who take
up international Arab causes. . .no wonder Kareema believes activism within
the area has dwindled; there is no more room for radical forms of activism
since the events of 9/1 1, but rather only space for multicultural and civic
engagement.2

Since many of us are in the business of telling stories, the story I wish to tell is
hopefully, among many things, honest but more specifically a story about Arab American
citizenship in the closing months of the Bush administration’s eight year reign. I chose to
open with this field excerpt as it not only provides a context from which to understand the
pervasive fear that was born in Arab and Muslim America in the minutes after the events
of September 11, but it also provides a sense of who I am as the ethnographer of this
project. More importantly, it sets the stage for the very particular interests I wish to

discuss throughout this thesis.

Kareema’s narration shows how Arab and Muslim Americans’ everyday lives
vary from those of their non-Arab counterparts. Arab and Muslim American
communities have for decades been monitored by federal agencies, and in the chaotic
aftermath of 9/11 federal activity within prominent Arab and Muslim American
communities significantly increased. This was in many ways due to an imaginary
connection between Arab and Muslim Americans and the 9/11 terrorists, a perilous
conflation of Arab and Muslim identities with the dehumanized attacker. Arab and
Muslim Americans were thrust into a space of national contradiction. As both citizens
and suspects of sedition, Arab and Muslim Americans’ were perceived by many non-
Arab citizens to have ambiguous allegiances to the nation thus making their communities
prime targets for the post 9/11 domestic war on terror.

Kareema’s story illustrates how public and government suspicions of Arab and
Muslim American’s allegiances affect the ideological stances Arab and Muslim
Americans are allowed to embrace publicly. She demonstrates how this affects her level
of comfort as an American citizen. It compels her to acknowledge that she, like her
acquaintance, may be detained and interrogated for her political views. According to
Kareema, this fear feels surreal yet she believes the fear is necessary due the event’s
possible actualization, a manifestation of fear which Veena Das claims constitutes “the
ecology of fear in everyday life” (2007: 9).

Yet fear, chaos, instability, and exclusion are only part of this story. Value, gain
(social, political, and economic), influence, and inclusion also figure centrally in this
narration. Despite Kareema’s demonstrative account, she, like many representatives of

Arab Detroit (AD), has an established livelihood as a spokesperson for segregated and

oppressed Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. and abroad. She, like other AD spokespersons,
has gained increased social clout within Detroit as a representative of AD since the
tumultuous events of 9/1 1. Thus while Kareema has been discriminated and excluded
from aspects of mainstream society due to her vocation as an Arab and Muslim activist,
she has also been included in local politics and political affairs as a prominent
spokesperson for Arab and Muslim rights.

In this thesis I attempt to trace the fragments of September 11 and the backlash
that ensued against Arab and Muslim identities in the U.S. into the present projects of
Arab Detroit representatives. Today, AD representatives attempt to fashion Arab
Detroit’s image for the cultural sensibilities of mainstream America. In order to address
how the events of 9/11 have been projected into present AD politics, I will speak to a
relatively recent phenomenon in Arab Detroit that is directly related to the events of 9/1 1:
an increased federal presence and the complicated relationship that has arisen between
established members of AD and government personnel.

In a recent survey, the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) conducted by the
Detroit Arab American Study Team, scholars note that September 11 did not
substantially alter Arab Detroit or the identities that exist within this community (2009).
The findings of this study do not contradict the DAAS survey results. However, the aim
of this thesis is to unearth how the events of 9/11 have affected Arab Detroit politics and
spokespersons’ discussions pertaining to Arab and Muslim American civil and cultural
- inclusion in the U.S. In this sense, this study is a qualitative analysis of how the politics

of 9/ 11 have affected Arab Detroit politics and residents.

Defining “Arab Detroit”

Arab Detroit, as defined by participants, politicians, and scholars alike, is a
conceptual tool for recognizing Arab American constituents in Detroit. The term “Arab
Detroit,” also known as AD, attempts to account for the highly diverse Arab identities in
the greater Detroit area and even represents people who are not Arab, such as Chaldeans.
Numerous studies have been conducted in order to produce viable statistics about the
prominent number of Arabs and Arab Americans in the Detroit area. By establishing
Arab prominence in the Detroit area, Arab organizations in Detroit may lobby on behalf
of Arab American rights and receive federal funds for the established minority group. In
other words, the concept “Arab Detroit” was created by prominent Arab organizations in
order to portray Arabs in Detroit as existing in a unified ‘place’ that publicly exemplifies
Arab culture and influence. Thus my use of the term Arab Detroit in this thesis is in
direct reference to participants’ own description of the Arab community.

I however argue that the term Arab Detroit, as used by participants, essentializes
Arab identities in order to portray AD as a unified community. My use of “Arab Detroit”
throughout this thesis should therefore be understood as a complex referral to the
numerous and dissimilar identities that are encompassed in this overarching communal
identity. In other words, I use the term Arab Detroit as an analytic tool that renders

problematic far-reaching projects of ethnic identification.

AD Demographics
Arab Detroit is comprised of portions of greater metropolitan Detroit, notably

Dearbom and Dearbom Heights. Most of the interviews I conducted were in the city of

Dearbom, a sister city of Detroit that is approximately 7 miles West of downtown
Detroit. Dearbom is best known as the most prominent Arab American enclave in the
United States and is often viewed as the ghetto of Arab Detroit where assimilation
pressures are minimal. I also conducted interviews in Northville (a suburb of Detroit that
lies approximately 27 miles West of the city of Detroit and 24 miles West of Dearbom)
and Canton (another suburb of Detroit that lies approximately 31 miles West of the City
of Detroit and approximately 26 miles West of Dearbom).

Arab Detroit is primarily known for the immense concentration of Arabs that live
there. Arab immigration history in metropolitan Detroit dates back to the late 1800’s and
continues to this day making Arab Detroit a vast compilation of 1”, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
generation Arab Americans. Immigrants migrated and continue to migrate to greater
metropolitan Detroit from Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, Kurdistan, Palestine, and Libya with most recent immigrants migrating
from Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2007,
Arabs comprise “35 percent of the city’s 99,000 residents who live in Dearbom” (Howell
and Jamal, 2009). This is a high percentage considering the city’s overall population
size.

Arab Detroit is also unique in that it is home to a significantly larger portion of
Muslim Arabs than any other area in America. Most of Arab Detroit’s predominantly
Shi’a Muslim population resides in Dearbom. About 42 percent of Arabs in Detroit
identify as Muslim and 58 percent identify as Christian (Howell and Jamal, 2009). In
addition, Arab and Islamic influence in Dearbom are highly visible. Arab influence may

be seen in objects as discernible as Arabic script on local businesses and in Arab

influenced pillars, ironwork, and ornamentation on houses in the densely packed Arab
neighborhoods. Islamic influence may be seen in the numerous mosques, old and new, in
greater Metropolitan Detroit, including the largest mosque in the U.S. located on Ford
Road.

Arab and Muslim Americans living in Dearbom, however, represent only a
marginal percent of Arab Detroit residents. According to the DAAS survey, 29 percent
of DAAS participants live in and around Dearbom and Dearbom Heights while a larger
62 percent of participants live throughout Detroit’s suburbs in concentrations that are
characteristically minor in comparison to the Dearbom enclave (Howell and Jamal,
2009). Arab Christians predominantly live in Detroit’s suburbs while Arab Muslims live
in Dearbom and Dearborn Heights. These patterns reflect the segregation of Christian
and Muslim neighborhoods in Arab Detroit.

These segregation patterns also reflect historical and recent immigration patterns
in AD. Shryock and Lin categorize American-born Arabs and Arab immigrants in AD

into two zones3 of Arabness: zone 1 is composed of Arab Americans who are often
citizens of 13‘, 2nd, and 3rd generational status. These individuals primarily live in the

suburbs of Metropolitan Detroit. They are highly assimilated. They speak English, are
often Christian, and are ethnically Lebanese-Syrians, Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, and
Jordanians. This group is more likely to consider themselves white (Shryock and Lin,
2009: 58). Zone 2 is comprised of recent Muslim immigrants from Lebanon, Iraq, and
Yemen. They live predominantly in or around Dearbom and Detroit and have less
education than those residing in zone 1. They speak less fluent English—Arabic is more

predominantly spoken—and they identify as “other” in U.S. Census surveys (Shryock

and Lin, 2009: 58).

Arab Detroit residents are also, as Howell and Jamal note, more highly educated
and less educated, richer and poorer than the average Arab American nationwide and in
comparison to the general Detroit population (2009). Fewer Arabs in Detroit have a high
school education and bachelor’s degree than their Arab counterparts nationwide. This is
in large part due to the continual and steady flow of poor and uneducated Arab
immigrants to the Detroit area. Arab and Muslim immigrants are settling in Arab Detroit
at unvarying rates in comparison to other Arab and Muslim American communities in the
U.S.

Yet, while numerous Arab and Muslim immigrants continue to flock to Detroit,
residents of Detroit who are of Arab descent are highly integrated into Detroit’s
prominent mainstream. Significant disparities in education are thus additionally true for
Arab Detroit’s wealthy and educated Arab and Chaldean populations in relation to recent
Arab immigrants in Detroit. These discrepancies are reflected in household earnings;
Arabs in Detroit are 6 percent more likely to be poorer than the average Detroiter and 9
percent more likely to be earning above $100,000 than the average Detroiter (Howell and
Jamal, 2009).

Arab Detroit is thus comprised of people who live on the margins of Detroit and
those who are highly integrated into Detroit’s prominent mainstream. AD is known for
its’ “in-between” status as both a community recognized for its high social and political
achievements as well as a community known for its large numbers of recent immigrants

from the Arab world (Abraham and Shryock, 2000; Howell, 2000). This combination of

old and new immigrants and American-born Arabs makes Arab Detroit unique in its’

soc'ial composition as an “immigrant community.”

Moreover, Arab Detroit is distinctive in that it faired relatively well in comparison
to other Arab American neighborhoods during the 9/11 backlash against Arab and
Muslim identities. The positive support AD received from the public and local law
enforcement agencies in Michigan was unparalleled elsewhere in the United States.

Local law enforcement agencies patrolled Arab American neighborhoods, mosques, and
business quarters in order to protect Arab and Muslim Americans from hate crimes
(Howell and Jamal, 2009; Thacher, 2005).4 Additionally, Arab Americans in Detroit,
according to the DAAS 2003 survey, reported that kind gestures by non-Arabs were
“twice as high (33 percent) as those who reported discrimination (15 percent)” post 9/11

(Howell and Jamal, 2009: 78).

Arab Detroit Spokespersons

In the summer of 2008 I conducted a series of interviews with numerous Arab
Detroit spokespersons as well as a few Arab American residents. Arab Detroit
spokespersons are prominent individuals within AD who are considered to be part of a
larger social network of activists, politicians, businessmen and women, lawyers, and
cultural educators. While I interviewed several persons who do not hold political and/or
prominent positions in AD—indeed I spoke with some who have deliberately chosen to
distance themselves from the Arab community—the majority of those who were
interviewed are Arab Detroit representatives. The few participants who are not AD
spokespersons are referred to as residents. Throughout this thesis I therefore refer to

participants as spokespersons, leaders, representatives and residents of Arab Detroit.

Spokespersons that are specifically more active in the promotion of Arab culture are
additionally referred to as ‘culture workers.’

While each participant’s experiences, political perceptions, careers, generational
status, and ideological leanings vary, most participants are part of a larger, prominent
social network of Arab Detroit leaders. These persons mediate national and local
perceptions of Arab Americans. They primarily reside in Dearbom and Dearbom
Heights and work for numerous principal AD organizations that operate in the Dearbom
area. In other words, spokespersons in this thesis mainly represent the AD enclave, or
residents who reside in zone 2 of AD, who often appear to be exceedingly foreign by
mainstream standards. AD spokespersons in this study are thus employed by prominent
Arab organizations to promote Arab Detroit as a model minority community to the
public.

Participants contend that Arab Detroit should be represented as an “Arab
American” community as opposed to an “Arab and Muslim American” community.
Spokespersons in this study maintain that the identity “Arab American” is more inclusive
of Arab Detroit’s diverse community members. However, there are numerous AD
representatives who lobby strictly on behalf of Muslim rights in Detroit, such as the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). This bifurcation of AD representational
politics is not all too surprising given that Muslims are the focal point of federal
investigations in Arab Detroit (Baker and Jamal, 2009). Many Muslim rights activists
and participants of this study contend that since the events of 9/1 1, Muslim Americans
are in dire need of organizations that lobby directly on behalf of Muslim rights. Muslim

American activists were not spoken to in this study due to time constraints.

Therefore when I refer to Arab Detroit spokespersons, I am referring to a
particular group of AD representatives that lobby on behalf of Arab American
constituents. These spokespersons encourage the cultivation of AD’s Arab Americanness
in an attempt to transform AD into an established political minority group. They are
more likely to push for partnerships with federal agencies in AD than their Muslim
American counterparts. AD spokespersons in this study often compete with other Arab
and Muslim Detroit leaders for economic and political resources in order to push their
political and ideological agendas. To speak on behalf of Arab Detroit is thus a
representational battle between those with competing aims and means for promoting
Arab and Muslim Americans’ rights in Detroit.

Approximately half of the spokespersons who participated in this study are
immigrants; additional participants are first generations, American-born spokespersons
and residents. That half of the study’s participants are immigrants relays the exceptional
nature of their social status. According to Baker, Jamal, and Tessler, Arab Americans
have less social capital6 than the general population and Arab American immigrants are
even further removed from and less trusting of the general U.S. population than their
American-born counterparts (2009). What these statistics tell us about the immigrant
participants in this study is that they hold exceptionally prominent social positions in
Dearbom and Dearbom Heights in comparison to other immigrants and are remarkably
more active in civic affairs than their Arab and Muslim American immigrant
counterparts.

Yet, while spokespersons’ increased social capital provides certain privileges,

their high profiles also make them more subject to fierce political smear campaigns; these

10

smear campaigns are often tied to terror related war-time rhetoric. Given that 80% of
participants in this study are Muslim Americans, of which 50% are immigrants,
participants could be considered to be part of the most vulnerable population within AD:
Muslims and non-citizens (Stockton, 2009). All of the participants in this study are
however citizens and thus not as vulnerable as their non-citizen, Muslim counterparts—
the primary targets of federal agency interrogations and deportations post September 11.

Spokespersons who have come to the fore post 9/11 are able to garner forms of
social capital (Bourdieu, 1991 [1977]) within and for Arab Detroit. Spokespersons
additionally have increased access to economic and political capital as numerous
spokespersons have high levels of education, prolific jobs, work for prominent
organizations and businesses, and repeatedly interact with local and state politicians.
Thus post 9/11 politics in AD have garnered social, economic, and political capital for
some within Arab Detroit and enabled many AD spokespersons to safeguard particular
local interests.

Now eight years past the events of September 11, AD spokespersons have
become symbolic guardians of local representation. For many spokespersons, years of
mediating government and popular interest in AD has created pro-packaged responses to
outside inquiry that are repetitive, systematic, and couched in a particular ideological and
moral framework. These pre-formulated responses are geared towards the many non-
Arab national inquirers seeking information on the local Arab community. AD
representatives’ responses attempt to shape and direct inquirers’ interpretations of Arab
Detroit and of Arab Americans in general. Spokespersons therefore shape, to varying

degrees, moral and representational authority within Arab Detroit, influencing practices

11

of inclusion and exclusion within the community and how .AD’s residents are to be heard,

seen, and represented locally and nationally.

Full Citizenship in Arab Detroit

“F or them [Arab Americans], civil liberties are not abstract matters of
principle but vital issues of personal and community interest” ~ Ronald
Stockton

Since the events of September 11, AD spokespersons have been meeting with
state and federal representatives about government policies enacted in AD. The crisis
surrounding Arab and Muslim American identities in the U.S. post 9/11 and AD-
government relations have thus fostered amongst AD spokespersons a heightened sense
of Arab and Muslim Americans’ responsibilities as U.S. citizens. AD spokespersons, in
an attempt to protect Arab and Muslim Americans’ civil liberties, encourage AD
residents to actively engage and educate the local and national community about Arab
culture, Islam, and Arab and Muslim American civil rights. (Baker and Shryock, 2009).
According to AD spokespersons, engaging with the non-Arab public and state and federal
government may increase the likelihood of genuine Arab and Muslim American political
and cultural inclusion in the U.S.

In this sense, this is a story about solidt'jying the cultural, moral, and political
compatibility of Arab American identities with the national community through the use
of “full citizenship” rhetoric. Here I borrow the concept of “full citizenship rights”
directly from participants who often used this terminology in their interviews. In order

to obtain what AD spokespersons’ dub “full citizenship rights”—civil and cultural

membership in the national community—spokespersons encourage AD residents to

12

become active members in all aspects of society, including service in the very federal
agencies that monitor Arab Detroit. The CIA, FBI, ICE, and DHS were often
mentioned in passing as appropriate federal agencies to join as an Arab American. In
short, to obtain full citizenship, spokespersons state that Arab Americans must participate
in all aspects of society and promote Arab American civil and cultural inclusion in the
national community.

What is particular about Arab Detroit spokespersons’ political activism is
the degree in which they promote full citizenship rhetoric as the most effective form for
regaining civil liberties lost in the wake of 9/11. Lobbying on behalf of Arab and Muslim
American rights has become a widespread occupation in AD. Civil rights workers
attempt to empower Arab and Muslim Americans to become involved in civil rights
issues of major concern for AD residents in the hopes that increased civic involvement
will result in the obtainment of equal rights for Arab and Muslim citizens.

This form of political engagement will be referred to in this thesis as the full
citizenship project. The full citizenship project is also referred to throughout this thesis
as the AD safeguarding project. I define the full citizenship project as a three-part
process, of which all parts are carried out in congruence in AD; the full citizenship
project is comprised of Arab American multicultural affirmation, civil rights obtainment,
and the promotion of Arab American participation in federal agencies (Baker and
Shryock, 2009).

Multicultural discourse is used to reaffirm the importance of Arab culture in
America’s multicultural make-up. Arab culture is marketed, as I depict in chapter 3,

“Memory Work at the Museum,” as a traditional practice, heritage, and as part of Arab

l3

American immigration history. By framing culture in terms of tradition, AD
spokespersons reassert that they are first and foremost American in their cultural
practices and beliefs. This sanctions and makes permissible discussion about Arab
culture and Islam during a time in which Arab and Muslim Americans are highly
misunderstood and distrusted by their non-Arab and Muslim American counterparts. In
other words, multicultural rhetoric in the full citizenship project attempts to fashion Arab
culture for imagined mainstream sensibilities in order to emphasize the semblance
between Arab and Muslim Americans and their non-Arab American counterparts.

Second, the full citizenship project is the obtainment of full civil rights and
political incorporation. Here, AD spokespersons borrow from the civil rights movement
and other minority constituent groups claims to civil rights. Civil rights rhetoric serves to
publicly affirm the Constitutional rights afforded to all American citizens. It enables AD
spokespersons to publicly discuss their disagreements about federal policies pertaining to
the domestic and international war on terror by framing these policies against their
Constitutional liberties of equality and justice.

Third, Arab Americans are actively encouraged by particular AD spokespersons
to participate in federal agencies that carry out operations in AD. It is thought that Arab
American participation in these agencies will help reduce ill-founded federal policies
enacted in AD.

While numerous participants of this study state that such notions of citizenship are
or should be commonplace, I argue that full citizenship is not of the ordinary but rather of
an extraordinary understanding of one’s self as a citizen. What is commonplace about

this notion of citizenship is AD spokespersons’ continual affirmation that full citizenship

14

will grant Arab Americans a respected seat in the national political, social, and economic
arena as “first class citizens” (Personal interview, 8/5/08); a belief in the real and
imagined privileges of American citizenship that have not, despite high numbers of AD
citizenship, produced the desired sense of belonging in America for Arab and Muslim
American citizens (Baker and Jamal, 2009; Shryock and Lin, 2009).

Through full citizenship rhetoric and imagery, Arab Detroit spokespersons
attempt to constitute AD within the hierarchy of the nation’s communities. They
symbolically pay communal “debt to society” in order to legitimize ethnic authenticity
and to secure a place among ethnic communities that may represent the “American
national community” (Creed, 2006, 19; Ong, 2003). Ethnic functions or contributions to
the state are thus made unique in form in order to benefit the national body politic and
thus be recognized by it (F airclough, 2001 [1989]). Here, Arab Detroit is valued only in
its ability to perform as a “national resource” (Hage, 1996: 470). For Arab and Muslim
Americans, this contribution comes in the form of cultural expertise for a nation that is in
desperate need of understanding a geographic region they have long failed to culturally

understand.

AD and the Government: Post 9/11 Politics

In the aftermath of 9/1 1, Arab Detroit became a central point in the government’s
efforts to combat domestic and international terrorism. The Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) was created specifically to monitor “suspicious” activity in Arab and
Muslim American communities in the U.S. The first DHS was however built right in

downtown Dearbom, the core of Arab Detroit and the home of AD’s most recent Arab

15

and Muslim immigrants.

After 9/11, prominent AD organizations and leaders sought out federal agencies
launching “counter-terrorist” operations in AD in an attempt to soften the potentially
devastating affects of these operations and policies. Now eight years past the events of
9/11, AD spokespersons are still meeting with local, state, and federal authorities about
domestic counter-terrorist operations in AD, attempting to protect AD residents’ civil
rights. Prominent AD organizations and representatives thus mediate both government
operations in AD as well as the interests of national journalists and scholars seeking a
story on the nation’s most envisaged ambiguous community.

Mediating federal and national interest is not a new undertaking for
spokespersons and prominent organizations in Arab Detroit. The proliferate number of
Arab American institutions, such as the Arab Community Center for Economic and
Social Services (ACCESS), the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, the Arab
American Political Action Committee (AAPAC), the American Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Arab American Voter Registration & Education
Committee—to name only a few—that seek to serve and protect the interests of Arab
Americans relays the enormity of organizations working on behalf of Arab American
political interests in Detroit. Many of these organizations have since the late 1960’s been
creating an Arab American identity that is “secular, progressive, and pluralist”; one that
treats religion as an “overarching Arab identity defined in national, cultural, ethnic, and
historical terms” (Howell and Shryock, 2003: 447).

In 1967, during the Six Day War between Israel and neighboring Arab

countries—particularly Jordan, Syria, and Egypt—Arab and Muslim American activists

16

started petitioning on behalf of the group identity “Arab American” and their Arab
relatives in the Middle East. The identity was used to lobby for Arab and Muslim rights
in the Arab world after Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the closing days
of the Six Day War, placing approximately one million Arabs under Israeli control. Arab
American identity has since been solidified as an ethnic political identity with each
ensuing political crisis in the Middle East (Shryock and Lin, 2009); it has emerged as an
effective political identity for garnering inter-ethnic solidarity and for gaining political
and civil incorporation of even Arab Detroit’s most marginalized residents.

Prominent organizations and members of the Arab Detroit community have thus,
for four decades, been fashioning Arab American identity into an ideal political ethnic
group, bolstered by solid institutional structures in AD. Since the events of 9/1 1, these
institutional structures have been solidified, their cultural and civil works programs
increasingly funded by philanthropic donors, companies, state and federal agencies, and
the well wishing public.

It was these influential organizations and their employees and affiliates in AD that
made intervention in the government’s numerous operations in AD post 9/11 possible.
AD’s political prominence and established institutional structures enabled AD
spokespersons to engage state and federal authorities in dialogue pertaining to the
government’s often covert law enforcement operations in Arab Detroit (Howell and
Jamal, 2008). The backlash against Arab and Muslim American identities post 9/11 was
thus strangely a political opportunity from which Arab Detroit spokespersons could
mobilize and make claims (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009). In this sense, the enormity

of the 9/11 crises blew steam into an already established ethnic structure in AD.

17

While the responses Arab and Muslims Americans encountered in the days after
9/11 were disparate, ranging from disturbing acts of discrimination to philanthropic
outpourings of support for Arab and Muslim citizens, the events of 9/11 solidified and
propelled the terms “Arab American” and “Muslim American”, for better and for worse,
into mainstream discourse. The events of 9/11 thus explicitly placed Arab and Muslim
Americans on the stage of national curiosity and skepticism. In other words, the events
of 9/ 11 made central debates pertaining to Arab and Muslim cultural and legal inclusion

in the United States, compelling AD leaders to publicly display their loyalty to the state.7

Inclusive Discipline

The project of educating the public, of reassuring Americans that Arab Americans
are a moral people, is part of a shared project (albeit not a rosy project) between AD
spokespersons and the government. Here, both parties attempt to reassure the public of
the shared Americanisms and ethnic value of the Arab community. This is accomplished
through state and federal funding of prominent social service organizations in AD and by
encouraging AD residents to embrace their Arabness and educate mainstream society
about Arab culture and Islam. In other words, the full citizenship project attempts to
include Arab and Muslim Americans by empowering them to reach out to and educate
non-Arab Americans about their predicament post 9/1 1. This is achieved by encouraging
non-Arab and Arab and Muslim Americans alike to understand each other’s cultural
practices by promoting a mutual respect for diversity. This is a disciplinary project of
inclusion and full citizenship rhetoric is the tool used for gaining the right to belong in the

national community.

18

The full citizenship project has therefore generated a sense of solidarity amongst
Detroit’s Arab and Muslim population. It has, in many ways, reassured and empowered
Arab Americans to fight for their civil rights and cultural inclusion in the national
community by taking charge of their identity in acts of self-determination. Thus
discipline in AD operates on an inclusive plane, in which AD spokespersons’ encourage
and empower Arab and Muslim Americans to become active in AD affairs. Arab Detroit
does not need to be forced to conform to the national community; AD residents and.
spokespersons perform this act willingly, consciously and subconsciously in attempts to
be seen as simply American. Inclusive discipline is therefore discipline that empowers
and reassures; it empowers those who embrace its message and reassures them of their
actions.

In chapter 1, “Crisis Begets Inclusive Discipline,” I show how processes of
inclusive discipline function on both a conscious and subconscious level in AD
spokespersons’ rhetoric. This can best be understood by analyzing how AD
spokespersons use multicultural and civil rights rhetoric in the full citizenship project.
Spokespersons believe that their representation of Arab American identities and
citizenship is counter-hegemonic when it is rather in tune with the tone and temper of
dominant society’s values of culture, citizenship, and nationality. In this sense,
spokespersons perpetuate the constructed consciousness of multiculturalism and use it to
empower AD residents.

The full citizenship project demonstrates how practices of freedom and inclusion
in the national community frequently depend on the repetitive performance of inclusive

disciplinary practices, practices that perpetuate Arab Detroit’s own subjection to

19

 

dominant ideologies (Ong, 2003). Yet, if inclusive discipline is a necessary facet of the
full citizenship project, then what are the costs of projects of minority inclusion in the
national community? By adopting multicultural ideology, Arab Americans are relegated
to a sub-stratum in the national community where they are always defined by degrees of
otherness and inclusion. In other words, by engaging in the politics of being and
belonging within the nation-state, spokespersons inevitably link ethnic identity to the
essentializing discourse of multiculturalism that discems the “Arabness” of national
subjects.

Such forms of ethnic representation determine the extent in which individual
identities bearing the ethnic American uniform may or may not reflect Or be domesticated
into the national body politic (Herzfeld, 2004). It is thought that multiculturalism will
save Arab and Muslim Americans from their perceived moral ambiguity; however, rather
than removing these identities from this zone of contradiction, multicultural rhetoric
further entrenches Arab and Muslim identities in the politics of difference and sameness.
Practices of AD inclusion in the national community thus paradoxically exclude AD from
firll inclusion in the national body. Thus in order to understand why it is so difficult for
Arab Americans to obtain a sense of national belonging, we must attempt to understand

where these particular challenges are located (Shryock and Lin, 2009).

Framing Doubt
While AD spokespersons have gained an increasingly large platform from which
to air their concerns since the events of 9/1 1, many AD spokespersons, despite these

gains, still doubt the politicized nature of this platform and AD’s relationship with the

20

government. Doubt, frustration, and tension are thus central to many AD spokespersons
narratives as they attempt to mediate the contradictions embedded in the full citizenship
project. How AD spokespersons account for these contradictions speaks to their own
conscious awareness about the complications of AD’s engagement with the government,
aspects of how this engagement functions that participants’ cannot or should not know, or
know but cannot acknowledge if they wish to continue to do their work.

As I discuss in chapter 2, “Engaging the Government in Arab Detroit,”
spokespersons’ means for negotiating, rationalizing, and legitimizing trenchant forms of
state intrusion vary immensely. Spokespersons understand AD-government relations to
be an opportunity for civil empowerment, but these relations are also seen to be
overbearing, brash, and downright intolerable. How these conflicting facets of an overt
government presence come to be negotiated is a struggle that plays out in conspicuously
public displays surrounding Arab and Muslim Americans’ “role” as U.S. citizens, as both

upstanding citizens of cultural worth and as suspects of purported terror related activities.

Denoting Difference in AD

How the project of full citizenship unfolds in Arab Detroit reflects the
stigmatization of things Arab and Muslim in America. That AD spokespersons actively
mark their own ethnic and cultural distinctions speaks to the “anxieties and desires that
motivate the master narratives of center and margin, self and other...” (Stewart, 1996: 6).
Paraphrasing the words of Kathleen Stewart, to understand the story of “America” and
the creation of the “Other” is to understand the creation of cultural and civil imaginings

as processes that in use are tense, contradictory, imaginary, practical and prone to

21

deviation, displacement, and difference (1996). These contradictions and deviations can
be seen in the cultural and civil rights works projects of AD spokespersons, in
participants’ understandings of their own “Arab Americanisms,” and in spokespersons’
promotions for Arab American mainstream status.

The full citizenship project requires spokespersons to fashion Arab and Muslim
American identity for mainstream cultural sensibilities. Following the work of Andrew
Shryock, I illustrate how public displays of Arab American identity are often put on for
an imagined mainstream American audience (2004). I argue that Arab Detroit
spokespersons’ representations of Arab American citizenship and identity are not solely
shaped by an imagined outside viewer (Foucault, 1975), but also by complex sensory and
emotional responses to crises that are intersubjectively felt and experienced. Both of
these facets shape how AD spokespersons respond to crisis involving Arab and Muslim
Americans, how they act on behalf of Arab Detroit, and how they come to understand
what it is that makes them “Arab American.” The full citizenship project in AD is thus an
undertaking in which ethnic identities, paraphrasing the words of Aihwa Ong, are created
and create themselves into American citizens (2003).

With many unfriendly eyes on Arab Detroit since 9/11, spokespersons have
increased their efforts to mediate the type of Arab image outside inquirers see when
coming to Arab Detroit. In chapter 4, “Accounting for Difference in Arab Detroit,” I
detail how AD spokespersons attempt to conceal what is, in the words of Michael
Herzfeld, culturally intimate (1997) in Arab Detroit. Arab identities that appear
exceedingly foreign, “other,” or “too Arab” in AD, have become the things of public

controversy in the full citizenship project, as they are often perceived to be too radical in

22

appearance and in cultural practice for non-Arab, mainstream citizens. Therefore,
modern affluent Arabs attempt to conceal outwardly appearing “old world” or
“traditional” Arab Detroit residents.

In the undertaking of marketing a vulnerable ethnic population, these are the
personalities of local and national sacrifice, those persons whom prominent AD
spokespersons attempt to account for, explain, and subdue when presenting AD to outside
inquirers.

In chapter 4, I illustrate how spokespersons’ attempt to conceal foreign identities
in AD and how this impacts spokespersons’ personal lives. In this sense, chapter 4 is
devoted to unearthing the costs of the full citizenship project by detailing the ways in
which the political has intruded upon the personal lives of participants. In order to
unearth what is intimate in AD, I look to differing depictions of inter-ethnic
discrimination, religious, political, and class related tensions, gendered experiences, and
how these experiences are discussed and relayed as intimate projects and experiences of
the self. I inquire into why such aspects of participants’ lives are private, controversial,
or excluded from the apparent public eye of mainstream America, viewing such areas as
culturally intimate zones (Herzfeld, 1997; Shryock, 2004) where difference is accented
and experienced in the everyday lives of participants, in which the political and personal

become distorted.

Methodology

The duration of my fieldwork was spread out over a six-month period, from May

2008-October 2008, in the Arab Detroit area. My primary methods of data collection

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were: 1) formal and informal interviews, 2) participant observation, 3) photo mapping for
critical imagery analysis. Due to the limitations of this study, I was unable to conduct as
much participant observation as I would have liked. While I would have preferred to live
and work in Dearbom, I was obligated to fulfill work duties in East Lansing 20 hours a
week. My weeks were thus divided, spending one half of the week in East Lansing and
the remainder of the week in Detroit. This division of my time made any form of
engrossed ethnographic experience difficult and I, more often than not, had to resort to 1
to 2 hour interviews8 with AD spokespersons rather than engaging in any extended form
of participatory dialogue.

Despite these limitations, I did conduct ll interviews—each of 1 to 2 hours in
duration—with AD spokespersons and residents. I additionally participated in numerous
cultural workshops at the local Arab American National Museum and at additional
culture and civil rights related workshops in the greater area.

In order to gain critical insight into participants’ interviews, I use narrative theory
to best analyze the data. Narrative genres are expansive and account for many forms of
human communication and performance. While personal experience may be conveyed in
structured narrations, such as in the art of storytelling, prose, the novel, and performance,
Ochs and Capps argue that co-created, conversational narratives “constitute the prototype
of narrative activity” as opposed to more artfully structured narrative discourse (2001 :3).
I thus depict participants’ interviews as narrations that are less structured than
perforrnative narrations.

Ochs and Capps define narrative as a “way of using language or another symbolic

system to imbue life events with a temporal and logical order, to demystify them and

24

establish coherence across past, present, and as yet unrealized experience” (2001: 2). The
act of narrating is thus a process through which individual identities and achievements
come to be realized, a process in which events come to be rationalized and traumatic
experiences confronted. Through the act of narrating, participants attempted to structure
life experiences into logical, deducible occurrences. Here I argue that the interviews
conducted allowed participants to discuss issues pertaining to their controversial status as
the state’s proclaimed internal enemy. Participants’ were thus able to share the
difficulties encountered since 9/11, and reaffirm, question, or deny AD projects of
representation and full citizenship.

In the narratives I gathered this past summer, many could be characterized as
what Ochs and Capps call the “default narrative of personal experience” (2001: 20).
Default narratives are often characterized by: one narrator; a generally tellable9 account; a
relatively detached demeanor towards the surrounding room’s activities; an overall linear,
temporal, and causal framework; and a continual moral bearing (2001: 20). I would also
argue that default narratives are generally detached from the emotional-and controversial
aspects of the narration. Yet, the act of narrating is not static as the configuring of a
narrative may shift during the narrative’s telling.

The majority of the narratives gathered, despite individual narrative variability,
however, should be understood as relatively structured, authoritative, and pre-packaged
narratives (Bakhtin, 1981). Therefore, most of the narratives I will focus on are various
forms of default narratives that attempt to convey a singular storyline and moral (Ochs
and Capps, 2001).

The few narratives that do not reside within this particular narrative form serve as

25

necessary counterpoints to the overtly structured narratives of prominent AD
spokespersons. These narratives are the focus of chapter 4. By paying attention to
intertexuality, or the relationship between narratives (Brenneis, 1996), I hope to
emphasize how the less tellable accountsIO draw upon the discursive aspects and tensions
that exist within the tellable, default narratives of prominent AD spokespersons.

While my aim is to focus on more than the methodical and political nature of
these narratives, I must simultaneously acknowledge the overtly political time and space
in which these narratives were gathered. In this sense, numerous participants’ narratives
are also part of a larger web of locally authoritative accounts that subsume portions of
dominant authoritative language ideologies in attempts to contextualize and
recontextualize (Bauman and Briggs, 1990) the political and social representations of
Arab American identity. In other words, the additional context specific variables in
which these narratives emerged must also be taken into account; that is the political
environment from which these narratives materialized should be understood as part of a
larger “politics of narration” that emerge during times of conflict (Brenneis, 1996: 43).

For the participants of this study, the conflict surrounding the events of September
11 has been ongoing. As Donald Brenneis notes, “conflict is a process, not a state”
(Brenneis, 1996: 43). Arab Detroit spokespersons’ and residents’ narratives should
therefore be understood, in part, as an ongoing process of continual reformulation of
discordant events.

Through the telling and retelling of 9/11 stories and related issues and concerns,
AD spokespersons not only project feelings tied to 9/11 into the present, but they also

attempt to shape the cultural sensibilities of Arab Americans in Detroit (Stewart, 1996).

26

Here, AD spokespersons inform common sense assumptions about what it means to be an
Arab American in Detroit post 9/1 1. This complexity must foreground our understanding
of the narratives detailed in this thesis for it is participants’ perceptions of their identities,

formed through intersubjective constructions of “being” and through discursive actions of

the state, that shape their actions as communal representatives of AD post 9/11.

Personal Admissions

This thesis has not been easy for me to write. Writing this during a time of self
actualization and increasing self-awareness has made me progressively aware of my own
uncertainty of myself as an aspiring anthropologist; I fear I have often taken on a
vanguard’s attitude in order to reassure myself of my own endeavor into the discipline of
anthropology. Yet I have also felt exceedingly vulnerable as a young ethnographer who
does not necessarily feel warranted to write what I have detailed in the pages that follow.

Oddly enough, I feel that these sentiments have come full circle and have, in
many ways, shaped my own theoretical interests in this project as I inquire further into
the seductions of inclusive discipline and why it makes us feel so good and often times at
home in our surroundings. These are comforting emotions that I now believe are
important to continually question: Why exactly does it make me feel so good? Why does
it make any of us feel excellent, empowered, and/or reassured? And why are such
feelings so hard to question? I am not under the delusion that I will answer these
questions, for indeed they are not universal questions to answer but rather personal quests
of life exploration. Rather, I simply wish to keep them in mind as we traverse the pages

that follow.

27

As I position myself as the writer of this story, I have to acknowledge the
vulnerable position that both myself and the participants of this project placed ourselves
in. I realize that what I received from people during their interviews is only what they
were willing to give; therefore, my work only reflects participants’ ability, and my own,
to be transparent. Due to my limited understanding and knowledge about participants
and the complexity of their lives, I will attempt to write this thesis in the spirit of
humanity and hopefully as a contribution to our collective understanding of our lives as

human beings.

Conclusion

In order to understand how the politics of fear and the events of 9/ 1] affected AD,
I look to the politics of inclusion, or inclusive disciplinary tactics, and how these politics
shape AD spokespersons’ notions of citizenship. I additionally address how AD
identities are intersubjectively constructed and politically fashioned. I study full
citizenship by focusing on spokespersons’ perceptions of the self and the self’ 5 identity in
times of national chaos, as an identity marked as morally ambiguous and contradictory. I
address how disciplinary tactics require an internal leveraging point in which the
individual finds motive, reassurance, or empowerment in the very acts that perpetuate
individual subjection. It is this aspect of inclusive discipline that my thesis is devoted to
explicating.

It is my hope that this thesis will provide detailed insight into the inner workings
of inclusive disciplinary tactics in which scapegoat populations attempt to navigate

charged sites of cultural and political allegiance. The narratives in. this thesis, in disparate

28

ways, thus speak to issues of embodiment and forms of inhabiting space within the
United States as a people who have been symbolically and physically marked as the
state’s antithetical Other. In order to better understand how the politics of fear
surrounding the events of 9/ 11 have come to affect participants’ form of public and
political engagement, I look to moments of frustration, doubt, and instability in
participants’ narratives and the role that sensory perceptions play in the Arab Detroit
safeguarding project. It is thus my endeavor to analyze how the 9/11 backlash has shaped
subjected identities in AD and how these identities in turn shape nomenclature and
common sense of the day.

Through my examination of these issues, I ultimately address the costs of the full
citizenship project. I examine how this safeguarding project has perpetuated and
rendered visible the violence of the 9/11 backlash in the everyday actions and intimate
sensibilities of AD spokespersons and residents.

I encourage readers to procure a complex understanding of the full citizenship
project. I am not arguing against or condemning the project, but rather attempting to
understand the full citizenship project and render a complex depiction of AD-govemment

relations in Detroit. I hope we can all appreciate the project for its analytic value.

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Chapter 1
Crisis Begets Inclusion: Embracing America’s National Myths

In this chapter, I demonstrate how the full citizenship project is rooted in practices
of ethnic distinction and exclusion in the national community, and how such practices
are, ironically, rooted in disciplinary tactics of inclusion. I look at how participants’
feelings pertaining to the events of 9/ ll shape their sense of themselves as Arab
American citizens, and how these feelings ultimately influence the full citizenship
project. Finally, this chapter focuses on how others’ views of one’s identity are

implicated in the creation of one’s own Arab American identity and vice versa.

Intersubjective Constructions of Being

“My first sentiment was fear actually. Because I knew somehow that the
Arab American community was going to pay for this. . .one way or another.”

“Oh my god. . .I hope this is not true, I hope this is not true.”
“We prayed that they were not Arab, Muslim.”
“After 9/11, I was afraid to approach my neighbors’ doors.”l

“And as far as 9/11, Rachel. . .(in a hushed voice) they knew 9/11 was
coming. They knew.”

“. . .it’s like we had a double-lash. . .this was our country; it was attacked. Oh
then all of the sudden it was like! ‘my god let ’s go get those bastards!’ And
then all of the sudden ‘oh my god we are being construed as the bastards.”’

“I always think about. . .god forbid. . .what if there were another attack. . .you
know? You know, what if there were another attack, god forbid?”

I opened with the montage of quotes above because it captures something
emotionally complex and uncanny about the predicament Arab and Muslim Americans

found themselves in after the 9/11 attacks. Italicized words relay several sentiments that

30

capture how the surreal became fused with the real in moments of fear, distress, anger,
and apprehension during a prolonged state of confusion and uncertainty, 3 zone of
contradiction and ambiguity that was particular to Arab, Muslim, and South Asian
Americans post 9/1 1.

What we see in some of the quotes above are participants’ realizations of their
heightened depiction as the state’s discursively proclaimed internal enemy, their state of
extreme otherness, and delicate vulnerability as targets of misplaced national anger. The
praying, the fear underscores the problematic of perception where the dilemma of
identity starts for the target population first, as their own awareness of their marked Arab
identity fosters instability before any person, entity, or institution has the chance to shake
this ground of perception for them. It is not that the fear and instability felt are not real or
warranted, the emotions are actualized and experienced; it is rather that these emotions
express possibilities that were not yet actualized in real time.

Yet I must also engage the veracity that these initial reactions to 9/11, relayed
eight years post the events of 9/1 1, were shaped by the backlash against Arab and Muslim
identities in the U.S. For Arab Detroiters, the national “state of emergency” post 9/11
became a lived statute rather than an exceptional state of being as AD residents came
under the watchful eye of the federal government (Benjamin, 1939). These sentiments
thus project fears of the past, and more importantly, past fears of past future possibilities
of which some were actualized, directly into the present and into the present concerns of
AD spokespersons; “. . . god forbid. . .what if there were another attack. . .you know?”
(Personal interview, 8/12/08). In other words, this “moment of danger” has been retained

in AD spokespersons’ memories due to 9/11’s unprecedented status, singled out as an

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unparalleled “moment of danger” in U.S. history (Benjamin, 1939: 257), and Arab and
Muslim Americans status as the internal domestic enemy throughout this perpetuated
moment of crises.

In what follows, I situate how sensory perceptions, or the “feeling” or “sense” of
9/11 speaks to pervasive forms of inter-communal discipline in the full citizenship project
today. By looking at how sensory perceptions and narrations of discrimination and fear,
often tied to the events of 9/1 1, inform the type and degree of inclusive disciplinary
practices in AD—such as the need to educate and empower in order to protect specific
local and national interests—I hope to produce more than just musings about the nature
of discipline. Rather, I hope to create concrete insight into the intimate sensibilities of
disciplinary projects of inclusion in which individual perceptions of the self speak to the
internal leveraging point of discipline.

In this sense, the self, one’s intimate sensibilities, beliefs, and perceptions, are at
the heart of what is being acted upon in the mainstreaming cultural activities of AD
spokespersons. To convince others to share in and project a naturalized, multicultural
understanding of Arabic culture means one must first convince themselves, to some
degree, that such forms of empowerment are appropriate and necessary. It is thus from
the perspective of the participants’ that I wish to start this story for it is from their
perspective that we see how the chaos surrounding the events of 9/11 destabilized one’s
sense of self by placing Arab individuals in the intimate zone of personal and public

contradiction and disorder.

Sensory Perceptions Speak to the Department of Instability

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This narration was taken from an interview I conducted with Talal, a civil rights
worker and AD spokesperson. Talal immigrated to the Detroit area several decades ago
and has since been active in civil rights issues in Dearbom. Talal works for a prominent
national organization that actively lobbies on behalf of Arab and Muslim American
rights. He is one of several directors of the organization’s regional chapter. Talal, in
response to my comments about the impressive coalition building Arab Detroit
spokespersons engaged in post 9/11 despite the backlash, began to talk about the “sense”
or “feeling” of “that day” in order to understand why the events of 9/11 empowered Arab

Detroit residents to become more active in the public sphere.

T: No, no, [think you captured it in a very accurate way, because I tell you
um, that the only way that you can really sense it and feel it, if you go back,
go back to that day, like my, I give you a simple example. Um, September
11‘“, my flight left from Detroit airport here at 9:30 in the morning, well
actually 9:20 or 9:15. I was leaving Detroit to Washington DC to the Reagan
National Airport next to the Pentagon. And the irony... the ironic part of this
was that I was to attend a meeting at the KLM Northwest Headquarters
Office in Washington DC, as a continuation of our discussion and
engagement related to racial profiling at airports. All right? I didn’t know,
nobody of us knew what was going on. We were up in the sky. For what we
knew the captain made an announcement that the plane diverted to the Dallas
airport because of a sky traffic jam. And people like most people were
business people so they were smiling, laughing joking, say, “what the hell,
what the hell with all that traffic jam in the sky,” but no one took it beyond
what it was.

So when the plane landed in Dallas airport, and this is when the captain
announced that there is a terrorist attack as we speak, blah blah. . .and you
know, like anybody in the plane I reached to my cell phone trying to get a
signal, trying to find out what was going on because the first thing that struck
me was that “Oh my god, I hope this is not true, I hope this is not true ” OK?
And I as I 'm going through this mixed feeling as I going supposedly to this
meeting to discuss you know, a matter related to that (racial profiling),
everyone on the plane start looking at me, and [ start looking you know?
What the hell you looking at?

Like I all of a sudden I became like a question mark. I left the plane. I walk
in the airport. Everybody is running in different directions, so I thought

33

myself like I’m looked at differently. So in that experience, if I go back to it, I
would easily have become a victim if my plane was one of those (hijacked)
or I could have been an accused. That’s the feeling that haunted us for a
while. So I spent a week in Washington DC before I managed to come back.
But to me it was one of the most unforgettable experiences, like the first day
we had to evacuate the national office. We had to have police escorted with
us because of the threats we received to the office. Uh, we had at that time
almost 26 phone lines; they were all jammed at the national office. We used
to sit there from 7 o’clock in the morning to 2, 3 o’clock sometimes, and the
police would help us just answer phones from people all over the country, not
only from Michigan, who are afraid, scared, yelling, crying, people asking us,
uh should I stay in this city? Should I move to another city? What should I
do? Should I take my kids to school? Should I not? You know? And like at
the office, there were like seven or eight of us. . .there it was like a crisis
time... I think as much as this put the community under the ghetto of uh fear
for a while, it also gave a dose of empowerment to the community to rebel on
it and move forward on it aggressively and compact it, and I think we did
manage in a very articulate way in a very effective way to engage (Interview
with Talal, 6/9/08).

In Talal’s description above, what we see is the particular sensory experience that
informs how Talal first comes to account for and understand the events of 9/11. In that
particular moment of crisis, the instability Talal first describes (italicized in the text
above) comes from his own knowledge that he, like the terrorists, is an Arab. He
perceives of himself as an individual marked, imagined to represent and feared to be part
of a larger terrorist network. As he attempts to digest the events that have just unfolded,
he realizes that “everyone onthe plane” is looking at him and that he has become a
morally ambiguous “question mark.” The chaos that Talal thus has to resolve is in part
his own understanding of who he is and what the other people on the plane perceive of
him to be. He knows he is Arab. It becomes only a short matter of time before others
will begin to question the national origin of his darker complexion, accent, and of his.
moral leanings and intent.

In this sense, the sense or feeling of that day reminds Talal of the immense

instability he felt as he came to comprehend the vulnerable state he was in on September

34

11. He relays how he became aware that he, in that moment, symbolized the attacker
thus making him susceptible to discriminatory acts of violence. He in turn recounts the
moments in which others begin to perceive of him as Arab and thus a threat. In other
words, Talal’s experience reflects his own sense and perception of himself, what he
knows himself to be—Arab—and what he envisions others’ imagine him to be—a threat.

Talal knows that this space of ambiguity and contradiction is dangerous. These
sentiments are reinforced once he hears about the predicament other Arab and Muslim
Americans are in throughout the nation. Talal’s motivation for wanting to remove Arab
and Muslim Americans from this zone of contradiction comes from his political
involvement as an anti-discrimination activist, but also from his understanding that he is
perceived by other Americans to be morally ambiguous as he symbolizes the attacker.
Thus to remove oneself and others from this space of contradiction becomes a moral
imperative. Here, the dangerous predicament Arab and Muslim Americans are placed in
post 9/11 serves as justification for the actions taken in securing and stabilizing Arab and
Muslim American safety in the U.S.

As Talal’s narration relays, in order to get out of this zone of contradiction, Arab
Americans had to prove to mainstream America and to the American government that
they do not belong in this zone of cultural and moral ambiguity, a project that requires the
empowerment of Arab Americans and the education of those with less than sympathetic
sentiments towards Arabs and Muslims. But in order to prove that you do not belong in
this space of contradiction, you must first attempt to polish your image by removing the
negative aspects of your identity that you imagine others to perceive when they see you.

The immediacy of fear and the necessity to remove oneself from this space of potential

35

 

 

 

 

physical harm speaks to the internal leveraging point of discipline. In order to secure a
safe place in society, one must engage what one imagines the mainstream to think of
oneself and then publicly refashion one’s identity and cultural sensibilities to its liking.
This revisioning of identity requires the ultimate reinvention of the self in which you alter
how you think of yourself and similarly how others judge or imagine you to be.

When I asked participants about their initial reactions and/or experiences in
relation to the events of 9/1 1, numerous participants connected their personal perceptions
and experiences of “that day” to the actions they took on behalf of their place of work or
as representatives of Arab Detroit. They often described in plural form what “we” or “the
community” have done in order to mitigate discriminatory actions of civilians and the
state. That participants often connected the instability of 9/ 11 to the coping mechanisms
taken in the wake of 9/1 1 implies that there was a multifaceted emotional response to the
9/11 crises that, when evoked, served as a form of validation for the actions taken by AD
spokespersons post 9/1 1.

Talal relayed how the instability felt and experienced by Arab and Muslim
Americans after 9/11, how the fear of harassment, maltreatment, and death from racial
and religious intolerance became a catalyst for closer engagement with the government in
Arab Detroit, especially amongst AD’s prominent public service organizations and
businesses.2 By engaging the government and the law enforcement branch of the
government, prominent AD organizations were able to lessen the number of hate crimes
expected after 9/11. According to Talal, through aggressive engagement with the
government, AD spokespersons have been able to make civil rights claims, maintain their

mainstream status, and exhibit their loyalty to the state through patriotic displays of

36

participation and negotiation with the government. While it is acknowledged that this
relationship is difficult, Talal reaffirmed that engagement with the government is crucial

for Arab Detroit’s ongoing acceptance in the mainstream (Personal interview, 6/9/08).

Arab Detroit Duality: Inclusion and Exclusion as Generative Themes

The crisis surrounding Arab and Muslim American belonging in the U.S. since
9/11 has been humiliating for many established Arab Americans in the greater Detroit
area. Arab Detroit has for decades been considered a model minority community of
exceptional status. Arab American residents in Detroit have long held positions of
authority and influence in the region. Wayne County Road Commissioner, Michael
Berry, held enough social and political clout to have an airport terminal named after him
at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Manuel Maroun, a Lebanese immigrant, owns and
operates the Ambassador Bridge that connects traffic passing between the U.S. and I
Canadian border in downtown Detroit. Arab Detroiters hold thirty-six political
appointments in Michigan and hold numerous powerful positions in all aspects of
institutional life in Southeastern Michigan (Howell‘and Jamal, 2009: 75).3

However, despite Arab Detroit’s local prominence and historical achievement,4
the area has figured centrally in the government’s domestic war on terror, obfirscating the
lines of distinction between local prominence and success, and distinction based upon
exclusion and difference from the mainstream. Arab Detroit is thus both noted for its
local prominence and for the public role it plays as the central grounds in the domestic
war on terror.

Demonized depictions of Arabs and Muslims in the media and decades of U.S-

37

Middle East conflict5 have helped to shape this dual depiction of Arab Detroit identities.
These portrayals and policies influence how Arab Detroiters view themselves as part of
both national and local society. Arab Americans are continually portrayed in popular
media and film as in the process of becoming American, as a people who have
questionable ties to their “homelands” and are indisputably “foreign.” Portrayals of Arab
and Muslim Americans as uprooted peoples depict these populations as politico-moral
problems that have lost their moral bearings due to a bodily disconnect with their national
homeland (Malkki, 1992: 63).

AD spokespersons thus represent Arab Detroit identities in direct contradiction to
stereotypical images of Arabness,6 portraying AD identities as modern, culturally
compatible with U.S. culture, and as counter-hegemonic to dominant negative portrayals
of Arabs and Muslims. For these harmful depictions to so highly shape AD politics of
representation, these stereotypes must be pervasive enough within popular society to
warrant a habitual campaign against them. These stereotypes are indeed historically and
currently all too pervasive in U.S. society.

Derogatory images of Arabs in cartoons, comics, news, media, and film have
throughout the last century depicted Arabs as internally displaced, primordial peoples of
the desert. The perpetuation of such imagery reinforces the notion that Arabs are rootless
Wanderers without a “home” (Malkki, 1992). Riding camels, wearing turbans, assaulting
women, and carrying guns have come to be the quintessential characteristics of
Orientalist discourse—or what Said depicts as “the Western approach to the Orient. . .that
collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to anyone who has tried to talk

about what lies east of the dividing line” (Stockton, 1994: 126; Said, 1978). Hollywood

38

films have, over the past half—century, routinely played up these stereotypes of Arabs and.
demonized peoples of the Middle East as “haters” of freedom and democracy.7 Arabs
have thus continually been portrayed and viewed by popular culture as a national threat, a
ticking time bomb without a proper place in the world. A population that is damned to be
forever displaced and disgruntled.

Ronald Stockton links Arab prejudice to two archetypes of American cultural
outsiderism: The first is linked to notions of biological inferiority that was traditionally
ascribed to Africans and African Americans. The second is depicted as a mental
incompatibility or the belief that a population is pathologically flawed. The two forms of
prejudice thus form a complementary binary of undesirable American qualities (Stockton,
1994: 120). In Orientalist discourse post 9/11, Arabs and Muslims have come to embody
both of these qualities, symbolizing the essence of most things anti-American and
immoral.

Amplified negative depictions of Arabs and Muslims post 9/11 have conflated

Arab and Muslim identities with terrorism in popular discourse. These negative
portrayals have remained in the forefront of the American imaginary. In a 2006
Washington Post-ABC poll, 46% of the surveyed Americans had an unfavorable
understanding of Islam, while 54% believe Islam to be a peaceful religion. Additionally,
33% of surveyed Americans stated that mainstream Islam perpetuates violence against
non-Muslims and another 58% felt that Islam, unlike other religions, has more violent
extremists. This poll was repeated in 2009 with few changes in public opinion (Zaharna,
2009). Arab Detroit spokespersons are acutely aware of the prejudices and stigmas held

against Arab and Muslim Americans (Shryock and Lin, 2009). The conflation of the

39

identities Arab/Muslim/terrorist in popular rhetoric has thus directly influenced who
counts as the Other by discursively defining who lies beyond the borders of the cultural
practices of the national community.8

This place of perceived contradiction as well as AD local prominence and
inclusion affects participants’ own‘understanding of themselves as U.S. citizens, as
American-born Arabs, or as naturalized immigrants. These two aspects of Arab
Detroiter’s lives, both local success and prominence as well as distinction based upon
difference and foreignness, work in ways that both augment and aid the other depiction of
Arab Detroit. They exist in a state of continual contradiction with each other, opposing
and challenging the others validity; yet, they also have come to work in tandem with the
other and actually promote the political, social and economic inclusion of Arab Detroit.

In what Bahera describes below, we can see how her own local success and her

assumed foreignness exist in tension together. Yet we also see how these aspects of her
life work together to produce not only a livelihood for Bahera but also a sense of her
place as a member of Arab Detroit and the imagined national community (Anderson,
1983). Bahera works for a marketing firm, business, and newspaper in Dearbom that
seeks to promote an authentic image of Arab Americans. She is a committed culture
worker in AD and actively promotes the cultural and civil inclusion of Arab and Muslim
identities in the U.S. She is both a successfirl, modern woman and an American-born
Arab with an Arabic name; these two facets of her being play out in the folds of her
narration. Below, Bahera describes a trip she took to Pennsylvania a few days following

the events of 9/1 1.

B: So my husband and I were traveling to visit family. . .and he has an
Americanized name and of course mine is Bahera Ghadah Aswad right

40

so. . .so we would get to the counter and they would look at his ID and give it
right back and then they would look at mine and then you know, they would
punch in some more information and they would ask me for some more [D
and you know I would be there for about 40 minutes being interrogated. . .and
you know they searched everything. So every single spot we went to they
would give him his stuff and. . .So it took me you know, four times the amount
of time it would have taken me, at each stop...because...but I was
interrogated basically because of my name. I had an American passport. 1
had everything; it didn ’t matter. You see what I’m saying? I was set aside
every time. So, you know at that point it was like...[ never really experienced
the stereotypes what have you. . .even with the eyebrows. . .(Bahera smiles
with a sarcastic grin)

R: [ Hahaha oh my. ]9

B: ...I never really felt like [ was different in any way. . .but that time you
know it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was like...this is it! This is the turning
point of our, of our entire culture, of our entire community, and of everything
we ’ve ever stood for and this is, you know, this is the reversal right now! So
really it was a shocker and it was something that just... you know...was hard
for me to internalize you know, really comprehend in terms of me being
stereotyped, me being profiled So, you know, that was a turning point for
me, so uh...we, we tried as a community to come together. And I have to tell
you that Dearbom did not really have many issues at all in terms of backlash
and in terms of ...you know

R: Yes, which is amazing!

B: ...yea so we were really a model uh kind of community because we did
come together. And since a lot of people who live in the community have
direct contact with Arab Americans, so that whole white wash, you know, that
your neighbor is a terrorist wasn 't going to fly here because people were
socially active with Arab Americans. They were their neighbors. They knew
them on a personal level so that kind of campaign wasn’t going to work here.

Bahera’s understanding of herself as a contemporary, successful American woman is

challenged each time she is detained because of her Arabic name. She comes to see

herself as more intrinsically tied to other Arabs in Dearbom as her own experience of

discrimination speaks to a larger landscape of disorder and lawlessness that Arab and

Muslim Americans, despite religious affiliation, class standing, ethnicity, and success,

were placed in post the events of 9/11. She first acknowledges why she is being detained,

because of her Arabic name, and then frames this exclusion in relation to the objects that

41

make her legally American: her passport and other forms of identification (this section is
italicized above). She then goes on to discuss her own internalization of these events and
the ultimate reversal of Arab Detroit’s image from that of a minority success story to the
focal point in the domestic war on terror.

We see how her sense of belonging in America is reconfigured around her
heightened sense of her Arabness as threat as her citizenship status fails to protect her
from racial profiling and surveillance. She intemalizes this experience as it refashions
her understanding of her “entire community” and possibly whom she imagined herself to
identify with within her own community: modern and progressive Arab Americans.
While this experience challenges Bahera’s understanding of herself as a legal and cultural
citizen, it also serves as a backdrop from which she may define how she is and is not like
“the rest” of American society and what it means to thus obtain “full” citizenship rights.

That her story takes place, as most if not all of these stories do, in a public space
illustrates how Bahera’s sense of her “Arabness” is heightened vis-a-vis others who are
not Arab and thus do not experience this particular form of discrimination. The
perceptions of those detaining and searching her body, her personal being, come to shape
her understanding of her own identity and augment what is so specifically at stake for her
in getting out of this stereotyped space: her reputation and understanding of herself as a
mainstream woman.

The frustrations that accompany this space of contradiction for many AD
spokespersons and residents have been channeled towards the effective promotion of
Arab and Muslim American cultural and civil inclusion in the United States.

Differentiating how Arabs are and are not alike other Americans is a professional

42

undertaking of Bahera’s. Since the events of 9/1 1, Bahera has established several
exceptionally successful workshops that attempt to address popular misconceptions about
Arabs and Muslims abroad and in the U.S. These workshops are geared towards both
Arab Americans and non-Arab Americans alike. Workshops such as these are in high
demand in AD; culture work in AD is thus a burgeoning industry in Arab Detroit.

Thus while AD spokespersons and residents have experienced increased racial
profiling and discrimination post 9/11, they have used these experiences as platforms for
engaging in public discussion about the controversy surrounding Arab and Muslim
identities in the U.S. Engaging in this type of discussion was made possible due to Arab
Detroit’s status as a locally integrated and respected ethnic community. This is one
personal example of the ways in which Arab Detroit’s contradictory forms of distinction,
its image as both a minority success story and its status as the focal point for the domestic
war on terror, have come to work in tandem and actually promote the political, social and
economic inclusion of Arab Detroit. This promotion has come with many costs for

participants, costs of which are personal and social, political and economic.

Crisis and Contradiction Promote the Politics of Inclusion

This incongruous space of Arab American identity construction speaks to larger
discursive processes of the state in which disorder and contradiction are necessary aspects
of state functionality. Michael Herzfeld argues that a space for disorder, contradiction,
and lawlessness is ironically necessary for the functioning of a bureaucratic state that
hopes to maintain the loyalty of its citizens, some semblance of public order, and the

appearance of cohesive national values (2004). It seems that the events of 9/1 1 and the

43

domestic backlash experienced in Arab Detroit thereafter speak to this very aspect of
state functionality in which the dual representation of Arab Americans as both internal
enemy and valuable citizen became a necessary facet for the war on terror and for the
maintenance of celebratory American multiculturalism.

Here contradiction, disorder, and lawlessness serve the goals of AD
spokespersons as they seek to broaden the discussion surrounding Arabness in America
with a more engaged U.S. public post 9/11. State and federal agencies’ interests are
served as they are able to publicly display how the government is protecting America
domestically by monitoring Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. while they simultaneously
publicize how the state protects Arab Americans in AD from hate crimes. Through these
discursive and elaborate displays, AD spokespersons gain a platform from which to
present their cultural. worth. The government gains a symbol of effective state/minority
engagement.

Ironically, this has resulted in the creation of extreme outward displays of Arab
American loyalty to the true values of the nation—constitutional values of equality,
justice, and freedom'0 (Baker and Jamal, 2009). Such patriotic displays can be seen in
the inclusive disciplinary tactics of spokespersons as they seek to foster and promote AD
civil rights and multicultural values in greater Detroit. Spokespersons evident faith in the
United States Constitution has also enabled representatives to rationalize the overt federal
presence in AD. Phrases such as “They need to do their jobs. . .and we also want to see
that this country is safe” relay how untenable government surveillance in AD is
accounted for and sanctioned. Such logic shows how the often-illegal practices of the

state became, at best, tolerable in the disorderly aftermath of 9/1 1.

44

Yet the extreme federal presence in AD is also often tolerated due to the financial
benefits acquired from state and federal agency operations in AD. In the aftermath of
9/11, Arab Detroit organizations began to receive philanthropic donations from charitable
organizations, businesses, and state and federal agencies at increasing rates. Donations
were surprisingly high in the days that followed 9/11 as institutions and individuals
donated money to AD organizations in demonstrations of their support for the Arab and
Muslim community. According to Howell and Shryock, ACCESS received over $5
million dollars in gifts in the two-year span that followed the events of 9/11 (2003: 447).
Thus while the entire area has suffered under the weight of an overt government
presence, particular organizations have faired especially well and have even grown
financially and physically since 9/1 1.

A significant portion of federal and state funds received post 9/11 were used to
establish much needed cultural education workshops for federal agencies conducting
operations in the area. Principal Arab Detroit organizations were thus paid to sensitize
government workers, agencies, and the public about Arab culture in acts that sought to
fortify the economic, political, and cultural value of Arab Detroit.ll In a piece written by
Andrew Shryock, he quotes a culture worker discussing his take on the notably enhanced

money flow to AD organizations post 9/11:

I’m happy this money is pouring in. The community really needs it. It’s a
vote of confidence. But I know that’s only half the story. I mean, when this
kind of money suddenly becomes available, after something horrible like
September 11, it’s a blessing and a curse. It means you’re about to take a hit.
This money will soften the blow. Maybe. It’ll help the community handle
the major shit that’s about to go down. People are scared. I see these million
dollar checks coming in from everywhere and I think, man! They’re actually
paying Arab organizations to “sensitize” the FBI; we’re running workshops
now for the same people who are cracking down on the community. It’s
weird as hell, quite frankly. Part of me thinks. . .well, part of me knows, this

45

is all a way of maintaining “homeland security” and keeping things in order.
There is incredible potential here to develop new cultural resources people
can use to educate, and the need for that is really urgent. Basically, you’ve
got to get to work and not be all freaked out about the big picture. Or else
you’ll be totally paralyzed (2004: 284).

In the fight for resources in Detroit, prominent AD organizations are doing considerably
well eight years after 9/11 and amidst an economic recession. This is a testament to the
perpetuation of the politics of fear surrounding the war on terror as the need to “sensitize”
government agencies and the public about Arab culture remains.

As the excerpt above relays, the government is paying Arab organizations to
educate federal agencies about Arab culture. The irony of this discursive display of
inclusion and discipline is not lost upon the culture worker; it is in many ways seen as a
fi'ightening yet potentially beneficial situation. She “knows” that this is a national and
international display of government power and domestic management, a display that will
have numerous negative repercussions for AD. Yet she also realizes the potential for
communal and cultural development due to the influx of philanthropic, federal, and state
funds, a potential that has, for many AD spokespersons, been actualized as Arab
Americans gain an expanding soap box from which to air their concerns.

This soap box however comes with particular stipulations and contradictions
embedded within its overall aims and goals. As the culture worker above states, “you’ve
got to get to work and not be all freaked out about the big picture. Or else you’ll be
totally paralyzed” (Shryock, 2004: 284). The freaky “big picture,” the source of potential
paralysis, is that Arab American organizations were and are being paid to educate and
promote federal agencies that monitor, interrogate, and deport many AD residents. In
other words, AD organizations gain access to a platform for educating the public about

Arab culture by engaging with the government. They become ambassadors of Arab

46

America, naturalizing Arab Americanisms for mainstream consumption.

Many AD spokespersons state that they were ‘forced,’ out of necessity, into this
type of engagement with the government. Yet, when such engagement is discussed in
terms of cultural and civil public education, the work is rather seen in many ways as
positive and as actions pursued out of choice. The work gets reframed in terms of
cultural “self-representation” and civil rights activism, taking on counter-hegemonic
connotations.

Federal force alone cannot explain why many AD organizations continue to
culturally sensitize government agencies. Rather, this act of sensitization is part of a
larger production: the production of a mass produced and consumable Arab American
identity, marketed and represented by Arab Americans (Davila, 2001). As the culture
worker notes above, the events of 9/ 11 produced a public platform from which Arab
Americans could display their own cultural representation and in turn educate the public
about what Arab Americans are “really like” (Field notes from Arab American Museum,
6/3/08). In this sense, after 9/11 there was an opportunity to sensitize the local and
federal government and the ill-cultured American public about what it means to be Arab
American, opportunities to further solidify and project the self-determined identity “Arab
American” nationally. This unexpected pedestal for self-representation has given Arab
Detroiters the chance to voice their frustrations about racial profiling, discrimination, and
their “guilt” by racial or religious association. It has allowed Arab Detroiters to establish

themselves as self-determined American people.

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Bifurcating Arab American Identity

This platform for Arab American self-representation comes with a great deal of
politico-moral responsibility for Arab Detroit spokespersons. They seek to mediate
government intervention, educate Arab Americans about their civil rights, encourage and
empower Arab Americans to engage and educate the non-Arab public about Arab culture,
promote joining federal agencies, support military involvement, and endorse the Arab
American ethnic uniform. In this process of civil and cultural representation,
spokespersons denote, categorize, and reframe the responsibilities of Arab Americans
along an access of perceived differentiation between their “American” duties and their
obligations as “Arab Americans.”

This categorization frames the boundaries of belonging in the U.S. around
differing identities of citizenship: “American” citizenship and “Arab American”
citizenship. Each form of identification with the nation comes with different
responsibilities. Akil, an affluent and educated immigrant, is a civil rights worker
employed by ACCESS. He works for a department of ACCESS that seeks to build
strong local and national institutions that may advocate on behalf of Arab American
rights. Below, Akil depicts the discussion surrounding Arab American belonging in the
national community as “no different than the kinds of discussions that were going on
during the civil rights movement between the African American community or other

communities.”

A: It ’s like on the one hand we are Americans and so as Americans we
absolutely think that our community should be part of any agency whatever it
is: the state department, the commerce department or weather it 's, whatever
agency as Americans! You know. But that doesn ’t mean that as an agency or
as individuals

48

R: [ Yea. Definitely... definitely]

A: ...we may take very strong issue with certain policies that come out of any
particular agency. And uh it’s again our responsibility as Americans! Ha! As
citizens! Because we are a democracy and that is part of the privilege of
living in a democracy is you not only have the rights but you have the
responsibilities of making your voice heard and advocating and that is part of
what makes this country what it is.

Here, Akil depicts American citizenship in terms of one’s right, privilege, and
responsibility to be active in all forms of society. His emphasis and strict use of the term
“American” rather than “Arab American” entails precisely how responsibility in AD
spokespersons discourse is being framed: contribution to law enforcement agencies, the
military, and civil society on the whole are being normalized as standard American
activities. Akil argues that this form of full civil participation is common for all
American citizens. He thus frames one’s American contributions to society in terms of
employment in government agencies rather than acknowledging how this call to
citizenship is particular to the heavily monitored Arab and Muslim American community.
In turn, discussions pertaining to federal agency participation are framed as normal and
conversely become mundane dialogue in AD.

Akil subsequently frames one’s “Arabness” and “Arab American” individuality in
contrast to one’s Americanisms, a form of bifurcation of Arab American identity not all
too uncommon amongst AD spokesperson rhetoric (Stockton, 2009). In Akil’s depiction
above, one’s Arabness may, in contrast, strongly object to the very policies and actions
put in place by the same agencies an Arab’s “American” half is called to participate in.
Here, Arab American citizenship is thus framed as both government assistance and ethnic
activism. This becomes a platform from which to participate in the national community

as a member of a distinctive ethnic group and as an American citizen.

49

Making this type of conversation ordinary is one way in which AD spokespersons
attempt to claim full American citizenship. They make explicable the contradiction
surrounding Arab and Muslim American identities in the U.S. by relaying how Arab
Americans may remove themselves from this space of contradiction. Full citizenship
thus becomes an attainable and practical goal for Arab Detroiters if they follow the
guidelines they suggest. It is an endorsement project; it is replicated from civil rights
projects that have come before. Full citizenship rhetoric is thus projected as practical,
common sense in Arab Detroit as AD spokespersons attempt to make such logic
widespread in AD.

This type of logic is pervasive amongst AD spokespersons and it is tremendously
paradoxical. This is not to imply that Akil and others do not doubt or question this type
of project, but rather to point out the contradiction inherent in this notion of Arab
American citizenship and the bifurcation of identity such discussion entails. This
discourse places Arab Detroiters in a limited, controversial, and contradictory
relationship with City Hall, law enforcement agencies, and the government, in which they
are both working for and in contradiction to these institutions. More importantly, it
ultimately redefines Arab Detroit’s image, particularly the Dearbom area, around its
complicated and controversial relationship with the government and the domestic war on
terror. In this dialogue, responsibility is projected onto Arab Detroiters as it is
simultaneously heavily felt by AD spokespersons. Such a weighty project of citizenship
comes with hefty responsibilities; it is not too far to wonder when and where there is

doubt

50

Constructed Consciousness and the American Dream
Today, Arab Detroit spokespersons have adopted the nationally constructed

consciousness of multiculturalism; a consciousness that conjures a cohesive national
value that is hoped to spare Arab Americans from the violence born from perceived
difference. This constructed consciousness disguises trenchant state intrusion as minority
autonomy. It fashions a common sense based around multicultural values and in turn
displays the politics of ethnic identity as counter-hegemonic when such identity displays
are rather produced in “conversation and often in complicity with. . .dominant hierarchies
of race, culture, and nationality”, a phenomenon Arlene Davila examines in the
representation of Hispanic populations in the U.S. in Latinos Inc. (2001: 2).

Through this adoption of multicultural values, AD spokespersons have engendered
a composition to the art of feeling that AD residents may adopt and deploy in their own
actions and conversations with mainstream society. This is composition shapes Arab
Detroiters’ spoken sentiments pertaining to their place as an American citizen, their own
cultural awareness and understanding of themselves as an Arab American, and their
reactions and subsequent actions taken after the events of 9/1 1. These sentiments appear
to stem from the fact that many Arab Americans feel a sense of security when in
Dearbom. Dearbom represents a protective enclave for Arab Americans who appear
exceedingly foreign, who do not speak perfect English, or who have different sounding
names (Interview with Farihah, 6/3/08; Shryock and Lin, 2009).

This sense of security is also born from the protection that AD spokespersons and
organizations, such as ACCESS and the Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), afford

to Arab Detroit residents. That these organizations effectively reduced hate crimes post

51

9/11 and continue to mediate an onerous government presence augments these
organizations’ influence in AD. These organizations in turn influence how AD residents
engage the non-Arab public by making readily accessible politically correct ideas and
discussions pertaining to Arab American “culture.”

As numerous participants suggested, this project is carried out in the hope that
Arab and Muslim Americans, like the Irish, Jews, Japanese, and Italians before them, will
pass through the multicultural gate of acceptance and be considered an assimilated, full
American citizen. As many AD spokespersons noted, America is, “at the end of the

day. . .a unique country in the world.”

It’s a multilingual, multicultural, place and the good almost always
outweighs the bad, but when there are issues then that is kind of our
responsibility as citizens to address those issues. . .regardless of what the issue
is! By and large again this (multiculturalism and ethnic succession) is
what makes this country unique and we, you know, we make mistakes as a
country, but also we. . .we do it right in a sense...

Multicultural rhetoric, in all its positive affirmations, is an attempt to conjure comfort
during a difficult time. It allows spokespersons to relay to the national community Arab
Americans’ cultural and civil worth. Yet it also seeks to acknowledge and make sense of
the positive affirmations Arab Detroit organizations received post 9/11 and in turn shows
how AD leaders have adopted part of our nationally constructed consciousness: the belief
in multicultural value and worth. Through repetition and persistence, multicultural
discourse is hoped to solidify a space for the Arab American dream; it symbolizes
opportunity for Arabs in America just as it is hoped to reassure and calm the suspicious
non-Arab American examining eye.

Such rhetoric additionally attempts to reaffirm and summon the good will of the

American people. It beckons the American mainstream to distinguish between Arab

52

Detroiters and the terrorists. By carving out this zone of comfort and security, Arab
Americans are reminded of the good American citizenship affords, such as civil liberties
and equality for all ethnic citizens. They attempt to create a moral and cultural space for
themselves in American multicultural society. Yet, by invoking this desirable image of
America, its’ liberties and the possibilities it affords, spokespersons in turn silence the
violence born against Arab and Muslim identities post 9/11.

The use of full citizenship rhetoric thus perpetuates two distinctive myths that are
often employed as tools for reaffirming the success of multicultural and civil rights
discourse: first, it promotes the notion that ethnic groups will and do assimilate into
mainstream American society over time. Scholars refer to this form of citizenship
obtainment as a “set of expectations” known as ethnic succession (Ong, 2003). As
Aihwa Ong and Renato Rosaldo note, the myth of ethnic succession enables immigrant
populations to maintain a right to difference in order to authenticate and make legitimate
their claims to self-representation (2003; 1997). In Arab Detroit, the ethnic and cultural
practices maintained and promoted must be sanctioned and acceptable according to
mainstream standards.

In their attempts to gain full cultural and civil citizenship, spokespersons draw
lines between the “good” and the “bad,” the “traditional” and the “modern,” and the
“boaters” and the “ethnic Arabs” in Detroit as they argue that “boaters” will eventually
assimilate into American society as do all American immigrants. This belief in ethnic
succession thus allows spokespersons to portray Arabs that deviate from mainstream
cultural standards as in the process of assimilation. These aspects of AD representation

attempt to quell the fears of non-Arabs who may wonder, “What’s going on in Arab

53‘

Detroit?” Unfortunately, this belief in ethnic succession has not been actualized. Now
almost a century past Arab migration to the US, Arab Americans are still proving that
they deserve to be seen as simply American.

Second, full citizenship rhetoric perpetuates the myth of U.S. exceptionalism, as
both a nation of noteworthy constitutional rights and opportunity. Full citizenship
rhetoric silences the fact that American democracy has been built upon racial inequality
and logic (Graves, 2001; Stockton, 1994; Ong, 2003), a logic that rigidly defines the
rights of the United States’ minority citizens. It normalizes structural state violence and
oppression as part and parcel of the assimilation process. In the text below, we see how
struggle and hardship are famed as courageous, honorable, and noble in the process of

becoming American.

As Arab Americans indeed we take pride in taking part of such a rich
movement [civil rights movement], such a noble movement, such a noble
cause. I don’t think there’s anything better these days, especially after the
national tragedy of September 11. There ’s nothing nob/er than to accept
what we see as the true American values and the precious constitution that
we have and the precious basic freedoms that we enjoy as citizens. So to be
part of that struggle is a great honor as any struggle is not going to be free of
challenge and it’s not going to be easy. But hey that’s what makes the best
shape and the best image of the nation (Personal interview with Talal,
6/9/08).

By reaffirming the just nature of the American constitution, spokespersons legitimize
struggle and hardship as part of the process of becoming American; personal and
communal costs become expendable in this struggle for a higher good and value.

The process of becoming American, however, can be ongoing with no guarantee
of obtaining full equality in American society and civil law. Processes of becoming
culturally and civilly “American” often do not end even after moments of apparent civil

rights success. Instead, structural and institutional racism against Arab and Muslim

54

Americans persists as cultural norms that exist outside of and beyond civil law.'2

The myth of U.S. excpetionalism then, in an ironic twist, enables spokespersons
to frame Arab Detroit as an exceptional model minority community that faired
particularly well throughout the 9/11 backlash; AD becomes a community that despite
hardship, will win their multicultural and civil rights. It is the American dream, the
dream of equality and unlimited possibilities that places the burden of hill citizenship
claims onto those who are essentially bared from the perks of Anglo-Saxon society. This
constructed consciousness, this belief in multiculturalism and the fill citizenship project,
reinforces unequal relations between AD and the government and AD and the nation. As
if in an ultimate farce, by adopting this constructed consciousness participants’ place the

burden of obtaining equality on the heads of those whom it deliberately subjugates.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I demonstrate how the full citizenship project is rooted in practices
of ethnic distinction and exclusion in the national community, and how such practices
are, ironically, rooted in disciplinary tactics of inclusion. I take a multifaceted analytic
approach to understand how this process of inclusion functions. I look at how the
instability felt after 9/11 influences spokespersons’ awareness about their obligations to
Arab Detroit and how they come to rationalize and legitimize their actions taken on
behalf of the community. By prioritizing participants’ feelings and senses as legitimate
analytic data, we see how this space of instability and contradiction shapes practices of
inclusion in AD.

I illustrate this theoretical interest further by looking at how participants’ reacted

55

to discrimination in the public sphere, placing these narrations against a larger backdrop
of Arab and Muslim American stereotypes. In doing so, I reveal how popular
exclusionary depictions of Arabs shape AD spokespersons’ understanding of their social
space and work related endeavors. I then frame these stereotypes in relation to Arab
Detroit dual depiction as the nation’s domestic front in the war on terror and as a model
minority community.

I then proceed to look at how the lawlessness, chaos, and disorder surrounding
the events of 9/11 benefited not only the federal government, but also AD organizations
that received federal funds to culturally sensitize federal agencies. I look at the problems
embedded within AD-govemment political and economic engagements. I then relate
these contradictions to the bifurcation of Arab American identity in spokespersons’
narratives and the weighty politico-moral responsibility AD spokespersons’ bear as they
seek to mediate an overt government presence in AD. I then argue that the full
citizenship project is positioning AD residents in a contradictory relationship with City
Hall and the federal government.

This chapter concludes by looking at the ideologies inclusive disciplinary tactics
are rooted in AD and how these practices are embedded within belief systems that
perpetuate the subjugated position of Arab Detroit’s most seemingly foreign residents. In
addressing these particular topics, I hope to have produced more than just musings about
the nature of discipline. Rather, I attempted to create concrete insight into the intimate
sensibilities of disciplinary projects of inclusion in which individual perceptions of the
self speak to the internal leveraging point of discipline. By focusing on these issues, I

hope to have provided new critical insight into the full citizenship project in AD that will

56

be not only of use to the academic community but to AD spokespersons and

organizations as well.

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Chapter 2

Engaging the Government in Arab Detroit: Where Contradiction
Meets Both Gain and Doubt

To speak about Arab Detroit’s relationship with the government is no easy task.
The nature of this relationship varies not only from spokesperson to spokesperson and
organization to organization, but the difficulty in pinpointing some sort of “nature” to this
relationship also lies in the discursive actions taken by the Bush administration post 9/1 1.
The Bush administration sent unclear and contradictory messages to millions of Arab and.
Muslim Americans post 9/11. In order to understand how the politics of inclusion
function in Arab Detroit, we must be aware of how initial homeland security efforts post
9/11 affected and continue to influence the relationship between Arab Detroit and law
enforcement agencies.

In this chapter, [ look at how the policies implemented and actions taken by the
state post 9/11 affect the AD full citizenship project today. [place state actions post 9/ 11
in conversation with participants’ narrations about state-AD interaction and in turn
disclose what is contradictory or incongruous about AD-state relations and the full

citizenship project.

Discursive State Actions: Rationalizing an Overt Government Presence

”They need to do their jobs...and we also want to see that this country is safe. ”

Within days of the attack, the federal government released numerous statements
that aimed to prevent domestic hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans: “Any

threats of violence or discrimination against Arab or Muslim Americans or Americans of

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South Asian Descent are not just wrong and un-American, but also are unlawful and will
be treated as such” (Howell and Shryock, 2003: 447). The terrorist attacks, initially
defined as egregious acts of terrorism perpetrated by extremist fundamentalists,
promulgated in the months that followed into an all out attack on Arabs and Islam.
Throughout this time period, Islam, extremism, Arabs, and terrorism were continually
conflated in popular discourse. One participant reflects on the initially encouraging

management of 9/1 1 by the Bush administration.

You know, the beginning reports were uh “this is not an Arabic issue, this is
not a religious issue, this is an act of terrorism.” Which was great, and had it
continued that way it would have been fine, but then when you have the
President saying one thing and then slamming terrorists it’s just...very much
hounding the fact that it is Arabs, Muslims and the like, you know. They are
our enemy. You’re with us or you’re without us. . .or you’re not with us
you’re against us.I

The government increasingly presented statements that were at odds with state actions
and media reports on the domestic war on terror. While the administration was publicly
admonishing acts of racial profiling and hate crimes, the government demonstrated rather
swiftly that it itself was not susceptible to the law.

Shortly after the events of 9/11, the Bush administration began to monitor AD
residents’ homes, purchases, intellectual interests, and contacts at home and abroad.
These actions, made legal by the PATRIOT Act in October of 2001, enabled the
government to bypass legal processes in order to discreetly ship unwanted groups abroad
for interrogation or back to their homelands.2 These raids resulted in the detainment and
deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims nationwide and of a thousand plus Arab
Detroit residents.

The PATRIOT Act, an infringement on all Americans’ civil liberties, was

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portrayed as part of the domestic war on terror that sought to keep American
neighborhoods safe from the iniquity of Arab and Muslim terrorists. The achievements
of this legislation and of the domestic war on. terror were publicly displayed through a
series of local and national special feature newsbreaks that highlighted Arab Americans
who were being tried for criminal activity. “Operation Green Quest,” initiated through
the U.S. Customs Office, was one of these specials that detailed Arab Americans as
suspects of sedition. These policies and public displays served to discourage Arab
Detroit residents from giving money to loved ones in the Middle East (Sassen, 2008;
Alsultany, 2007)3 while these operations were simultaneously broadcast to the public in
order to maintain an image of Arab and Muslim Americans as a people of questionable
moral behavior.

What lay behind this propaganda machine was an ostentatious and aggressive
federal operation that sought, and still seeks to weed out potential Arab and Muslim
American “threats” in order to maintain domestic security and order. These “threats”
proved to be nothing more than the Orientalist4 imaginings of a purportedly violent
people that unfortunately resulted in devastating accusations against numerous Arab and
Muslim Americans.

Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. Border Patrol in Michigan housed the first FBI
facilitated unannounced, rotating checkpoint that sought out terrorist activity in the highly
populated Arab and Muslim American area. The first “operational combat sleeper cell”
was only to be shortly later revealed where four “Al-Qaeda terrorists” were allegedly
discovered plotting schemes against America. These men were eventually acquitted of

all charges (Lewis, 2004). Conveniently, the U.S. government never made public the

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purported evidence against these men (All Things Considered, 2004). The discovery of
the cell was, however, aired nationally through cable networks and radio waves where
imagery of the alleged terrorists could be seen and identified by wary Americans.

In 2003, sixty government agents raided five Yemeni-American businesses
located in Dearbom Michigan. They arrested six men for partaking in what officials
labeled “illegal money transfers” (Howell and Shryock, 2003: 452). Through a series of
such assaults on various Arab and Muslim American businesses, including the American
Arab Chamber of Commerce, the government put the once transnationally active Arab
and Muslim American economic sector nearly out of business. Capital technology
enabled DHS to mobilize the Arab Detroit political economy as a form of state
panopticism, an issue I will further illustrate in the first vignette of this chapter. This has,
according to the U.S. government, allowed the state to simultaneously protect U.S.
interests abroad as the state gains increasing control over who does and does not receive
remittances in the Arab world.

Understanding how these discursive actions of the state impacted the already
contradictory space Arab and Muslim Americans were placed in post9/11 is crucial to
understanding the complicated relationship between the U.S. government and its Arab
and Muslim citizens. It also allows us to recognize moments of doubt in participants’
narratives where they grapple with the pros and cons of the full citizenship project and
the extreme level of federal presence in AD. One of the first AD spokespersons I met
highly suggested that I focus on “how the mechanisms” of AD representation “had to

change” post 9/1 1.

How they [Arab Detroit spokespersons]...had to create different mechanisms
in order to cope with the changing environment of being Arab American. . .of

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having to actually communicate and be as cooperative as possible in order to
be able to know what is. . .expected of the community after the situation. . .why
we had to cooperate. . .why we needed the exchange of information.

Why Arab Detroit leaders “had to cooperate” after 9/1 1 was not simply the result of
government force. As I illustrated, discursive state actions post 9/11 pertaining to Arab
and Muslim American identities in the U.S. sent mixed messages to the American public.
This placed AD in a volatile position as AD spokespersons had to quickly react to these
discursive public messages about the Arab and Muslim American community in order to
mediate the climate of ambiguity that befell AD. Therefore fear of containment and.
segregation, of being blocked from the mainstream, as well as evident political,
economic, and social opportunities to be had from AD-govemment relations are as much
a part of this need to cooperate with the government as is AD cooperation due to
governmental duress.

The narration above relays how the actions taken by AD spokespersons post 9/11
were often rationalized as actions organizations and individuals were ‘forced’ to take, as
expectations spokespersons had to fulfill. In this scenario, one must deal with the cards
they are dealt, actions must be rationalized and accounted for in order to legitimize the
steps one took as an Arab Detroit advocate. While Arab Detroit spokespersons
understandably argue that they have been forced into the “hot seat,” provoked to define
Arab American identity “from square zero,” (Personal interview, 6/9/08) particular AD
organizations have in many ways entered into a somewhat ideal position from which to
push their mainstreaming agendas. [n a climate in which the stakes of communal
representation could not appear to be higher, AD organizations have come to more
clearly define what are and are not appropriate Arab American cultural sensibilities,

delineating what is desirable (modern) and undesirable (traditional) behavior.

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Understanding how AD engagement with the government functions is essential to
defining what is expected communal engagement. As we look closer, we see where the
necessary enters into the govemment-AD exchange and where the expected AD
interaction exceeds its apparent average obligations. To understand “what is expected of
the community,” we must understand the politicized nature of identity politics in Arab
Detroit and exactly who “needed the exchange of information” with the government
before we can fully understand the manner in which constructed consciousness functions
amongst mainstreaming AD spokespersons.

In what follows, I depict three vignettes that attempt to exhibit varying political—
public and private—and divergent landscapes of governmentality5 (Foucault, 1978) in
Arab Detroit. Yet rather than approach governmentality as a simply an operative and
organized mentality, [ argue that the art of governance lies in disorder, contradiction,
chaos, and lawlessness (see Herzfeld, 2004); in a citizen’s sense of how to survive amidst
such disorder. By pointing to moments of doubt in spokespersons’ narratives in which
the full citizenship project is questioned and reconstituted in comprehensible chunks, the
discursive nature of AD- government relations becomes apparent and highlights the
particular moments in which adopting part of a larger constructed consciousness becomes

necessary for identity stability and individual conviction and action in everyday life.

Vignette 1: BRIDGES

Building Respect In Diverse Groups To Enhance Sensitivity, also known as
BRIDGES, was founded by ADC Regional Director [mad Hamad and is today co-chaired

by Daniel Sutherland, Officer of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties from the Department of

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Homeland Security in Washington DC. BRIDGES is a collaborative meeting between
AD representatives and state and federal agents and politicians that meets once a month.
It is attended by the regional U.S. Attomey’s Office, various state and federal officials,
the FBI, CIA, and numerous other federal agencies as well as prominent Arab Detroit
spokespersons and organization affiliates. These meetings address issues that are of
concern to both parties pertaining to the domestic and international war on terror. It is
considered a collaborative effort to eschew international and domestic terrorism. Yet, it
is also an avenue for AD spokespersons to display their value and cultural worth as U.S.
citizens through performative gestures of patriotic contribution to the state.

Many AD leaders also argue that this engagement has made the “local law
enforcement community more accountable to Arab concerns” (Howell and Jamal, 2009:
91). While words such as “collaboration” and “partnership” are often used by AD
spokespersons to describe the BRIDGES meetings, AD participants’ frustrations
throughout the meeting I attended in the fall of 2008 were anything but inconspicuous; in
some instances blatant aggravation was displayed while eyes rolled and mouths
whispered irritably in comers. Despite the tension present at these meetings, they are
often described as a venue where AD leaders are able to air their concerns pertaining to
eroding civil rights while the government gains communal cooperation in guarding
national security interests abroad.

Arab Detroit is viewed as a key site in protecting U.S. interests, as AD residents
are believed to be prime cultural and political guides to the Arab world. They are also
seen as having close transnational ties with family members and various organizations

and institutions abroad. In the BRIDGES meeting described below, the government

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assumes that by micro-managing AD transnational economic and social activities that
they may undermine terrorist activities of decreed terrorist groups such as Hamas and
Hezbollah. These are assumptions that AD residents argue are hindering their families’
livelihoods abroad. This imagined tie to terrorism in the Arab world forcibly re-inscribes
Arab Detroit residents to a homeland abroad and in turn restricts their local activities.
One participant described this assumed connection between Arab Detroit and terrorists

with outrage and disgust:

You have public officials calling on the Arab American community to help
them...for curbing terrorism. . .(slams hand on table). . .we don’t have coffee
with these terrorists! You know, they are not coming to our homes and we’re
saying “Hey! You know, you got better things to do! Don’t be doing this
anymore!”

Yet despite AD participants’ frustrations, many still participate frequently in these
roundtable meetings for they are seen as the most probable manner in which to protect
individual and AD residents’ civil rights and personal interests.

The day was August 19 and I was headed to a BRIDGES meeting in West
Bloomfield Michigan, located approximately forty minutes North-West of Dearborn
Michigan.6 This month the BRIDGES meeting was held at the Chaldean-Iraqi American
Association of Michigan (CIAAM), Shenandoah Country Club on Walnut Lake Rd. I
was one of the first participants to arrive and found myself mingling amongst Navy and
Department of Homeland Security recruits, CIA and FBI agents, local politicians,
prominent AD businessmen and women, lawyers, and local AD activists.

As participants took their seats, Irnad stood and announced the day’s guest
speaker—Mike Rosen from the U.S. Department of Treasury. Today’s topic would be

centered on the new guidelines for sending money overseas to family members and for

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donating money to AD charities that contribute funds to persons in Arab countries. As
the topic was relayed and a flyer titled “Terror Organizations Still Exploiting U.S.
Charities”7 was handed out, the men sitting at my table starting grumbling and making
sly jokes and rebuffs under their breath. These quiet and outspoken disagreements would
continue throughout the meeting.

The meeting centered on the discussion of six out of seven nationally
blacklisted charitable organizations said to be operating in the greater Dearbom area.
Mike Rosen reiterated how important it is for the Muslim community in AD to take
interest in this cause due to the “dynamic nature of terrorist financing,” implying that AD
donors may not be aware that the charity is funding state decreed terrorist organizations.
Rosen argued that charities donating to “high risk” areas, such as the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank, must follow the federal guidelines for transparency. He reiterated that the
Better Business Bureau was available to aid charities looking to comply with the
transparency parameters thus insinuating that there are no reasons why charities should
not be following federal guidelines. With the tone of a positive interjection, a man from a
Chaldean charitable organization rose to speak. He explained that his organization
donates to high-risk areas with “100%” transparency by transferring money from family
to family. This positive affirmation, however, did not waylay the fears, frustrations, and
anxieties of other AD attendees.

A man with an American flag pin fastened to his button-up collard shirt was
worried about the repercussions for innocent AD residents’ who, for lack of better
knowledge, give to blacklisted charitable organizations. “What happens to this innocent

donor? How will the government protect him? Right now the donor is responsible!”8

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(Field notes, 8/19/08). Rosen’s reply did not state whether or not federal procedures are
put in place to handle such situations; he simply replied that he could not think of a case
in which such a situation has occurred. Rosen stated that the government is doing its best
to let people know which charities are blacklisted. This comment drew sighs from the
meeting’s participants. Rosen’s assertion that the government has “done its part” places
the responsibility of lawful compliance on the shoulders’ of AD residents. Here, AD
community members must again prove that their desire to comply and identify with the
nation-state is authentic.9

With a perturbed and sharp tone, the man donning the American flag pin again
interjected, “Are you aware of the chilling effect such policies have on community
members?!”'0 Calls of agreement sounded throughout the room as Rosen, a seemingly
mild and sofi spoken man stiff with tension at the podium prepared to answer the
question; he garnered the authority of his status and position and stated: “We are aware of
the chilling effect U.S. Government policy actions has on community members. Our
policy is to promote charitable giving, but we do take a high-risk approach, a
geographical approach and that happens to be within your community. Six out of the
seven blacklisted charities are operating out of this area”'1 (Field notes, 8/19/08). “But
are you targeting any other ethnic groups other than Arab and Muslim Americans?”
replied one woman. Rather than call it racial profiling, Rosen argued that the government
is rather looking at the “geographic activity” of such organizations and charities and that
these organizations “happen” to be operating in Arab Detroit neighborhoods.

The snickers and stifled gestures of the women sitting at the ADC table were

reproachfirl of this absurd statement. Tension, debate, frustration, and doubt would again

67

rise, fester, and fragment in the room as AD spokespersons sought to find some debatable
or equitable ground from which to handle the pro government debate. This was not the
scene of completely blunt and honest conversation. In an attempt to remind AD leaders
why they were present, Rosen gently but firmly stated, “Both sides involved in this
discussion have something to gain from keeping America an open, free and charitable
society”12 (Field notes, 8/19/08).

BRIDGES meetings are an attempt to sustain Arab American political
constituency and mainstream status, a form of combating marginal depictions and
discussions of Arab Americans on the national level. Yet these meetings likewise serve
to further unite Arabs in Detroit against overt and unwarranted state intrusion. Local
Arab American newspapers regularly publish articles pertaining to the latest BRIDGES’
meeting in attempts to update AD residents about the most recent government policy in
the Detroit area. Thus these meetings, publicly displayed, also augment already
prominent AD residents’ social capital in the local area and further solidify their status as
spokespersons for Arab Detroit.

More importantly, the scene depicted above relays the struggles Arab Americans
face due to their stigmatized status. Throughout the discussion pertaining to the
blacklisted charities, it was not clear whether or not these charities were or were not
giving to terrorist organizations abroad. Rather, what we can decipher from this text is
the degree in which AD has become a target of the state’s war on terrorism. That 6 out of
7 blacklisted charities are in the Detroit area shows the degree in which the AD
community is monitored due to their perceived connection to state declared terrorist

organizations in the Middle East.

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The BRIDGES meeting also illustrates an extreme form of inclusion for a state’s
minority population, the likes of which most Americans and other minority groups do not
experience. Due to the meeting’s exceptional quality and status, BRIDGES is also
thought to be a model form of community-law enforcement engagement and is being
duplicated throughout various parts of the U.S. (Howell and Jamal, 2009).

These meetings are thus both depictions of how Arab Detroit’s new burgeoning
form of inclusion in local and national society is being rewritten around what AD is often
excluded for from larger society: perceived difference, moral ambiguity, and extreme
foreignness. In this vignette, AD political inclusion is based upon AD exclusion and
difference from the rest of mainstream society. Here, uniformed Arab Detroit residents
come to pay the highest social, economic, and political costs of Arab Detroit’s
distinguished status based upon difference. As one participant noted above, innocent AD
residents, often unaware of newly implemented federal policies, may unknowingly
violate the law. While Arab Detroit spokespersons pay high personal and psychological
costs in their attempts to navigate the onerous government presence, AD residents’ pay
the highest costs for overstepping often unknown or unforeseeable boundaries of cultural

or minor political transgressions.

Vignette 2: The Arab American International Festival

Below, Bahera and I discuss the explicit presence of federal agencies at the Arab
American International Festival in Dearbom. Unlike the BRIDGES meeting, the scene
that Bahera and I describe below depicts law enforcement agencies interacting at the

Arab American International Festival with middle to lower class Arab Detroit residents,

69

many of whom are recent immigrants. Bahera, a culture worker in Dearbom, is an
American-born Arab. She is a contemporary, accomplished, professional woman. She
works for a marketing firm, business, and newspaper in Dearbom that seeks to promote
an authentic image of Arab Americans. Our discussion of the festival arose after Bahera
lamented about how the Bush administration conflated Arab and Muslim American
identities with the 9/11 terrorists, using Arab and Muslim Americans as scapegoats for

the wrongs committed against the country on 9/1 1.

B: ...we are Arab and you know we are a strong Arab American community
here in Dearbom. This was the atmosphere that was given to us and the label
that was given to us. “They need to be helping us. You know they need to be
doing this.” (Here Bahera evokes the tone and mentality of the government.)
And you know we wanted to help in terms of creating understanding about
why this happened and you know why we never want it to happen again and
why we were just as devastated! And why we had nothing to do with this
particular incident. . .and it was difficult. . .it was just very difficult.

R: Yea...yea oh geez yea I can imagine. Yea I find it interesting because I
was up at the Arab American International Festival the other day.

B: Oh! Last night?
R: Yea last night.
B: Oh I was there too!

R: Ha that's funny...Yea. I find it interesting because I was up at the Arab
American International Festival the other day. And so yea, I was just kind of
walking around and sort of just looking at everything, but I did notice the FBI tent
and how they were marketing that and then the CIA tent was next to it as well!
Which is incredible to me because they have this massive tent and they are blowing
up balloons next to it and on the back it says “Myth” you know “ we do not screen
background checks as much as you think” or something like that. . .and I’m sitting
there like...

B: and they had top secret typed on it?

R: ...[and I’m thinking what the heck!] ....yea! And then they have a
cardboard picture of a cartoon woman who looks Arab with her shoe turned
into a phone and its just like. . .I just found it really bizarre...

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B: It is very bizarre, and I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t condone that kind of
behavior at all. . .and I think that the negotiations in terms of them being
sponsors of the Arab American Festival should not have taken place in the
beginning and you can quote me on the record because I really don’t

care. . . you know they do what they have to do and I respect them and you
know what. ..I brought you something too, but I have to get copies and send
them to you. But I want you to take a look at this. (Bahera places a paper
series on the table, titled “Terminology to Define The Terrorists:
Recommendations from American Muslims” created by the Department of
Homeland Security and in cooperation with Arab-Muslim Americans.) We
work very closely with the FBI, CIA. We work closely with ICE. We work
closely with every single government agency you can imagine. . .and
everything has its place, but for them to be part of that type of activity [The
Arab American International Festival] [don’t really think that they have any
place for it. And this was the first year that they actually had a tent...they
knew it would be a bit of a hostile situation. You know given. . .given the
registration that men in the Arab community had to go through you know
(Arab and Muslim men in AD were requested by DHS to register with the
law enforcement agency post 9/1 1. As a result of this registration, over a
thousand men were questioned, several were detained, and many deported),
all that kind of indecent inappropriate policy that was taken and to then have
them have the tents there? I mean, it was not, it is not accepted very well and
people were very suspicious and very upset.

R: Right, rightfully so I mean!

B: Right. Exactly, but this is it. . .they are doing their job, you know what I ’m
saying? And we’re allowing them to. . .you know? We really don ’t have
anything to hide, which is number one, but as a PR thing, I don’t think they
really have a place. They need to do what they need to do, we need to work
with them to do what they need to do, but they don’t have to

R: [Right Yea.] [Oh geez...yea, yea. Right]
B: ...be as visible. Hobnobbing with us as it was at the festival you know.
R: [Yea right. Exactly. . .]

B: The first year that they sponsored the festival, they had a little logo. They
had a logo and it was like “oh my gosh! What is their logo doing on our
banner!? What the heck is that doing there?” And that was negotiated with
different partners at the festival. So there wasn’t really anything to be

done. . .We’re (the government and AD) not friends, family and lovey dovey.
There are issues! And so that has been a major, a major ...thing for us. . .and
we don’t have anything to hide at all! I mean they are more than welcome to
come into the community; that is not a problem. But it’s the, you know, the
visual, the kind of in your face thing for the community. [mean you have to
know activists and leaders who are dealing with certain kinds of situations

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but the community at large does not understand, you know, that we have to
cooperate, that we have to work with them. So when you see them in your
face I think, that you know that, that creates a little bit of animosity.

The Arab American International Festival, an event created by the American Arab
Chamber of Commerce, is sponsored by numerous local and national big businesses and
additionally subsidized by the FBI and CIA. As Bahera notes, while the FBI and CIA
have been sponsors of the festival before, never has their presence been so openly
displayed in Detroit. The Visibility of these agencies in Detroit has increased immensely
in the last five years in an effort to recruit Arabs and Muslims proficient in Arabic and
Middle Eastern languages as CLA analysts.

In the summer of 2008, the Arab American International Festival became a prime
location for this marketing campaign. The large CIA tent, in many ways larger and more
spectacular than the other tents at the festival, including the FBI tent”, had a man
stationed right outside the pavilion; he was blowing up balloons for those passing by,
pleasing and tantalizing the senses of little children. There was a cardboard cut out
cartoon character of an Arab looking woman looking sleek with her concealed shoe
phone. The sides of the tent were covered with luring slogans for wary Arab and Muslim
Americans in attempts to entice AD residents who fear they may have a “questionable
background.”

In the past five years, the CIA has become a generous sponsor of numerous events
in and around Dearbom. "They have poured tens of thousands of dollars into the greater
Arab Detroit area, sponsoring festivals, galas, scholarships, and the like. The agency was
a platinum sponsor for both ADC and the Arab American and Chaldean Council gala this
past fall with donations of$10,000 plusl4 (DesPardes, 9/9/09). These lavish displays of

monetary support are openly discussed in AD and greater metropolitan Detroit and are

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thought to be, by some AD spokespersons, preferable to secretive agency operations.

According to [mad Hamad, regional director of ADC, fostering an open
relationship with federal agencies shows that AD is valued and truly American
(DesPardes, 9/9/09). Many AD spokespersons and residents do not agree with this open
model of community- government engagement. When framed as an ethical issue, Bahera
laments that this type of monetary relationship is condoned in the first place; “I do think
that it is an ethical, moral kind of thing and we do have issues with them!” For Bahera, it
is crucial that AD spokespersons allow law enforcement agencies to do their jobs as it
shows that Arab Detroiters “don’t have anything to hide.” Yet, in her opinion, there is an
unambiguous boundary between allowing the CIA to carry out their work in Detroit and
enabling their influential marketing campaigns in AD. I

The CIA and F Bl’s visual presence at the Arab American International Festival
sets a precedent for Arab Detroit engagement with law enforcement agencies and places
less powerful AD residents at the promotional whims of CIA and FBI campaigns.
Sponsorship by federal law enforcement agencies pinpoints an overall problematic of
AD-government relations as it blurs the lines between “necessary communal
cooperation” and eager participation. This transgresses the boundaries between coercion
and inclusion, force and voluntary involvement, muddling individual motive within the

representational folds of “community.”

Vignette 3: Selling Ads to the Federal Government

In this vignette, I relay portions from an interview I conducted with Majid

Ahmad. Majid, an active spokesperson for Arab Detroit, works for an Arab run,

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Dearbom based business that sells online advertisement space to federal agencies. He
emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970’s and has since established himself as a successful
businessman in the Detroit area. He often speaks on behalf of Arab Detroit in local
newspapers and is respected as an authority figure for Arab Detroit affairs; he is well
known in prominent and influential Arab Detroit social circles.

Having visited the company’s web page15 and noting the FBI promotional banner
situated evidently at top of the page, I thought it pertinent to ask Majid about the
business’ relationship with law enforcement agencies and the government. In response to
this question, Majid stated that the relationship “between our company and the

government is the relationship between any company and the government.”

M: ...We are open to everyone including the government of the United
States. So if the government wants to reach our community they are
welcome to advertise. In fact! I do not see any problem at all, inviting my
people to participate in the FBI ...because this is the ultimate citizenship
responsibility. The FBI supposedly are there to protect our country and our
citizens and they are suppose to go after the crooks and those, those who
cheat us. . .and the corrupted people. . .so our duty is to help the FBI catch the
criminals and put them in jail and protect our neighborhoods and our country
and from terrorists and from all those wrongdoers and bad. . .uhh manner of
people ...so. . .and corrupted people. . .so it is in the best interest of the Arab
community, and particular the Muslim community, to become FBI agents and
officials. . .because we need Arab American in the FBI, not as, not as a. . .a
tellers. . .uh what do you call them. . .those who umm. . .umm

R: [Rat out the community?]

M: spy and tell. . .but we need them as professionals, as officers so that they
sort things out. So that they can sort fiction from facts. . .they can save lots
and lots of time and efforts out of the people...(man enters room. . .they greet
and speak in both Arabic and English for about a minute. . .). .. so we are...so I
want them to become CIA agents, I want them to become [CE agents, 1 want
them to become in the army. . .you see and also we will have to fight for the
country but at the same time we can object about the foreign policy and
become legislators, public legislators. We have to be part of everything. We
cannot just sit on the side and complain. We have to be in the system, and we
have to serve our country and the ultimate service to our country is to give

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the ultimate sacrifice to be in the army, in the FBI, in the line of fire in order
to protect our country. Now, do we agree on the war in Iraq? No! Should we
participate in the army? Yes! Where do we object about the war? In the
Congress, in the streets, in the lobbies you know, ...in the army we
participate and protect our nation. So we have to be part of this! So I don ’t
have any anything to apologize for when I call on our community to
participate and become part of the F 31, part of the CIA, part of the navy, part
of the army, part of the air force you know and the police. So, this is part of
life, part of Americans ’ life and we have to be a full citizen. We can ’t just be
a second-class citizen or third citizens... ’6

What this narration depicts, unlike the two vignettes discussed previously, is a
particular business that has benefited from one of the only booming industries in
Michigan: homeland security. During a time in which businesses’ and organizations’ are
suffering under the weight of a long and slow economic recession in Michigan,
businesses in Dearbom that are open to doing business transactions with law enforcement
agencies can stave off further financial losses. Doing business with government agencies
additionally bolsters the social capital (Bourdieu, 1991 [1977]) associated with the
business and one’s own social stature and rank. These aspects of AD-government
relations cannot be ignored. They highlight where there is value for both parties involved
and emphasize an elementary logic for involvement with the same agencies that have
been monitoring Arab Detroit for decades. Yet again social and financial gain are only
part of the picture. If we look a bit further into Majid’s narration, we can clearly trace his
rationalization for selling advertisement space to the FBI.

According to Majid, as many AD spokespersons will concur, Arab and Muslim
Americans can help protect local interests by serving in the FBI. As Majid notes above,
professional Arab and Muslim service would help reduce ill—founded or ill-educated FBI
policies that fail to distinguish “fiction from facts” about Arab and Muslim peoples.

Involvement in the FBI is thus seen as a means for educating and directing FBI policies

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according to local socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts. It is seen as a means
for redirecting bureau policies so that the bureau fulfills its intended purpose of
protecting the country and its citizens, including Arab Detroit residents, from
“wrongdoers” who seek to do America harm.

Paradoxical to this logic are the frustrations many AD spokespersons relayed as
they bemoaned the imagined and projected connection between the 9/11 attackers and
those in their community: “We don’t have coffee with these terrorists!” However, as the
money continues to roll in from federal agencies and as the CIA seeks to boost its
recruiting efforts in Arab Detroit, particular AD spokespersons and organizations have
reconciled this contradiction for the sake of seizing the opportunities and financial
prospects these relationships provide. Doing business with federal agencies, however,
provides more than prestigious jobs and connections for AD residents. It also allows
both AD spokespersons and the government to showcase Arab Detroit’s value to the
nation, as a cultural resource for homeland security operations and the international war
on terror.

Encouraging Arab and Muslim Americans to participate in the FBI, Majid impels
AD residents to take on the “ultimate citizenship responsibility;” he posits that Arab and
Muslim Americans may prove their loyalty to the nation through the “ultimate sacrifice”
of death. By performing these acts of loyalty through willing participation, Majid asserts
that Arab and Muslim Americans can and will acquire their firll citizenship status as first
class citizens. Through his depictions of ultimate participation in American society,
Majid figuratively unites the obtainment of full citizenship with the procurement of an

imagined mainstream status. By binding sacrifice to admittance into the mainstream,

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Majid reaffirms the violence inherent in America’s social system of multicultural
acceptance. He figures sacrifice as a symbolic motif of Arab and Muslim American
belonging in the national community'7 and in turn frames Arabs and Muslims squarely on
the margins of mainstream society.

Full citizenship rhetoric reinforces damaging notions about Arab Detroit: it
reinforces AD difference based upon an imagined connection between their “Arabness”
and terrorism while it simultaneously reinforces their value as a politically strategic
ethnic community. It further perpetuates this space of contradiction surrounding issues of
being and belonging in America as Arabs and Muslims, a space of contradiction that is
fortified in Arab Detroit because their value is based upon perceived difference which is
then displayed and promoted.'8 As a project that attempts to gain the full acceptance of
Arab and Muslim American people in mainstream society, this inherent contradiction in
the full citizenship project could have potentially devastating affects for a community that
simply wants to be seen and recognized as American.

The costs of these ardent calls to full citizenship seep through in the closing
remarks of Majid’s narration as the tone and vibrato of his words are propelled by an
unyielding deportment. He argues that Arab and Muslim Americans “have to be part” of
all aspects of American life. “So I don ’t have any anything to apologize for,” says Majid,
“when I call on our community to participate and become part of the FBI, part of the
CIA, part of the navy, part of the army, part of the air force you know and the police.”
Since this interview with Majid, the FBI advertisement has been removed from the
website’s front page. The latest ad situated at the top of the site displays Arabic script

followed by the statement, “If you can read this! Click here. National Guard.”

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Eight years post the events of 9/11 prominent Arab Detroit organizations and
businesses now market Arab Detroit as a place of “Middle Eastern” expertise. In other
words, particular AD spokespersons are enabling federal agencies to use Dearbom as a
recruiting station for AD residents. It is hopped that these persons will be able to serve as
specialized federal agents in the war on terror by providing Islamic knowledge, Arabic
language skills, and general cultural know-how. Oddly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

have created an economic demand for Arab American cultural expertise.

Conclusion

Help. Cooperate. Sensitize. Allow. Participate. Assist. These are all verbs used by
AD spokespersons to describe their respective organization’s/company’s relationship
with the government. What we see in this range of verb choice is spokespersons attempts
to construct and control the boundaries and terms of the overt federal presence in Arab
Detroit. As we saw in the vignettes above, the government presence is an opportunity for
some in AD; yet, while it is good fortune for few, it is other AD residents’ misfortune.
Thus while the federal presence in AD is overwhelmingly believed to be overbearing,
brash, and downright intolerable for many AD residents, there are few who benefit from
the augmented federal residency. How these conflicting influences of an overt
government presence come to be negotiated is a struggle that plays out in conspicuously
public displays surrounding Arab and Muslim Americans’ “role” as U.S. citizens.

What I attempted to highlight in the vignettes above is how spokespersons’
narrations may also speak to what is troublesome about the AD full citizenship project.

By stressing moments of discomfort, uncertainty, and emotional sensitivity I attempt to

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display the doubt that accompanies projects of political inclusion. By placing these
vignettes in conversation with the policies implemented and discursive actions taken by
the state post 9/11, I situate the full citizenship project in relation to 9/11 politics. I then
point to moments of doubt in spokespersons’ narratives in which the full citizenship
project is questioned and reconstituted in comprehensible chunks.

These vignettes underline how the politics of inclusion in Arab Detroit are both
intersubjectively felt and politically fashioned. They expose particular moments in which
adopting part of a larger constructed consciousness becomes necessary for identity
stability and individual conviction and action in everyday life. When groups are placed
in a space of politico-moral contradiction to American cultural values and political
foreign policy, it is not surprising that underlying fears and group vulnerability seep into

spokespersons’ narrations in manifestations of doubt and fi'ustration.

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Chapter 3

Memory Work at the Museum: Discursive Arrangements and
American Values

 

Fig. 1.1 The Arab American National Museum. Photograph taken by Cedric Tai

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In this chapter, I discuss how the politics of 9/11 have affected the Cultural
Competency Workshops at the Arab American National Museum (AANM), a project of
ACCESS, located in downtown Dearbom. This chapter, like chapter 1, also addresses
how AD projects of political inclusion require the adoption of a larger constructed
consciousness in order to effectively mediate the discursive rhetoric surrounding Arab
and Muslim identities post 9/11. However this chapter, unlike chapter 1, will address

these issues by looking at how they operate at an institutional. level in Arab Detroit.

The Arab American National Museum

If you go through our exhibits, you realize that this is the story of the Italian
American, the Mexican American and I say the Arab American story is really
the American story. It is the story of people who come to this country for
better lives for themselves and for their families. And that's what the Arab
American story is. I believe that if we are able to convey that message, then
we succeed... The message is to show the public how much Arab Americans
have been part of A merican society basically (Interview with AANM
Founding Director, 7/31/08).

Plans for erecting the Arab American National Museum were well underway prior
to September 11. AANM, a department of the Arab Community Center for Economic
and Social Services (ACCESS), was formerly the Cultural Arts Program operating out of
ACCESS’s main administration building. The program was growing rapidly and there
were soon plans underway for constructing an Arab American museum. Then, a year
later, September 11 occurred.

Prior to the September 11 attacks, many Arab Americans had successfully shifted
from America's margins into mainstream society. Arab Detroit's image was that of “'an

immigrant success story,” “'the capital of Arab America'” (Shryock, 2002: 917). The

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events of 9/1 1, however, marked an elevated use of Other terminology in Arab Detroit.
Only hours after the attacks, the community's image changed from an immigrant success
story to the state's first domestic front in combating the war on terror. A proliferate use of
Other terminology became widespread amongst non-Arab residents in the area through

6"

an incessant use of the phrases the Muslim American community' or 'the Arab American
community'” (Howell and Shryock, 2003: 444) (emphasis added).

This categorization of Otherness has emphatically embedded itself within the
community and has come to be used by community spokespersons as a protective device
that fosters communal solidarity while garnering multicultural metaphors.l The
derogatory antecedent of these terms is not lost upon those who utilize them as
safeguarding measures.

This post 9/11 atmosphere has created a field of discourses and memory practices
in which Arab American spokespersons have come to operate in attempts to mediate
increased national attention in Arab Detroit. Numerous times I was told by community
spokespersons that September 11 has brought people “like yourself” to the community to

speak with Arab American representatives. As Andrew Shryock notes, spokespersons

have become exceedingly accustomed to directing the interests of ‘outside’ inquirers:

this rich accumulation of images, objects, and historical narratives functions
as an elaborate buffer zone in which outsiders—journalists, certainly, but also
academics, government officials, and business interests—can be told what
they 'need to know' about Arab Americans and, at the same time, be kept
from straying into parts of the Arab immigrant community believed, by many
Arabs in Detroit, to be 'old country,‘ exceedingly Other, and a potential
embarrassment when exposed to the uncomprehending eye of the American
mainstream (Shryock, 2002: 918).

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The Arab American National Museum opened in May 2005 and has since its inception
played an integral part in this facilitation process.

While the museum's content attempts to foster numerous forms of symbolic
meaning, of only which some are political in nature, for the purpose of this paper I would
like to look at how the political operates through memory work at the museum. In other
words, I focus on how the politics of fear and the politics of 9/11 function at the museum.
Here, I argue that the politics of 9/11 operate in ways that are often characteristically
covert or seemingly semi-conscious on the part of AANM employees. I contend that the
museum’s exhibits—included and excluded artifacts—are directly influenced by the
events of 9/1 1 and the politics of fear. In this chapter I illustrate how the politics of 9/1 1
seep into the museum’s material objects, displays, workshops, and tours.

While the overwhelming majority of the museum’s content illustrates immigrants’
stories of migration and the lives of Arabs and Arab Americans in the U.S—highlighting
Arabs as diverse as the early 20‘h century Lebanese peddler to the successful American-
bom Arab public health professional—for the purpose of this paper, I deliberately focus
on how the museum’s cultural artifacts, content, exhibits, and tours are political. In other
words, this chapter does not attempt to detail the entirety of the museum’s content nor
does it endeavor to relay the total spatial layout of the museum’s exhibits and artifacts.

In an interview I conducted with a board member of AANM, he explicitly stated
that the co-founders of the museum were not going to let 9/11 define the museum or the
community. To make the events of September 11 a prominent focus in the museum’s
layout would be, according to the board member, to undercut the diversity that makes up

the Arab American population. To focus on 9/11 would firrthermore diminish Arabs long

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history of immigration to the U.S. as well as Arab American contributions to American
society. More importantly, the board member stated that such a focus would further
perpetuate Arab and Muslim essentialisms by reinforcing and relegating Arabs and
Muslims to an overtly political spatio-temporal time and place.

While exhibit materials attempt to combat these misconstrued understandings of
the diverse population, they also conform to a politics of fear surrounding Arab and
Muslim American identities by emphasizing and reinforcing hegemonic understandings
of what it means to be a patriotic, “American” citizen. The museum thus attempts to
unify and represent a pan-national Arab American identity, one that encompasses the
incredibly diverse faces of America’s Arab population. However, the museum, in its
attempts to unify and bond Arab American identity to the national community, prioritizes
authoritative understandings of citizenship and value in the United States.

While there are many forms of meaning making operating at the museum, I
therefore look at the ways in which dominant discourses and commemorative practices
surrounding 9/11 have shaped the types of narratives possible at the museum. In doing
so, I hope to understand the degree in which the events of September 11 have affected
AANM discussions of “Arabness” in America, underlining the creative ways in which
Arab Americans are challenging essentialist understandings of Arabs and Muslims. Here
I ask: how does AANM manage the symbolic residual meanings surrounding September
11? How does the museum negotiate its images as a museum of high society and as an
ethnic museum?

I argue that social actors, in this case AANM personnel, actively negotiate and

manage the discursive practices of the state and of popular society surrounding Arab

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identities in the U.S. Here I draw upon Joan Scott's argument, in “The Evidence of
Experience,” that individual experience should be understood as experience that is
created within discursive constructions of being. I argue that memory tactics used at
AANM should be understood as negotiations that exist and are created within a
discursive construction, looking at how such memory tactics are established, how they
come to operate, and in what manner they constitute the subject who interacts with these
practices (Scott, 1991: 777; Klein, 2000).

However, I do not want to only address the internalization of various forms of
state endorsed knowledge and discourse at the museum; I also hope to point to moments
of contestation, uncertainty and ambiguity, where gaps and fissures in the discourse play
out within Cultural Competency Workshop discussions. Such moments locate specific
forms of remembrance, or what Goodman and Mizrachi call “memory techniques,”2
within individual bodies as social actors shape and negotiate state discourse with their
own individual experiences and with the experiences of others (2008: 96).

Following the methodology of Goodman and Mizrachi, I look at the
“nondiscursive actions” within the museum, such as what is included and excluded
historical material, embodied memories, cultural performances, the types of discussions
being held, and various group interactions at the museum. In doing so, I examine how
the discursive practices of the state post 9/11 influence the practices at the museum
(2008: 97). I look at how the events of 9/ 11 have shaped how meaning and memory is
expressed at the museum, often as moments of abrupt rupture and discontinuity whereby
snippets of violent narratives are introduced and left untold and unarticulated within the

minds and imaginations of the visitors. These moments, in part, create the space for

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potentially alternative modes of meaning and memory creation. Meaning making at the
museum should therefore not be thought of as single in purpose, but rather as
multilayered processes in which disparate museum visitors may extract a range of
interpretations and meanings.

AANM, being the only Arab American Museum in the nation, highly influences
national and local representations of Arab Americans; it shapes local idioms of Arab
American representation and memory in greater metropolitan Detroit. I argue that local
idioms of memory attempt to historicize Arab Americans present existence in the US;
these devices and narratives attempt to confront dominant modes of Arab representation
in the present by working through institutionalized and sanctioned forms of ethnic
representation in America.

In this instance, America's immigration history is used to re-root the “Arab
American” in American soil, in America's Past and finally in America's present. I argue
that the museum focuses on Arab Americans’ rich immigration history in order to
sanction discussions pertaining to Arab belonging in the U.S. By emphasizing historical
Arab immigration, the museum draws attention to Arab Detroit’s mainstream and
integrated ethnic residents. The Arab American National Museum thus sanctions
discussions pertaining to Arab American civil and cultural inclusion in the U.S. by using
multicultural rhetoric, by personalizing the Arab American experience, and by
highlighting Arab American historical integration.

A particularly note worthy form for re-rooting the Arab American in America is
through military memory techniques. These techniques serve as a means for reclaiming

cultural citizenship by emphasizing the ultimate sacrifice of military and civic duty on

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behalf of the United States. This focus on Arab American civil service has increased in

congruence with the heightened presence of government agencies (FBI, CIA, ICE,

Department of Homeland Security) in Arab Detroit post 9/1 1.

 

Figure 1.2 Image taken in the Arab American National Museum. Image portrays
Arab Americans in the military. Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

AANM is thus a public space in which Arab Americans are presented and may
present themselves as active citizens and carriers of U.S. national memory. While
ordinary AD residents and immigrants from all parts of the Arab world are represented
and highlighted at great length in the museum, those who created and curated the exhibits
are affluent American-born Arabs as well as affluent immigrants who have access to

local prestige and influence. Those who represent Arab Americans at AAN M thus garner

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a particular form of cultural symbolic capital for themselves and for average Arab Detroit
residents.

As the museum seeks to navigate the terrain of discursive state-sponsored
practices surrounding the Arab American community post 9/11, social actors at the
museum routinely complicate and coincide with dominant forms of collective memory.
Here I propose that ‘collective memory’ be understood as the internalization as well as
the garnering and/or grafting of popular affective bonds by social groups. Popular
“politics of memory and affect” should, therefore, be understood as shaping the types of
narratives possible in Arab Detroit today (Sturken, 2007: 290; 2000: [30). Through this
definition of collective memory, I hope to better understand how practices and narratives
at the museum operate and on what grounds they constitute the subject.

My analytic focus is thus centered on: the information disseminated and
discussions generated at the Cultural Competency Workshop [ attended in the summer of
2008; the overall layout and material culture cultivated at the museum; museum
sponsored events; and an. interview I conducted with one of the board members of the

museum.

Cultural Competency and Narrating the Socially Dispossessed

AANM Educator: “Where do Arab Americans come from? How many Arab
countries do you think exist?”

Participant 1: “Eleven.”
Participant 2: “Fourteen.”
Participant 3: “Seventeen?”

AANM Educator: “More than that.”

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Participant 4: “Twenty.”

AANM Educator: “More than that. Plus two. Twenty-two. There are
twenty-two Arab countries....Arabs come from the Arab world... Can you
name some of the Arab countries?”

Participant 5: “Iraq.”

AANM Educator: “Yes very good.”

Participant 6: “Algeria.”

AANM Educator: “Yes Algeria, Northern Africa. Good.”
Participant 7: “Afghanistan?”

AANM Educator: “Afghanistan is not Arab but it is constantly confused for
Arab because they have a high Muslim population. Also we will talk about
using the term Middle East. Often when we use the term Middle East a lot of
non-Arab countries get put into Arab countries.”

Participant 8: “Is Pakistan?”

AANM Educator: “Pakistan is not Arab either. it is Muslim but it is
constantly being confused for being Arab and you know why Afghanistan
and Pakistan and some other countries such as Iran get confused with as
being Arab because there is this constant idea in the media that all Arabs are
Muslims and that all Muslims are Arab and actually that is not the case. The
biggest Muslim population is in a non-Arab country called Indonesia. Arab
Muslims make up about 20% of Muslims worldwide. So this is a big
misconception...so what makes them Arab?”

Participant 9: “Religion?”

As I sat in on one of AANM's many Cultural Competency Workshops held for

the organization STEP as part of their multicultural leadership series, I couldn't help but

think of myself as in the middle of a buffer zone, or what James Clifford calls a “contact

zone” for mediated dialogue (Harrison, 2005: 32). Indeed these workshops function as

just that: a dialogic space where the non-Arabic community may come and inquire about

socially sensitive issues pertaining to Arab and Muslim Americans such as “the role of

women, dress code, marriage, gender, and family relationships” (AANM Cultural

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Competency Workshops brochure).

The above dialogue shows how a seemingly innocent question pertaining to Arab
geography can speak to larger discursive practices of the state, media, and society. That
several participants continually conflated Islam with Arabs, despite the educators
attempts to clarify religious and ethnic distinctions relays the significant degree in which
the museum’s employees must address and direct visitors’ understandings of Arab
Americans. The above dialogue conveys one manner in which the politics of 9/1 l—the
conflation of race and religion and the demonization of Arabs and Muslims in the
media—affect the types of discussion and narratives possible in Arab Detroit. Within
this particular workshop session, participants’ questions about Muslim practices shape
how much time and dialogue is spent on the topic of Islam and Arabs, relegating other
discussion topics as non-important and thus not discussed. The discussion thus depicts an
ongoing struggle in which an Arab American, here a museum employee, attempts to
separate Arab Americans from images of radical Muslims as depicted in the media.

In this instance, narrative and pictorial memory techniques of popular media, film,
and Internet serve as an easily accessible “electronic archive of and for national
sentiment” (White, 2004: 294). As Geoffrey White discusses in the essay “National
Subjects: September 11 and Pearl Harbor,” these electronic sources allow a nation’s
citizens to emotionally identify with the national imagined community. In other words,
they serve as a form of symbolic “identification with the nation”3 (White, 2004: 294).
AANM's workshops therefore attempt to establish educational tools for mediating
popular media memory techniques by providing cultural, ethnic, and geographical facts

about the Arab world and the Arab American community.

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Another way of looking at the above discussion is to view it as a museum
memory technique whereby the museum employee attempts to foster an educational
atmosphere. Here, non-Arab participants engage in cultural and religious discussion
prior to touring the museum in an effort to encourage visitors to embrace new
understandings of Arab Americans. The museum thus functions as a space for
designating what is real and authentic Arab and Arab American culture.

Considered on this level, the museum partakes in what James Clifford calls
culture collecting in which artifacts, history, and culture are fashioned according to a
moral and political criteria of what is and is not socially valued (Clifford, 1988: 221).
According to Clifford, how the museum authenticates the culture being collected is a
political process. While the authentication process is indeed imbued with political
meaning, most museum employees and visitors do not experience their time at the
museum as politically charged; they rather interpret the museum's content in diverse and
disparate ways. This is in part due to the museum's successful use of socially sanctioned
memory practices through which the museum comes to define Arab American culture
and history.

Yet part of this collection process, as Clifford suggests, is always embedded in
claims to authenticity and truth: “Like any successful discursive arrangement the art-
culture authenticity system articulates considerable domains of truth and scientific
progress as well as areas of blindness and controversy” (Clifford, 1988: 235). While it is
undeniable that the museum’s content and workshops attempt to authenticate a self-
determined, socially integrated Arab American identity, the types of discussions

occurring at the museum convey their own discursive pluralisms. At the museum,

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visitors may extrapolate various forms of contested meaning from the museums exhibits
and workshops.

The discussion during STEP's Cultural Competency Workshop pertaining to the
hijab illustrates the plurality of meaning to be extrapolated from these workshops.
During the section of the workshop entitled “Arab American Women,” one visitor asked
what Arab countries make women cover up fully; her curiosity spawned from a story she
saw on the news in which a female reporter could not enter a store because she was not
covered up properly. Another STEP member relayed the experience of an acquaintance,
“she says she covers up because her husband is the only person who is suppose to see her
hair” (AANM Cultural Competency Workshop field notes, 5/18/08). In response to this
curiosity, AANM educators gave varying answers: one educator stated that some women
find it liberating to wear the hijab in their day to day lives; another educator added that as
Arab women assimilate, they tend to start working outside the home and become more
professional. Both the educators emphasized this second reply stressing that there is a
natural assimilation process immigrants will undergo, as they become accustom to
American society.

At a later point in this conversation, one man said that he sees a lot of Arab
American men just standing on the streets talking. “What are they talking about?” the
man asked. An educator answered this suspicious question with a probable reply; “they
are most likely talking about politics as there has been strife and conflict in Lebanon in
the past few weeks” (AANM Cultural Competency Workshop field notes, 5/18/08). As
the conversation shifted to Arab American family values, one woman expressed nostalgia

for the kind of communal values cherished in Arab American society. She added that

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those values used to be appreciated in the United States in the 1960’s and 70’s. This
remark stimulated a wave of comments and bodily gestures of agreement concerning the
inevitable assimilation and dissipation of these values and networks in the Arab
American community. There seemed to be nostalgia about this filture possibility as well
as an inevitability that it will come to pass.

What this brief synopsis of conversation captures is a diverse array of visitor
inquiries and concerns that range from curiosity and suspicion to empathy for a
romanticized, deteriorated American value. These visitors' questions and comments also
show how individual dispositions and personal priorities and concerns come to interact
with the information being relayed at the workshop.

The discussion about the hijab illustrates how the sanctioned discourse of
multiculturalism allows participants to abstract numerous forms of meanings from the
discussion. AANM educators based the discussion on a multicultural discourse of
acceptance while they simultaneously reinforced notions of assimilation and progression.
In other words, educators both emphasize the importance of accepting and appreciating
ethnic difference in America while they concurrently stress that immigrants will
assimilate and become “American.”

While these memory techniques appear incongruous, they are rather both born
from the same American value: freedom of choice. The first interpretation allows
participants to embrace multicultural values as a tool for accepting cultural variations
whereby women may choose to wear the hijab. The same value, freedom of choice, also
underscores the second interpretation in which a woman who is given this freedom will

eventually assimilate into professional, mainstream society. This discursive memory

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practice allocates space for a wide range of interpretations of the hijab discussion in an
attempt to maximize the likelihood that visitors will come to empathize with Arab
Americans. As I illustrate in this chapter, such memory practices are proliferate at the
museum.

While these workshops started well before 9/11, in 1987 as a project of ACCESS,
they today address topics such as Islam vs. Arabs, Islam vs. terrorism, and the PATRIOT
Act. This is in large part due to workshop participants’ increased curiosity in topics that
relay direct symbolic importance to the events of 9/1 1. The AAN M Cultural
Competency Workshop brochure seems to impart its own sense of urgency around the
growing need to understand and tolerate diversity within local communities: “Diversity
presents a challenge to all of us, and cultural competency is becoming a necessity for
living and working in a multicultural society” (AANM Cultural Competency Workshop
brochure) (emphasis added). This diversity “challenge” paints an overall somber tone,
employing multicultural ideology to reinforce inter-ethnic tolerance. The cultural
education workshops additionally reinforce the overall mission of the museum: “The
AANM documents, preserves, celebrates, and educates the public on the history, life,
culture and contributions of Arab Americans. We serve as a resource to enhance the
knowledge and understanding about Arab Americans and their presence in the United
States” (AANM General Information and Membership brochure).

The museum’s practices are, however, not only concerned with creation of
dialogic space between socially disparate groups. As Julia Harrison argues meaning
making within museums is a nuanced and complex process, simply not irreducible to a

singular purpose (2005: 32). Cultural Competency Workshops should therefore be

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thought of as one aspect of meaning making at the museum that explicitly addresses
relations of power, namely between the nation and its ethnic Arab and Muslim citizens.
When the context of AD government surveillance is taken into account and
popular anti-Arab sentiment is noted, narrating the culturally dispossessed is not a task to
take lightly. In such circumstances, carving out a space for Arab American belonging in
the national community becomes crucial; it humanizes the Other and normalizes the
everyday lives of Arab Americans by re-rooting them in American culture, as American
citizens, and as crucial facets of American society. What are at stake are claims to
citizenship, cultural and legal, and the humanization of a repeatedly demonized ethnic
American population. To reclaim “good citizenship” standing, however, comes with its

own socio-political costs.

Museum Layout, Artifacts, and Attempts to “Authorize the 'Real '”

“Alright everybody. We are going to gather our things and head upstairs for a
tour of the museum!” Ascending the stairs, we stepped into a traditional Arab courtyard
with mosaic tile and a large dome that opened to the upstairs portion of the exhibit. The
first floor features contributions of Arab civilizations to various scholarly and cultural
domains, such as art, science, math, language, and religion. The artifacts are encased

behind class panels that outline the walls of the courtyard.

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Figure 1.3 Image taken in the Arab American National Museum. Image displays
the museum’s Arabic style courtyard and the first and second floors of the museum.
Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

Approaching the second floor of the museum, workshop participants entered the

portion of the museum titled “The Arab American Story.” This section of the museum

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focuses on three thematic areas each displayed as separate exhibits: “Coming to
America,” “Living in America,” and “Making an Impact.” As the AANM educator

directed us towards the exhibit “Coming to America,” workshop participants came face
to face with early 20th century portraits of Arab women and children immigrants. In

front of these portraits lie old and new trunks and suitcases stuffed with personal
belongings that symbolize a broader shared material culture and historical companionship

between Arab Americans and mainstream society. This section looks at Arab American
immigration from the 16th century to present day. It focuses on Arab immigration

diversity through images and written stories that depict the lives of the Arab immigrants.

 

Figure 1.4 Image depicts an immigrant’s suitcase and belongings. The suitcase is
figured in the front display of the exhibit “Coming to America.” Photograph taken by
Rachel Yezbick.

These images and narratives serve to counter the memory techniques of

mainstream popular media by reinforcing what popular media typically denies this sub-

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population: the claim to an American history, to a historical consciousness. Through the
exhibit, visitors come to know the rich and far reaching history of Arab immigration to
the U.S. Here, the museum utilizes memory techniques that seek to re—root Arab
Americans in America's past through the sanctioned discourse of American immigration.
This display similarly attempts to foster affective ties to the Arab American immigration
story through imagery and personal narrative: audio narration of Arab immigrants is
included in order enhance the visitor’s experience and association with the immigrant
stories being relayed.

The last part of this exhibit stands in stark contrast to the rest of the display,
creating an abrupt rupture in narrative as the type of memory technique used quickly
changes. While the overwhelming majority of this exhibit focuses on diverse Arab
immigration to the US, the end of this exhibit radically shifts focus and introduces
politically charged memories into the immigration narrative.

In a brightly lit yellow room, there is a letter mounted on the wall from the U.S.
Department of Justice, signed by U.S. attorney Jeffrey Collins and assistant U.S. attorney
Robert Caves. The letter was given to 2,000 Arab Americans in the area asking people to
come in and speak with government officials, as they might be able to provide useful
information pertaining to the events of 9/1 1. This is the only artifact in the museum that
directly addresses the events of 9/11 and the backlash that ensued against Arab and
Muslim American identities post 9/11. The events of September 11 and the 9/11
backlash indeed receive little explicit attention at the museum; yet, the politics of 9/1 1
seep into the museum’s material objects, displays, discussions, and tours in a manner that

is often highly emblematic.

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Figure 1.5 Image depicts a U.S. Department of Justice letter that was sent to 2,000
Arab Detroit residents in the days post 9/1 1. Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

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Focusing on the government's illegal detention and deportation of Arab
Americans, this portion of the exhibit “Coming to America” allocates space for
alternative understandings of the events of 9/1 1. In doing so, the museum attempts to

“authorize the real”4

by establishing a public claim to marginalized experience (Das and
Das, 2007: 76). It critiques normative, mainstream understandings of the events of 9/11
through a critique of the state and in turn attempts to reclaim moral space within the
American popular lexicon by challenging popular narratives of U.S. innocence and
victimization post 9/1 1.5

This display thus attempts to problematize mass mediated tools of affective
involvement with the events of 9/1 1. Here, AANM employees highlight Arab Americans
who were wronged by the U.S. government due to their imagined tie to a presumed
culture of terrorism. For many museum visitors, this may be the first time that they have
heard of these illegal government actions carried out against Arab and Muslim
Americans. The U.S. Department of Justice letter thus functions as a memory technique
that attempts to localize, contextualize, and pluralize visitors’ understandings of 9/11 and
terrorism and who can perpetrate such actions.

The lesson learned in “Coming to America” is that freedom, equality, justice, and
the American dream are something to be fought for and upheld even when the cost is to
critique one's own government. In other words, this is portion of the exhibit does not
seek to decimate American ideals; it rather uses the American values of justice and
equality to critique the actions of the state as misguided American policy. .

However, the discussion surrounding this topic was in itself limited. The AANM

educator's narration of the 9/11 backlash against Arab and Muslim Americans was kind,

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if not glossed over. The educator stated that some of those who received this letter were
deported, as they did not have valid visas or green cards. What was not mentioned was
the violence of these deportations as government officials rounded up Arab and Muslim
Americans in their homes at all hours of the night, without due legal process, and without
relaying the whereabouts of their status to their families and loved ones. What was not
relayed was the continual monitoring of the Arab American community in their homes
and at their places of work, the monitoring of their e-mails and financial transactions,
phone calls, intellectual interests, travel, and bodies as they brace themselves for the
degrading “examination” of their person and belongings before boarding a flight (Howell
and Shryock, 2003: 449).

It is here that Gerald Conaty's problematic depiction of prompting change in the
museum becomes prevalent. Conaty argues that allocating space for alternative forms of
memorialization “requires a critique of 'norrnative values',” a “problematic for potential
corporate sponsors of museum exhibitions” (Harrison, 2005: 39). AANM is no exception
to this rule. Much of the museum's funding has come from private, corporate, and
government donors and sponsors who poured an approximate $5 million in financial
support into ACCESS programs after 9/11 in act of support for the Arab and Muslim
community (Shryock, 2002: 921). The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department
of Housing & Urban Development are two of the largest financial contributors to the
museum (2005-2007 Museum Report). Additionally, in 2008, the United States Congress
donated a line item of 2.7 million to the museum. AANM has thus received millions of
dollars in federal funding over the past several years; the state is now a major partner in

AANM. AANM board members must therefore actively negotiate the competing

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interests of private, public, and federal sponsors with the museums own aims.

This complex network of funding shapes what is and is not appropriate museum
content and educational information and in turn relegates who can act as subjects of
change. Here what Harrison calls the “burden of change” lies with the museum's visitors
as the moral boundaries of what is speakable, and thus easily receivable, is influenced by
the competing interests of sponsors, by popular mechanisms of affective involvement
with the state, and by popular perceptions of U.S. innocence and victimization post 9/1 1
(Harrison, 2005: 39; Sturken, 2007: 291).6 The museum therefore attempts to reclaim
social and moral space through the authentication and exhibition of marginalized Arab
American experiences. However, as the discussion surrounding the 9/11 backlash
illustrates, the degree in which the museum is willing to discuss controversial topics is
limited. Thus critical assessment of the museum’s content and the burden of change are
relegated to the AANM’s visitors.

Yet, the burden of change befalls the visitors for the AANM is in many ways
restricted in the topics it is able address as an ethnic museum, sponsored by the state. To
address outright state violence against Arab and Muslim Americans post 9/11 would most
likely be problematic not only for donors but for many of the museum’s non-Arab,
conservative visitors as well. Thus in order to critique the state and have this judgment
be well received by visitors, as opposed to admonished as unpatriotic, the critique’s
power of authority must lie within a mainstream ideology: the sanctioned discourse of the
American dream, American immigration, and American multiculturalism. These
American ideals function as forms of moral precedence over state acts of violence. Here,

government failure may thus be discussed and understood as separate from American

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Constitutional values of freedom, equality, and justice. By sanctioning discussion
pertaining to the 9/11 backlash in American Constitutional values, it is hoped AANM
visitors may be able to empathize with Arab and Muslim Americans.

Since the U.S. Department of Justice letter was left little explained and placed
starkly at the end of the “Coming to America” exhibit, the letter, in many ways, feels
oddly out of place, as an abrupt interlude in an otherwise politically correct tour. What
makes this portion of the museum tour seem so abrupt is that illegal government actions
taken against Arab and Muslim American identities in the U.S. post 9/11 received little
attention in popular media and society. Acts of government brutality towards Arabs and
Muslims in the U.S. lack the status as an “event” or happening in popular history.
Popular reports in the media, minus a few reports conducted by National Public Radio,
repeatedly verified wartime rhetoric;7 mass media reported none of the loopholes in the
often-outrageous allegations made against Arab and Muslim Americans. Mainstream
society instead received sound bites of wartime rhetoric such as the capturing of Arab
Americans who, as the then Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security,
Howard Coble, stated are “intent on doing harm to us” (Howell and Shryock, 2003: 450).

Propagation of this mentality has left little room for the classification of the
largest interrogation and surveillance undertaking of an American population by the state.
The surveillance, detention, and deportation of thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans
post 9/11 is silenced in the folds of official historical narratives pertaining to the events of
September 11. According to Raymond D. F ogelson, what counts as an “event” is that
which is “plot-generated” and “may be constructed for purposes of narrativity,”

(Fogelson, 1989: 141). Events are “the processes, happenings, (and) changes that

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typically serve as the basic elements in historical studies” (Fogelson, 1989: 134). The
“events” of 9/1 1 are thus that which has been commemorated in historical studies: the
hijacking of four planes by al-Qaeda terrorists that crashed into the World Trade Center,
the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania.

Fogelson goes on to state, however, that:

...surrounding the 'real' or constructed event is a residuum of cultural data
critical for historian and ethnohistorians. These include values, meanings
symbolism, worldviews, social structural principles, and other variables of
cultural analysis without which any event, real or imagined, cannot be
adequately interpreted (Fogelson, 1989: 141).8

In the case of 9/1 1, the valorized events of that day have left their own residual meanings
within various local objects, persons, and contexts. The “residuum of cultural data” can
be read in any number of objects, narratives, and presentations at the Arab American
National Museum. The Department of Justice letter is thus an explicit object at AANM
that contests the popularized events of 9/1 1. This object, and the educator’s explication
of the letter, could be understood as a “latent event” or the historically non-eventfirl; that
of which we are not aware of (F ogelson, 1989: 143). The lack of documentation and
dissemination of widespread information on illegal government actions post 9/11 has
relegated the violent detention, interrogation, and deportation of thousands to that of a
nonevent in popular history.

I argue that the illegal actions of the state are an historical nonevent, and that the
museum, through its presentation and explication of illegal state actions, despite their
brevity, is attempting to authenticate and authorize an alternative historical depiction of
the “events” of 9/1 1. Here the type of history being authenticated at the museum, what is

included and excluded historical material is neither wholly independent of nor dependent

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on dominant forms of commemorating. These moments of departure from socially
sanctioned discourse and history can be experienced as gaps and fissures in the memorial
process whereby alternative forms of remembering and commemorating can be
experienced.

After this abrupt interlude in the tour, visitors are walked through the “Living in
America” exhibit that focuses on the life and culture of Arab Americans in the United
States. Visitors are thus transported from a small, politically charged display to the
domestic sphere where visitors are guided through a simulation of a present day Arab
American home. Moving from a display that depicts state violence against Arab citizens
into the warmth of the domestic sphere perhaps serves as a means for mediating affective
involvement with the “distant, imagined events” depicted only moments prior (White,
2004: 294). The flow and layout of the museum is highly suggestive and may influence

visitors’ interpretations of the museum’s exhibits.

105

 

Figure 1.6 The image and text is showcased as the front piece of the exhibit
“Living in America.” Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

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While there are copious amounts of meaning to be extrapolated from these
exhibits and the deliberated flow of the tour, here I rather wish to look at how the
political operates at this particular juncture in the museum. I argue that there are two
probable interpretations to be extrapolated from this point in the tour as visitors move
from viewing the U.S. Department of Justice letter to the simulated Arab American
domestic sphere: l) a visitor could draw unpleasant parallels between the forceful
deportation of individuals from their homes with the pleasant depiction of the Arab
American household they enter. In the “Living in America” exhibit, visitors first walk
through a “front door” and into the living room of an Arab American household. Visitors
are taken through the intimates of the imaginary family's living room, kitchen, and
bedroom, simulating an authentic Arab American family to be empathized with; 2)
another possible interpretation is that the visitor may not draw parallels between the two
seemingly disparate narrations. Due to the comforts of the “Living in Ameirca” exhibit, a
visitor may find herself remotely transported to the amenities of her own life, reinserting
herself in a familiar culture of comfort.9 Here, memory techniques are never singular in
purpose; nor are they a fully predictable or precisely mediated processes.

In many ways, this section of the museum emphasizes the cultural contributions
of Arab Americans to American society, stressing culinary contributions and Arabic
dance as well as other forms of Arab tradition. “Living in America” includes a
lighthearted documentary film that highlights numerous interviews with ordinary Arab
Americans. Here, the audience gets to electronically engage with the personal stories of
Arab Americans.

This exhibit also emphasizes the importance many Arab immigrants place on

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obtaining American citizenship. An entire display within this exhibit is devoted to
relaying Arab Americans’ stories, trials, and tribulations in obtaining their American
citizenship. Simply titled “Citizenship,” this display challenges mainstream assumptions
that Arab Americans are exceedingly foreign and ambiguous in their allegiances to the

state.

 

Figure 1.7 This display, titled “Citizenship,” is featured in the “Living in
America” exhibit. Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

This exhibit's emphases on Arab American military involvement serves as the
most effective tool for reclaiming moral and cultural citizenship. To accentuate military
service is to remind the public that Arab Americans too give the gift of the ultimate,
patriotic sacrifice: that of the giving of the self through war for the bettemient of the

state. For a population that has been portrayed as the state's internal enemy, garnering the

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ethics of sacrifice reinforces fraternal sentiments and unifies disparate groups through

patriotism. Joseba Zulaika points to the roots of this logic in Western thought:

It is no accident that we find the enigmatic 'dying for another' turned into the
maximum expression of love and freedom, the triumph of life, at the center of
Western thought from Plato to Heidegger. Nowhere is the gift of death as
massive, universal, and unconditional as in war (Zulaika, 2003: 90-91).

While the museum emphasizes military service and the ethics of sacrifice, it does so in a
nuanced manner and amongst other forms of symbolic meaning. Yet the museum, in its
attempts to validate a demonized population, figuratively situates the Arab American as
one whose ethics include the ultimate sacrifice. By reaffirming the loyalty of the nation’s
most perceived morally ambiguous ethnic population through sacrificial metaphors, the
museum symbolically unites and binds the nation to a higher ethic of American morality
and values of freedom, equality, and justice. Here morality and American values are
hardened into societal “truths” as Arab Americans devotion to these higher ideals is
displayed in their willingness to die for their country. There becomes no greater sacrifice
than death.

Yet in this act of patriotic display and sacrifice, the museum bears excessive
witness to the crimes of modern history—in this case the events of 9/1 l—by pandering to
a 9/11 politics of fear that has demonized Arab and Muslim identities (Zulaika, 2003).
Showcasing Arab American military service attempts to challenge negative portrayals of
Arabs and Muslims in popular media and film. However, it does so only by playing into
a larger hegemonic backdrop of what it means to be a full American citizen post 9/11 in
which one’s willingness to die for the nation became emblematic of one’s patriotism and
loyalty to the state. It reinforces the notion that in order to be an ethnic citizen of the

United States, the ethnic group must publicly display their willingness to be sacrificed on

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behalf of the nation. The military display at the museum thus speaks to the ongoing crisis
of a nation that is at war with an Arab country and a nation populated by Muslims.

Much of the museum is constructed around this notion of a greater ethic and truth.
Zulaika refers to this higher ethic as a problematic “service of truth” in which individuals,
who have been exposed to excessive forms of violence, come to bear the ultimate

sacrifice of the self as a personal calling (Zulaika, 2003: 90).

 

Figure 1.8 The image was taken from the exhibit “Living in America,” Arab
Americans in the military. Photograph taken by Cedric Tai.

Individual sacrifice operates at three levels in the museum which are both
figurative and emblematic: 1) the omission of controversial Arab immigrants’ whose
practices and beliefs may appear un-American'0 for the greater representational good of

the Arab American community; 2) the omission of details surrounding the extremity of

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state brutality within Arab and Muslim American populations post 9/1 1; 3) and the
depiction of Arab American military figures that represent Arab American sacrifice on
behalf of the state. While the later is overtly represented at the museum in order to
restore good citizenship standing to Arab American populations, the former two
narratives are omitted and silenced in the folds of a lexicon unable to address them. To
address the omitted details would be to commit a form of excessive witnessing in itself.
As the director of the museum imparted to me, we should not let “September 11 define
our community” (Interview with AANM director, 7/31/08)

The museum's use of socially sanctioned discourse and commemoration practices
come to play out in a bizarre relationship between this particular exhibit's focus on
military service and the museum's brief focus on illegal government practices. This is not
to imply that museum personnel perceive or believe these portions of the respective
exhibits to exist in contradiction to one another. As I argued earlier, the museum's
critique of government policy was rooted in a higher American ideal. Narrating illegal
government actions was therefore sanctioned due to the very nature of their illegality.
Government actions could thus be admonished as poor administrative policy while the
museum’s content and tours could be championed as free speech and counter-hegemonic.
However, such facets of the museum and its tour only silence the fact that Arab
Americans do not have equal cultural and civil rights as their non-Arab and Muslim
American counterparts.ll

It is from these militaristic depictions of Arab Americans that the museum turns
its focus to the impact Arab Americans have had on American culture and society. This

is the final turn towards rooting Arab Americans in America's Past and present.

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In the final and third thematic exhibit at the museum, “Making an Impact,” the
stories focused upon are those of Arab Americans and organizations who have
contributed to and impacted the American way of life. This exhibit looks at hundreds of
famous Arab AmeriCans emphasizing the importance of the American dream as a crucial
facet to U.S. cultural, political. and economic success. As museum visitors exit the
“Living in America” exhibit, they gaze up to a momentous wall plastered with portraits

of famous Arab American faces.

 

Figure 1.9 This collage is the front display of the exhibit “Making an Impact.”
Collage depicts famous Arab Americans. Photograph taken by Rachel Yezbick.

The exhibit has several sections that seek to emphasize Arab Americans’ involvement in
all aspects of society: politics; activism; art & literature; science and medicine;

entertainment: sports; law; academia; and community. Here Arab American success and

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civic involvement functions as a tool for reclaiming cultural citizenship.
In the brochure disseminated along with the “Making an Impact” exhibit, the back

page depicts departing words from the brochure's architect, Casey Kasm:

'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country'——a famous quote by an Irish-American president, John F. Kennedy,
that inspired an entire generation. These Words were first written by, among
others, the Arab American author of 'The Prophet,‘ Kahlil Gibran. And that
sentiment, so beautifully expressed by Gibran more than 70 years ago, has
inspired Americans of all heritages. We Arab Americans are proud of our
heritage and proud to be Americans. It's this pride that keeps us all asking,
'What can we do for our country?'—the good old U.S.A. (Casey Kasem, Arab
Americans: Making a Difference brochure).

Here we see how Kasm emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity in the U.S. by
noting a beloved, former President’s ethnic heritage. He then proceeds to show how the
beloved saying, notably known as words expressed by President Kennedy, was first
written by an Arab American author. He states that these words have “inspired
Americans of all heritages.” While the quote serves as a pretty sound-bite for sentimental
patriotic consumption, it speaks to a specific type of ownership and belief in the
Constitution and American values and morals: ownership of these values and morals that
are particular to this state targeted ethnic community. It simultaneously reinforces many
of the little known Arab American contributions to the nation. The lessons learned from
Kasem’s words are that there is tremendous value in American multiculturalism, that
Arab Americans are, like other ethnic Americans, patriotic, and that each and every

American can and should contribute to the well being of the United States of America.

Conclusion

R: Did you ever feel like the museum or the organization had to cooperate
with the government or with the FBI?

[[3

B: We cooperated with the FBI?

R: Well no, cooperate is a bad word...um...but worked with government
agencies in terms of giving them cultural knowledge, where 'we' want 'you' to
know about these things about our culture...through workshops...

B: No, no I wouldn't call it cooperation; no I wouldn't call it that I mean or
cooperated or partnership. No. We target law enforcement agencies through
cultural education because we think that it is important for them to learn
about our culture. That is very different than cooperating because they want
information about the Arab community, or partnership because they want us
to work with them against certain people. That's...[ really hope you will be
very, very carefill about using this...

R: Oh yes I know I will. I'm very sorry. I know, someone else had used
that...

B: Maybe someone else...
R: Yes right...

B: For us it’s about providing education about the community to law
enforcement agencies because we think it ’3 important in the way they will see
the community.

R: Right and I will be very carefirl about using that term. My mistake.
Alright...l think that may be it...is there anything else you would like to add?

B: No, no just make sure you don't use this word cooperation...

My stumbling and misuse of terms in this small portion of an interview I

conducted with one of the museum’s board members, Bahir, highlights more than

conversational tension; it highlights, among many things, an increased normative practice

within AD whereby prominent community leaders and institutions navigate the overt

federal presence so as to safeguard AD residents from unnecessary and ill founded

government policies and prosecutions. My inquiry into this relationship with AD

spokespersons had for a long time left me puzzled, and with a mild sense of summer

paranoia about government wire-tapping. Yet what my own heightened sense of my

surroundings and, more importantly, what Bahir’s cautionary lesson imparts is a state of

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being particular to Arab and Muslim Americans post 9/11; his narration relays the
everyday nature in which AD residents fight for the safety and cultural and patriotic
citizenship of their community.

This point of awkward tension between myself and Bahir reflects larger tales of
government brutality and the overall institutional confines within which the Arab
American National Museum functions. It points to patterns of state intervention and
surveillance and the difficulties of combating notions of Arab Americans as Other and
anti-American. These widespread negative connotations surrounding Arab Americans
pervade everyday interactions and institutional behaviorisms of community
spokespersons that have become invested in the communal well being of Arab Detroit.

While I do not mean to downplay the symbolic importance of the museum for
many in the greater Arab American community, it is important that the museum's
practices be understood as operating within complex, political networks. The Arab
American National Museum is an influential institution that functions as a social buffer
zone for mediated dialogue between the Arab American community, mainstream
America, and the federal government. The museum like any institution, in order to shape
a unified cultural image of Arab Americans, must silence seemingly “backward” images
of Arab American immigrants that may appear exceedingly Other to mainstream visitors.

In this chapter, I attempted to show how these various forms of meaning making
operate by looking at the various memory techniques used at the museum. The
discursive nature of the museum's memory work points to larger discursive practices of
the state and of popular affective involvement with the events of 9/1 1. In order to

highlight these discursive practices, I looked to “nondiscursive actions” within the

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museum such as what is included and excluded historical material, various group
interactions at the museum, the types of discussions being held, and AANM brochures
(Goodman and Mizrachi, 2008: 97).

As I illustrated, the limited nature of memory work at AANM creates moments of
abrupt rupture and discontinuity in the museum's historical narrative. How the museum's
narratives come to be interpreted is dependent upon individual subject's personal
leanings, interests, and concerns. Meaning making at the museum is therefore in no way
a predictable process. Through my analysis, however, I analyze how meaning making
operates on a political level at the museum and how included and excluded content has
been influenced by the events of 9/1 1. In this chapter, I thus detail how the politics of

9/11 shape the exhibits and Cultural Competency Workshops at AANM.

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Chapter 4

Accounting for Difference in Arab Detroit: The Political and the
Personal in the Full Citizenship Project

Ethnic and religious intolerance, class confrontation, and unequal gendered
relations of power lie behind positive affirmations of communal and ethnic unification in
Arab Detroit. These aspects of communal relations are often times acknowledged
alongside reassurances of ethnic tolerance. Such sentiments were evident when
participants would speak on behalf of recent lower-class immigrants, referred to
derogatorily as “boaters,” in often-benign explanatory gestures of immigrants’ narrations
and actions. In turn, “boaters” are often embarrassed by the practices of American-born
AD residents and can and do impact the lives of their American-born Arab neighbors.

A relatively small portion of immigrants in Arab Detroit hold influential positions
of power, run their own businesses and organizations, and interact with federal agencies
present in Arab Detroit. Most of these persons are men and they frequently influence the
social norms and practices of the AD enclave to the dismay of some prominent,
American-born enclave residents.

In this sense, AD spokespersons are a mix of both more conservative and liberal
actors, who, despite their differences, often have overlapping aims and aspirations for the
Arab Detroit community. Many spokespersons wish to see more programs that educate
mainstream society about Arab and Islamic cultural traditions and for there to be better
and more accurate forms of AD representation. Despite common aspirations, these
spokespersons are often at odds with each other in their attempts to direct and influence

AD-government interaction and the basic procedures and principles for AD

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representation.

Disagreement about appropriate AD representation extends beyond the
conversations of AD spokespersons. These differences stem from varying lifestyle
choices of both Arab Detroit’s immigrant and American-hem Arab residents and are
evident in the everyday actions and conversations of Arab Detroit residents. These
everyday encounters between differing AD residents and their non-Arab counterparts is
the focus of this chapter.

In order to understand how 9/11 rhetoric has affected inter-communal relations in
AD, I focus on the narrations of four different women: Intisar, Bahera, Janan, and
Kareema. Each of these women defines her relationship to Arab Detroit and the full
citizenship project in unique ways. I chose to focus on these women’s narratives as their
interviews functioned less like interviews and more like conversational narratives (Ochs
and Capps, 2001). These women divulged personal stories and spoke candidly about
inter-communal politics in Arab Detroit in a manner unlike most of their male
counterparts.

While this chapter focuses on the narrations of women, it does not focus on
gendered issues and identities per se in Arab Detroit. In other words, this chapter does
not explicitly analyze gendered relations in Arab Detroit. However, these women’s
stories implicitly tell their own gendered stories that speak to larger configurations and
experiences of gender in Arab Detroit.

Only two of these women are AD spokespersons; the other two women are AD
residents. Two women were born in America, one immigrated when she was a teenager,

and the other moved to the United States in her young adulthood. These women, each of

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whom are long-time residents of Dearbom and have ambitious professional goals and
pursuits, conveyed similar troubles throughout the duration of our conversations. The
worrisome issues that often arose revolved around inter-communal politics between
strong, conservative personalities in Dearbom, recent traditional immigrants in Dearborn
and Dearbom Heights, and the interests of those in AD who are more American and
assimilated in their interests, livelihoods, and cultural sensibilities. Anxieties about
differing lifestyle choices in AD was notable whenever I raised the topic of the hijabl in
relation to its increased use in the greater Dearbom area amongst young Muslim women.
According to Bahera, this perceived traditional practice was not widespread in AD 30
years ago.

These stories of apprehension relay‘more than worries of personal identification
with the community. In many ways, the stories themselves tell their own tales of political
intrusion into the personal, everyday lives of these women. They speak to what is
culturally intimate (Herzfeld, 1997) about Arab Detroit and how the intimate becomes the
stuff muddled within conversation topics, itself veiled behind personal explanation and
validation. These topics of the intimate are not only the stuff of inter-communal
controverSy, but that which additionally arouses eager journalists seeking a tantalizing
story for the latest in the domestic war on terror. Since the events of 9/1 1, persons who
appear exceedingly other, Arab, or foreign in AD have become the things of public
controversy in the full citizenship project. In the undertaking of marketing a vulnerable
ethnic population, these are the things of local and national sacrifice.

In order to convey what is culturally intimate in Arab Detroit, I look to differing

depictions of inter—ethnic discrimination, religious, political, and class related tensions,

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gendered experiences, and how these experiences are discussed and relayed as intimate
projects and experiences of the self. I inquire into why such aspects of participants’ lives
are private, controversial, or concealed from the apparent public eye of mainstream
America. I portray these experiences as culturally intimate zones (Herzfeld, 1997;
Shryock, 2004) where difference is accented and experienced in the everyday lives of
participants, in which the political and personal become distorted. I highlight more than
inter-communal confrontation, but rather illustrate the everyday nature of communal
interactions that underscore projects of cultural and civil representation in an attempt to
understand what’s personal in projects of representation and political inclusion.

I contrast the pre-packaged narratives of previous chapters to female participants’
spoken self-conscious awareness of their role and relation to the process of cultural and
civic AD representation. In what follows, I attempt to show how an individual's means
for accounting for personal interest shapes the manner in which she relates to Arab
Detroit as a communal entity and what this says about the nature of inclusive discipline
and the full citizenship project. By looking at what is personal in participants’ narrations,
we begin to see the intimate moments in which participants justify their actions and
beliefs in moments of aggravation and disbelief. These moments demonstrate how an
individual’s sentiments come to shape inclusive and exclusive disciplinary actions in AD
politics of representation.

These stories thus relay something of a controversial communal politics in which
AD spokespersons and residents relay frustrations pertaining to everyday life within the
“community,” rather than depicting communal cooperation and unity. Here, we see

depictions of those who have been ostracized or who simply choose not to participate in

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Arab American identityjpolitics. These persons are, as often depicted by spokespersons, a
minority within AD.

According to Akil, a civil rights worker, resident’s increased civic engagement
and political activity was a normative reaction to the 9/1 1 backlash in Arab Detroit. It
served as a mechanism for protecting Arab American rights and for asserting the

community’s Americanisms. As Akil notes, however:

...there are some people you know who out of fear or out of necessity or just
out of the whole environment that we are in. . .who have not wanted to deal
with the issue at all with the community and say “you know what, I am going
to just go about my life and lay low.” I think it has been a minority reaction,
but it’s a reaction and it’s understandable! (Personal interview, 8/12/08).

As Akil notes, fear and necessity have forced many AD residents to steer clear of AD
politics. Numerous others have simply chosen not to actively partake in the politics of
representation in AD. Whether or not the choice to “lay low” is truly a minority reaction
in AD is of less importance than what these minority reactions tell us about how the
boundaries between what is personal and political are blurred in the politics of inclusion
and representation in Arab Detroit.

The personalized nature of these stories of communal explication speak to the
ways in which the political has intruded upon the personal affairs of Arab Detroiters; it is
these experiences that inform the politics of inclusion in AD and why informing the
impressions of strangers is of such consequence. There are not only political
consequences for participants if Arab Detroit is not represented towards the liking of
mainstream America, but personal consequences as well; personal consequences that
address the desire and need to be understood, accepted, and appreciated as a member of

the national imagined community (Anderson, 1983). The narratives that follow serve as

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guides into the intimate nature of this blurring process between the political and the
personal, into the personalization of cultural and civic representation, and into the

intimate nature of inclusive disciplinary tactics in AD.

“It’s Personal”: Representation and Americanization in Zones of Contradiction

We all have and continually formulate impressions of others. For Arab Detroit,
the “uncomprehending eye of the American mainstream” (Shryock, 2002: 918) can lead
to damaging impressions of Arab Detroit if these impressions are not managed by AD
spokespersons.2 Mediated in this process are not only federal agencies but also the
cultural sensibilities of recent Arab immigrants who often partake in traditions and rituals
that are considered “backwards” by mainstream American standards. Any aspect of
immigrant livelihood that could be considered bizarre or reinforce potentially damaging
stereotypes of Arab and Muslim Americans, such as manners of speech in Arabic and
English elocution, are censored by AD resident’s who are more familiar with American
society.

In contrast to this censorship, one participant noted that she believes that “we
have grown as a community;” yet deciphering who is “we” in “community” and who
constitutes “them” in AD is not always clear. By analyzing how Bahera and Janan frame
themselves in relation to the national community and the local Dearbom area, we begin
to see some of the ways in which “community” is defined by these participants.

J anan, unlike Bahera, does not consider herself to be an AD spokesperson; she is
not particularly active in communal affairs and is not actively engaged in local politics.

Additionally, Janan’s professional endeavors are not related to AD representational

122

 

politics, and she is therefore not referred to as a spokesperson in this chapter. She is
rather friends with numerous AD spokespersons and is aware of the politics that arise
within spokespersons’ circles because of her close ties with AD representatives.

She is a second-generation, American-born resident who does not speak Arabic.
Due to J anan’s physical appearance, non-Arab Americans are often unaware of her Arab
background; yet, she is also often ostracized from aspects of life in Dearborn by recent
immigrants who speak Arabic and are more traditional in their cultural practices and
beliefs. Janan thus often describes herself as existing on the borderline of two dissimilar
cultural milieus: an American mainstream culture and a culture of recent Arab
immigrants.

When I met with Janan at a local coffee shop in Metropolitan Detroit, I started
what would be a lengthy two-hour interview with the question, “how has 9/11 affected
your life as an Arab American?” Janan replied without much hesitation, “I have to say,
for me I think it has been more the feeling of an educator” (Personal interview, 8/13/08).
According to Janan, a Christian Arab American, educating the public about Arabs and
Islam has become a fairly regular occurrence as she goes about her everyday routines.
She states that she often encounters Islamaphobic discussions and overhears people
“slamming” Arabs and feels compelled to “stick up for a people” she has come to

collectively identify with.

...It’s really interesting to me too, because. . .so many of my close friends are
Muslim and I don’t really differentiate people on religion so uh. . .now I find
myself sticking up for a religion but also for a people, also for us. I fee like

it ’s all of us. So when they do that, it’s really hard because you have to find a
way to get the point across without putting more distance on the issue. . .and
so you have to take your emotion out of it. It’s a little tricky (Personal
interview, 8/13/08).

123

 

The opportunity for Janan to “stick up” for Arabs and Muslims arises because she is often
not perceived by others to be Arab or Muslim. Janan’s sense of security appears to stem,
in part, from her identity as an American—born Christian woman and from her
indiscemible ethnicity. She additionally does not live in the AD “enclave,” Dearbom,
and is thus additionally removed from the other images of Arabness in Detroit.

These factors foster situations in which she may interject in conversations that

\ .m~!

may be Islamaphobic or anti-Arab. Since September 1 1, Janan increasingly finds herself
in situations in which she may remain silent or speak out against discriminatory speech.

These socio-moral dilemmas impel Janan to speak on behalf of a people, Muslim

 

Americans, she now considers to be part of a collective “us,” Arab Americans.

The use of the word “us” frames her in collective association with Arab Detroit
and in opposition to an imagined “them” or mainstream, non-Arab America. Janan’s
collective association with AD residents is highly tied to anti-Arab sentiments in non-
Arab American neighborhoods in the surrounding area and in popular media and society
at large. Through reported speech,3 Janan carves out her own moral legitimacy as the
teller of these stories as she is part of the collective discriminated “us” (Ochs and Capps,
2001; Shuman, 2005). She in turn agreeably informs me of other’s biased and
discriminatory opinions of Arab and Muslim Americans, positioning herself vis-a-vis
others’ actions, opinions, and assumptions.

In order to convey the everyday and ordinary nature of anti-Arab and Muslim
discourse in the public sphere, Janan tells me about an experience she had at a local UPS
store. Below, she clearly defines herself vis-z‘l-vis a non-Arab American UPS worker

who is ill educated about Middle Eastern geography. She furthermore establishes a sense

[24

of familiarity with myself upon our first meeting (“Did I ever tell you. . .”), framing
myself as a sympathetic listener in relation to her story as she begins to relay the
absurdity of the UPS worker’s statement. In this sense, everyday conversation, here
between Janan and myself, becomes a “medium for determining moral truths” (Ochs and
Capps, 2001: 102).

In the narration below, Janan not only questions the moral authority of 9/11
politics, but she also unites my own politico-moral stance with her own in an act of self
legitimization and association with the national community. Below, Janan describes how

she frequently comes across anti-Arab and Islamaphobic conversations:

 

J: But [do just try to. . .you know. . .I try to ....set the example I guess and set
parallels and let people open their eyes a little. Yea... I really have run
across quite a bit [anti-Arab and Muslim conversations] ‘cuz I see a lot of
people daily.

R: [Really? Oh really?]
Like. . . just at work. . .or just daily...or friends. . .or?

J: ...at work. Daily. Anywhere. Did I ever tell you that story about the UPS
worker?

R: No...oh no!
J: Well this is a silly story but it is a good example.

R: OK.

J: I go to the UPS store probably a few times a week to do some deliveries
and. . .um. .. there is a young girl in there who is probably some extreme
Christian, Baptist something who knows.

R: [Ha, uhuh.]

J: She always has these extreme radical political views in my mind, but you
know I don ’t care. They are your views. That’s fine. But one day I was in
there and she got on this tangent, this was like 8 o’clock in the morning,
about. . .the war and how it’s a good thing that we’re there in Iraq because “if
we weren’t there Afghanistan would be out of control. We’d have people
back in New York, we’d have”. . .and I am listening to this and I am thinking,

[25

“Does she honestly think that by being there we’re controlling Afghanistan
and that her house is keeping people out of our back door?” So I said to her,
I said “Sarah,” I said, “are you under the impression that Afghanistan borders
Iraq?” and she said “well yes it does.”

R: Did she really? [Oh no!]

J: And I was just like alright, you know what, this is awfully early and I am
awfully tired. So I just thought, I didn’t say anything. I just smiled and I left.
The next day I came back in and I brought a map.

R: [Ahaha, ohh.]

J: The owner started cracking up. The owner actually took some kind of
political strategy...he really kind of backed me up. It wasn’t my intention to
gang up on her. I said “Sarah, you know I love ya,” I said, “and I am not here
to argue with you about your political beliefs, but when it comes to
geography, there is nothing to argue. So let me just show you this map.” So
she looked at it and she was in shock, totally in shock. She honestly didn’t ,
know.

 

R: [Oh wow...really!] [Ohhh.]

J: She doesn’t know her basic geography and. . .everything she does know
about the Middle East is what she hears. So there are all these crazy
associations.

R: [So she’s making. . .yea.]

J: And so I thought, well you know this is all disputable so let’s put this in
front of you. I don’t care about Bush. You can love Bush if you want to love
em. . .haha you know just whatever. But let’s just get the geography straight.
So you know I felt kind of afterwards, like I was being condescending. At the
time, I thought though I can ’t take this. Haha...this is just...haha...

R: [Yea]4

As Janan relayed this story to me, her act of narration brought to her conscious awareness

the surreal frequency in which her everyday experiences are shaped by war propaganda

and the politics of 9/1 1. Although she is frustrated with the UPS worker’s statements,

she decides to come back to the store the next day with a map in order to open the

worker’s “eyes a little” regarding geography in the Middle East. She demonstrates how

the owner supported her as she reprimanded his employee, positioning this man, in the

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rendering of her story, in ideological agreement with her own political principles.

Her focus upon the owner’s unexpected concurrence with her actions arranges
normative values and beliefs in mainstream society around her own sensible social
perceptions (Ochs and Capps, 2001).5 Yet that J anan describes the owner as “backing her
up” frames her as both an included and excluded member of mainstream America; she is
part of the national community and yet she is also definitively contrasted to popular ideas
and people in mainstream society due to her Arab American identity.

This was acutely displayed in her interaction with the UPS worker Sarah. Her
difference is shaped by her Arab identity. It impels her to right ill—informed assumptions
surrounding all things Arab and Muslim; it is an effort to amend what is considered
normative and valued in mainstream society. Janan conveys this explicitly in her
narrative by way of her direct efforts to educate and correct Sarah’s poor geographical
understanding of the Middle East, which, as J anan notes, Sarah believes simply because
of “what she hears” on the TV, news, and radio. Yet, her Arab identity is also the source
of her estrangement and frustration, which she laments in the following phrase: “I
felt. . .afterwards, like I was being condescending. At the time, I thought though I can’t
take this.”

In her efforts to educate the non-Arab public, J anan removes herself emotionally
from the issue at hand in order to discuss it calmly with the person she is confronting.
Her- acts of confrontation do not always go smoothly, however, and she further laments
that in these instances she becomes exceedingly frustrated; “I’ve done some crazy things
though sometimes. . .because it is a lack of just common sense and I find myself getting

firrther fi'ustrated” (Personal interview, 8/13/08). As Janan’s frustrations relay, the words

127

exchanged in these confrontational conversations are more than ‘mere words’

(F airclough, 2001 [1989]); they are the everyday experiences in which competing
ideologies, one often more dominant and the other more negligible, battle for moral
legitimacy and authority.

Moreover, Janan is able to insert herself into Sarah’s conversation because of
Sarah’s misinterpretation of popular discourses (Fairclough, 2001 [1989]; (Bourdieu,
1991 [2977]) pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their relation to Arabs
and Muslims.6 Yet while J anan attempts to reframe what is normative and valued
through the retelling of this story, we still see how the bizarre and frustrating nature of I "‘
her experience at the UPS store, and others like it, reframes the normative landscape of
Janan’s everyday activities and conversations. Here the familiarity and routine nature of
her activities coupled with the uncomfortably strange social occurrences she encounters
simulates an uncanny7 experience. She must therefore frequently position herself along a
continuum of difference and sameness with her fellow non-Arab Americans and Arab
Americans. In this sense, J anan is both subject to the politics of our time as she is also
capable of challenging the politico-moral stance of these politics and the ideologies they
produce.

Later on in our conversation, Janan began to speak of ethnic difference and
confrontation in AD. Just as Janan constructs her Arab American identity vis-a-vis
mainstream America, she also constructs her identity vis-a-vis her Arab and Muslim
neighbors in AD. She illustrates the differences between her assimilated identity as an
Arab American in relation to recent immigrants’ lack of cultural knowledge about what is

and is not appropriate behavior in the U.S. It is at this point in Janan’s narration that we

[28

begin to see where hegemonic notions of American culture shape how ethnic difference
in AD is understood, managed, and projected.
In what follows, Janan and I discuss images of otherness in Arab Detroit and how

these identities become easy targets for local and national suspicion.

R: Oh well yea I will tell you that the first time I drove back into Dearbom. ..
I really noticed the Arabic script and the visuals and I thought “it is a
different area”. . .but I think that the visuals are hindering the community. ‘
Because. . .it is fine. . .it’s good that people can practice what they want, they F
can do what they want. . .but I see something that is too perfect for the
government to be able to say “see look what you have next to you”. . .like it
can be twisted so easily because even people who are close to me who are
educated will say things... l

 

J: [Ohh yea definitely. I totally agree. Oh, I totally agree).

R: ...like oh “well is there anything going on in there? ” and my jaw will
drop and 1 ’ll be like “are you kidding me? ” because I think people see things
like Arabic script and women wearing the hijab and they go “What is going
on in there? "

J: Oh absolutely and that is something Nuha is really good at, and I just don’t
have the patience for it. 1 give her so much credit. Whenever you get a
rally. . .in Dearbom. . .I think it is Dearbom, you get all of these uh. . .visual
personalities that clearly look Muslim and radical. . .and the way that they
approach a rally is sort of. . .radical. .. I don’t really know how else to put
it...it ’s really emotional. And they think that they are doing justice by being
hyper emotional. I mean even their verbiage, if you look at the way they
write. They have so many more ways of looking at something than we do in
the English language, which can be beneficial but it can also be harmful if
you are translating it to an American venue. So you ’11 have these people do
it...and some of these things I ’ve read and I ’ve actually tweaked, because if it
went out the way it went out, it would be really damaging. Just this need to
put graphic details in their writing...

R: [Oh no. . .hmmm.]
J: ...and they do the same things in the rallies.
R: Graphic details?

J: ...you know when we talk about our people and bloodshed and loss. . .they
won’t just leave it at we have bloodshed and loss. They will get into a page
and half with all kinds of adjectives. . .about loss. . .extremely dramatic and
over the top!

129

 

R: [And you’re going oh gosh! Oh no!]

J: and very dramatic and the whole thing... So what she’s done is she’s, and
I think she’s found she can be effective this way, trying to see if she can kind
of ...calm down some of the leaders so that the impression isn ’t out there
looking so insane...so that it doesn ’t come across as those “crazy Arabs. ” It
does! 1 mean you know, I ’ll joke about it sometimes, and even my kids will
joke about it, like “those god damn crazy Arabs! ” But you know it’s at the
same time there is some truth behind it. It is one thing when you have a
feeling, and I think if you 're in another country or anywhere else that the
communication you have isn’t going to be received in the way you intend if
it 's only within your culture that you ’re putting it out there. You have to i
think how is the other end going to receive this? Some of this stuff is really
heavy. I’ve seen things that were going to go out in print that I’ve

actually. . .well greatly tweaked, rewritten because they weren’t fit to print. . .a
couple issues...

 

That J anan and I both argued that identities of extreme Arabness in AD are further
perpetuating Arab and Muslim stereotypes illustrates how our opinions were framed
against a hegemonic cultural backdrop that informs us of who is and is not to be
considered American in Arab Detroit. While our concerns came from our desire to see
Arab Detroit move past the politics of 9/ 11 and the negative stereotyping of Arab and
Muslim people, our concerns none-the-less further perpetuate ethnically intolerant
attitudes towards those whose cultural sensibilities are perceived to be less than
American. Encouraging controversial identities in AD to subdue their cultural practices
may reduce national public and federal interests in AD. Censoring these controversial
identities, however, only enables and legitimizes these stereotyping practices.

Yet, to assume that all Arabs in Detroit hold similar cultural practices and
beliefs—personal and political—is to reinforce the myth that communities are a-political,
essentially unified, homogenous, and innately positive entities (Creed, 2006). As
J anan’s narrative shows, this is clearly not the case. J anan’s referral to those “crazy

Arabs,” albeit she intends such words to be taken lightly and in good humor, relays how

130

radical “visual personalities” in AD are actually perceived to be “crazy” as they don’t
have the cultural sensibility to sensor themselves for “their own good.” Thus while Janan
jokingly refers to these persons as fanatical figures, there is, at the same time “some truth
behind” her statement. It is this apparent ‘lack’ of sense, of common sense about what is
and is not accepted as appropriate American behavior that separates and divides Arab
Detroit residents.

That these “radical” identities are the things of public controversy tells us just
how the politics of 9/11 and the politics of fear have affected AD residents and
spokespersons. The events of 9/ 11 influence the ways in which participants’ speak about
their neighbors and the high stakes involved in explaining and accounting for their “odd”
neighbors’ behaviors. What is culturally intimate in AD relays just what it as stake in the
political representation of Arab Detroit: the acceptance of AD in the national mainstream,
the solidification of Arab and Muslim civil and cultural citizenship, and the reflection of
one’s self within the Arab community. In other words, what Janan’s story shows us is
just how ethnic and cultural difference in AD is negotiated in the process of representing
Arab Detroit. More importantly, her story relays how Arab Detroit’s status as a
vulnerable, threatening, controversial, and foreign community affects the ways in which
J anan accounts for, explains, relates to and distances herself from Arabs and Muslims in
Detroit who appear exceedingly Other.

How J anan portrays Arab Detroit is additionally determined not only by her own
opinion of her community, but also by her understanding of myself as a researcher and
what she believes my aims, goals, and interests as a scholar are in AD. In this sense,

J anan fashioned her narration around what she believed my perception was of Arab

131

Detroit, and whether or not I saw the community as vulnerable or threatening, modem or
foreign, assimilated or culturally dissimilar.

This form of dialogic mediation is not particular to Janan but true of all
participants of this study. Thus to guide my impressions of Arab Detroit, participants in
this chapter not only sent me to those who could further explain and account for Arab
Detroit’s less well known and poorly understood inhabitants, but they also sought to
explain ethnic, class, and religious tensions in AD while simultaneously relaying what is ti
important and personal for them as Arab American women.

In comparison, recent Arab immigrants in Detroit often perceive of their t 2

 

American-born counterparts as being too assimilated, lacking in moral values, and as
unwarranted privileged members of the ethnic community. The story J anan imparts
below illustrates such tensions between AD residents. Janan depicts how many in
Dearbom have ostracized her as she cannot speak Arabic and is often seen as an outsider

by people who reside in the “enclave.”

J: people get really mad at you for not speaking Arabic, especially in
Dearbom. . .like I should be ashamed. But I’m like I didn’t grow up in an
Arabic community! So I’m like I wish I spoke it too, but I don’t.

And. . .ha...I think at the same time. . .I don’t like being judged because I
can’t! And I understand why. . .and. . .as a matter of fact. ..I always order my
meat from this halal butcher in Dearbom. He’s actually a Palestinian guy
who I like and he’s polite to me! And some of them aren’t so polite!...and he
is so I thought I’ll keep going back in even though it is a smaller shop. I’ll
sacrifice so he gets my business. And he’s always very responsible and I’ll
tell him my order and so he sends someone all the way from Hillsdale and he
always does. And so I say so I’ll be here about two and he’ll have it all
ready. And I came in this one day, and I went in to pick up my order and I am
standing by the counter and there is this woman standing in there and she is
urn. . .also Arabic. She started swearing in Arabic “Who does this mother
fucking woman think she is!? And bla bla bla. . .” She keeps going on “who
does she think she is just walking on up in front of everybody. She thinks she
is better than everybody else!” And she is going on and on this tangent. . .and
mind you, she doesn’t think I understand her. I do understand it. I

132

understand a lot of general conversation. I probably couldn’t do well in
school, but I can get by. . .and so I’m listening. . .and I’m thinking ok,
obviously I can’t respond to her eloquently in Arabic. . .but I said “you know,
I call my order in ahead of time because I don’t live around here and he
always takes such good care of me, and I’m sure if you don’t want to wait,
you can call your order in and [he] will take good care of you too!” So then it
was used as a social past time to get out of the house. . .and so he turns to her
and says in Arabic and she stands there and he says, “yes she can hear and
yes you can call your order in ahead of time too”. . .knowing very well that
she doesn’t want to do that because she doesn’t want to strike out in front of
me!

R: [Uhuh ....yea.] [Exactlyi]

J: But I see a lot of this “you’re not part of the club. You’re not part of the
core.” So there is uh. . .this strange behavior. . .uh. . .yea. . .and so it is very
different. . .And so I think, I think that ’s really sad because I think that other
American people feel that when they go there (Dearbom) and so it also adds
to the impressions that they already have of these people and the way they
are...1t ’s not helping.

 

J anan’s narrations relays more than her estrangement from Arabs living in Dearbom; it
highlights inter-communal tensions that reflect presumed spectrums of Arabness in
Detroit, of what it means to be truly “Arab.” In the narration above, Janan finds herself
confronted by another Arab woman who believes Janan is using her socio-economic
privileges as a Western Arab from out of town to cut to the front of the line at the
Dearbom halal market. These women, in their confrontation, transgress each other’s
boundaries of what it means to be legitimately part of Arab Detroit and thus genuinely
Arab.

The woman insulting J anan attempts to shame Janan publicly by speaking Arabic,
a language J anan sarcastically states she is expected to know as a member of Arab
Detroit. Janan’s basic understanding of what was said allows her a retort in which she
makes clear her knowledge of Arabic and her legitimacy at the front of the halal meat

line. Language thus becomes a definitive marker of “Arabness” in this narration, a

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defining cultural facet of who is and is not part of AD.

The scene relayed above depicts the everyday occurrences in which competing
Arab identities in Detroit vie for social and cultural legitimacy. These moments of
transgression reinforce the differences between AD residents and further legitimize ethnic
intolerance in Arab Detroit. Moments of confrontation in which the varying cultural
sensibilities of AD residents clash legitimizes participants’ beliefs that exceedingly
foreign Arab identities in AD should be censored. These moments reinforce who and

what is “backwards” in AD.

 

In order to account for participants’ often less than tolerant views of recent
immigrants in Detroit, we must look to what makes these stories personal for participants.
In other words, we must look at what is personally at stake in the process of representing
a vulnerable minority group. To understand how spokespersons come to shape the
boundaries of being and belonging in Arab Detroit, I wish to focus upon what is personal
for Bahera in the full citizenship project.

Bahera is a committed culture worker in AD; she actively promotes the cultural
and civil inclusion of Arab and Muslim identities in the U.S. She is a successful, modern
woman and an American-born Arab American. When I met her for coffee in the summer
of 2008, Bahera and I spoke for two hours. We discussed issues such as what it means to
be an Arab American post 9/11 to the difficulties involved in representing dissimilar
Arab identities in Detroit.

In a moment of genuine personal frustration, Bahera relays how her neighbors and
their extreme images of Arabness have come to intrude upon her own understanding of

her hometown, Dearbom, and the cultural landscape that it exudes. She is particularly

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frustrated with the changes in dress practices, particularly the donning of the hijab, and
traditional Islamic gendered interactions, such as the separation of the sexes in particular
mosques in Dearbom. She views these changes in the visual landscape of her community
as misrepresentations of the self. That her Arab American neighbors are such erroneous
representations of what she considers Arab Americans to symbolize, makes the process
of representing AD personal. The battle over representation in AD has thus become the
stuff of “personal things” over what one is and is not as an Arab American.

Below, Bahera explicates why inter-communal difference is aggravating. “You.

know what really drives me crazy...(in a hushed whisper). . .is this thing,” Bahera takes

 

her hand to her heart in reference to the traditional Islamic greeting performed between
men and women upon their return from the Hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. After
performing the Hajj, some men and women no longer shake hands but rather gesture by

placing a hand over the chest in a sign of reverence and respect to the opposite sex.

B: I always get upset. . .it was not the landscape of our community before, and
we’re, we ’re developed. . .I ’m evaluating myself because I think if I was in the
midst of another community and they had these weird idiosyncrasies I ’d go
“oh ok! I can accept that! ” you know but because it is my community and I ’m
in there! It ’s personal things. So... it aggravates me because that ’s not me.
That ’s a representation of something that I am totally not, and that a lot of
people are not. Do you know what I ’m saying? So you know, it ’s sort of this
facade and this is creating more of the stereotypes that we are tying to get

away from.

It is in this personal moment of genuine frustration and self reflection that Bahera shows
us just exactly what is being worked upon in inclusive disciplinary practices of the state
and society: personal sensibilities of self identification with the national imagined

. 9
community.

This process of identification is in many ways a subconscious or semi-conscious

 

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act of inclusion in which one’s habitus (Bourdieu, 1991 [1977])—one’s ingrained,
subconscious dispositions that make personal behavioral practices seem overall neutral-—
heavily determines how one will choose to view their identification with the nation. In
this sense, AD spokespersons’ inclusive disciplinary practices are based upon common
sense assumptionsI 0 (F airclough, 2001 [1989]) of what is and is not “modern” and
“progressive” behavior in the US, what is and is not counter-hegemonic and radical.
These common sense assumptions and spokespersons’ ingrained dispositions shape how

they attempt to contest negative depictions of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. and what

 

spokespersons’ believe to be counter-hegemonic.

In the full citizenship project, AD spokespersons attempt to publicly question and
contest what they consider to be negative depictions of Arabs and Muslims. They
empower Arab Detroiters to take charge of their image in an act of creative self-
determination.ll Arab American self-determination is thus depicted in opposition to
popular demonized depictions of Arabs. Modernity, consciousness, and critical thought
entertain Western notions of freedom to cultural assimilation; Western cultural
sensibilities thus become identity markers that affluent AD residents hold dearly for such
sentiments are proof of modern residents’ own Americanization and of AD’s developed
status. Spokespersons’ renderings of their own Arab identities are yet nonetheless
defined against an unquestioned backdrop of hegemonic representations of American
culture (Shryock, 2004), against historical norms that claim progress in the face of
struggle and emergency (Benjamin, 1939).

Spokespersons thus attempt to use multicultural rhetoric to secure a sanctioned

place for Arab cultural practices in America in order to secure their own position in

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mainstream society. Such practices unfortunately rely on the fundamental integrity of
multiculturalism. When the real consequences of multicultural practices are assessed, the
residual affects of multicultural rhetoric’s use in AD may be seen. The use of
multicultural rhetoric in AD aligns exceedingly other and foreign Arab identities with
popular negative depictions of Arabs and Muslims simply by not allocating a space for
these identities to exist within the popular lexicon. Controversial AD identities are thus
quelled because they resemble stereotypical depictions of terrorists. Their cultural r

practices are viewed as “backwards” and they become further portrayed as politico-moral 1'

 

problems of questionable character. L.

It is this hegemonic backdrop of what is American that shapes when and how one
can and cannot make an exception for their neighbor’s idiosyncratic behaviors. When
one’s community is a central target of the government’s domestic war on terror, the
stakes of what behavioral practices and traditions represent you as a member of the group
are considerably high. Unconventional behavior of Arab Detroit’s recent immigrant
residents becomes the locus of controversial political debate. It becomes the stuff of
personal disputes, disagreements and alliances made in relationships, and the fodder for
political and economic resource confrontation between ethnic organizations that represent
AD.

The stakes involved in the process of representing AD are significantly important
for Bahera. Bahera borders the boundaries of both Arab Detroit’s margins and
mainstream as an educated, successful, and professional first generation Arab American
woman who lives in Dearborn Heights. She has much to lose if Dearbom, the enclave of

AD, appears exceedingly foreign, including her own sense of likeness and solidarity with

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her understood Arab American community and the national community at large. She
straddles a line of contradiction that does not allow her to fully inhabit either identity.

In Bahera’s narrative, we see how this sense of estrangement from those with
whom she shares a common identity disturbs her. She questions and evaluates her
objectionable feelings about her neighbor’s idiosyncratic behaviors. She concludes that
her neighbor’s actions are intolerable for they do not represent the sensibilities of many,
like herself, in AD; “I’m evaluating myself because I think if I was in the midst of
another community and they had these weird idiosyncrasies I’d go ‘oh ok! I can accept
that!’ you know but because it is my community and I’m in there! It’s personal things.”
To accept the idiosyncratic behaviors of her neighbors is to recognize and legitimize
these identities in Arab Detroit’s politics of representation.

Yet, Bahera’s personal reasons for not accepting recent immigrants’ practices
addresses a more nuanced point: to accept these personalities would be to legitimize these
persons’ cultural practices as genuine representations of the Arabic self, of Bahera’s
understanding of what it means to be Arab in Detroit. The more these identities differ
from her own identity and become prominent in AD, the more Bahera feels she is being
pushed to the margins of her own community. Accepting foreign identities would thus
place those like Bahera on the margins of AD and expose these identities to the larger
public. For AD spokespersons that have worked to secure a modern image of Arab
Detroit, an image that suits their own cultural sensibilities, this is simply not acceptable.

To place oneself firmly in the mainstream then similarly means to act and engage
with non-Arabs in ways that are akin to mainstream social interaction. This requires one

to “de-Arabize” the self when presenting oneself to outside inquirers and in turn fashion

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one’s own Arabness according to notions of sanctioned ethnic acceptance. This is part of
the full citizenship project in which to gain multicultural citizenship in America, Arab
Detroit spokespersons must publicly display their cultural and civil compatibility with the

rest of American society.

“Beyond Vulgarity: ” The Ultimate Perversion of Society

 

It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core ;
of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the j.
political from intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political are .
interdependent but not one and the same thing. The realm of imagination is a r -
bridge between them, constantly refashioning one in terms of the other. ~
Azar Naflsi

 

In the previous section I attempt to show what is culturally intimate in the politics
of representing Arab Detroit. I then attempt to highlight what is personal for AD
spokespersons in the project of representation. This section similarly attempts to look at
what is personal in the fill citizenship project. However, rather than focus on individual
motives for partaking in the full citizenship project, here I attempt to highlight
participants’ personal reasons for distancing themselves from Arab Detroit and the
politics of representation. By focusing on how the political has intruded into the personal
lives of AD residents and spokespersons, I emphasize what is “beyond vulgarity” about
politics in Arab Detroit post 9/11: the politicization of even the most personal affairs and
experiences.

When I arrived at the Starbucks in Dearbom Heights for my meeting with Intisar,
I saw a woman with dark hair and a dress suit seated near the barista’s coffee counter.

Her demeanor was professional and down to business. I got in touch with lntisar

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following a participant’s suggestion that I speak with her as Intisar has experienced
hardship since 9/11 because of her Arab identity. Intisar is a notorious non-profit
consultant in Detroit who lost numerous clients post 9/11 due to popular perceptions that
Arabs and Muslims are morally ambiguous and untrustworthy.

I asked her how she has been coping with the changing environment of being
Arab American. “How have the politics of 9/11 and the 9/11 backlash changed the
language pertaining to Arab American identity in Detroit?...Or. . .um, how has it affected

your everyday life?” 1'4

 

I: You mean the form of language?

R: Yes.

I: It is hard to address that issue for it is pure and simple discrimination, even
by our own kind.'2

As Intisar began to tell me her stories related to the 9/11 backlash, her experiences spoke
more about blatant discrimination from both non-Arabs and Arabs alike than they did
about local support and reassurance. For Intisar, the language surrounding what it means
to be “Arab” in Detroit had not only changed, but something more had changed as well.
The form of her everyday life was altered so much that she could no longer combat
small-minded bigotry easily. She was forced to hide from bigotry, to stomach it, for
according to Intisar, it was too invasive to tackle.

The prejudice that she experienced was not infrequent; it was rather impudent
racism that invaded, and continues to invade, her everyday life. “How do you combat
bigotry when it is so prevalent everywhere around you? What are the words you use
then? How do you dispel it?”l3 Intisar has been told point blank by big businesses in

Detroit that they will not work with her because she is Arab. In the eyes of these

140

companies, Intisar became a liability for each companies’ image. They chose rather to
severe their ties with Intisar than explain to their shareholders why they are in business
with an Arab. A fellow Arab American told her to her face that he would not work with
her because she is Arab. She has been forced out of one career and into another because
of embedded fears surrounding Arab and Muslim identities simply to find herself bared
from another profession due to anti-Arab bigotry. The glass ceiling for Intisar is not so
much transparent as it is glaring and palpable.

These experiences have shaken her identity. They have led her to raise her
children as proud Arab Americans at home while compelling her to leave her Arab
identity safely behind closed doors as she goes about her workday. In order to maintain
her business and her professional status, she has to market herself as a non—Arab
American. Intisar has thus removed herself from the public affairs of Arab Detroit. She
no longer participates in activities related to and for Arab Americans in AD, often
avoiding Dearbom events in which numerous Arabs will be present for the sake of her
own personal interests.

That these experiences have led Intisar to isolate herself from the Arab
community in Detroit tells the other side of the full citizenship project. Just as some have
been empowered and reassured in their civil and cultural rights, there are also many who,
like Intisar, have lost incalculable amounts in the aftermath of 9/1 1. Thus while AD
organizations have gained social, political, and economic capital post 9/11, many have
been excluded from these gains and lost what they can never regain: a sense of the self
unaltered by horrendous acts of bigotry.

AD, in the process of gaining full citizenship rights, has strictly defined the

141

 

 

 

parameters for Arab Detroit membership: to be a full member of AD post 9/11, one must
be active in all aspects of American society as a representative of Arab Detroit. For those
whose experiences post 9/1 1 have compelled them to subdue their Arab identity, these
individuals become further excluded from AD social activities and membership.
Inclusion and exclusion are thus part and parcel of inclusive disciplinary tactics in AD; in
order for some to feel empowered, others must feel disempowered and disillusioned.
They are both part of the full citizenship project and one would not exist without the

other.

 

Like Intisar, Kareema also described the 9/11 backlash in terms of loss and
struggle. As noted in the introductory chapter of this thesis, Kareema, an Arab and
Muslim American activist and spokesperson, has been and is heavily monitored by
federal agencies. She is an immigrant who has lived in Dearbom for over four decades
and she is well integrated into local politics and affairs. Although she is a target of the
state, Kareema remains a prominent public figure for Arab and Muslim rights. It is
because of her rambunctious and determined personality that I first desired to speak with
Kareema.

Kareema’s sentiments about the vulgarity of 9/ 11 politics speak to the costs of full
citizenship well. According to Kareema, there was more radical activist activity in Arab
Detroit prior to 9/11. Activist activity had once challenged the boundaries of political
discourse surrounding foreign policy in the Middle East. Activists in AD use to contest
government policies that enabled the poor treatment of Arab and Muslim citizens.
Kareema argues that since 9/11 activists have instead promoted the discourse of

multiculturalism rather than challenging the boundaries of cultural inclusion in American

142

 

society. Kareema believes that multicultural rights activism is no more than complacent
defiance, a form of “watered-down” activism that simply spreads the perks of
multiculturalism.

Rather than tackling political issues that pertain to U.S. domestic and foreign
policy concerning Arab and Muslim Americans, Kareema argues that young people
completely avoid addressing these political issues due to the overt federal presence in
AD. That young people and students are more cautious today than they were 40 years
ago during the Israeli-Arab Six Day War and 20 years ago during the Lebanese Civil

War, demonstrates how government fear tactics have made students afraid to speak out.

 

“They are targets and they know it.” According to Kareema, students do not want to
draw more attention to themselves. If they choose to become Arab and Muslim activists,
their activism must be couched in a multicultural discourse concerning the sharing of
cultures; they must make things apolitical and sanctioned. In the sharing of cultures
“everything gets watered down. It feeds on the notion of normalcy, which is good but in
doing so it looses some of the injustice that has been done to a people, to Arab and

Muslim Americans”l4

(Personal interview with Kareema, 7/ 17/08).

When I asked Kareema how she maintains her integrity in a world in which she
cannot publicly vocalize the ideological beliefs she holds, in which her compliance with
federal agencies is essential to her well being, she replied that she maintains her integrity
in order to save her sanity. “You tiptoe through tulips! I support Hezbollah, but I don't
support Hezbollah. . .the inhumanity.” She paused and said, “Rachel the fact that I am so

guarded tells you something. Before 9/11 I would have said sure! Audio and video

record! The government doesn't want us to have free speech, but they sure as hell want to

143

 

 

”'5 (Personal interview, 7/17/08). She is bound by the ideology she is

have free action
compelled to display in public in order to keep herself out of trouble with the federal
government and what she really feels and thinks in private. Whether it is through blatant
disregard or by federal agents who leave her with little choice or recourse in matters,

Kareema often feels that she has been treated as if she does not exist; she has become a

subhuman being. These acts of discrimination are forms of debasement and they are, as

 

Kareema stated, “beyond vulgarity.”

These stories speak to what is beyond vulgarity about politics in AD: inter-ethnic

 

discrimination and the inclusion for some in AD at the cost of others’ exclusion. These i __
women’s experiences speak to the ways in which the politics of representation in AD

have intruded upon the personal lives of AD residents. They speak to the vulgarity of

government policies in Arab Detroit and the limits of AD political inclusion and full

citizenship. These are the costs of the fit]! citizenship project, muddled and cloaked

behind the positive affirmations of AD political inclusion, behind voices empowered with

multicultural rhetoric as the new generation of Arab and Muslim Americans are

encouraged to rise up and deliver themselves from the margins of American society.

Conclusion

This chapter analyzes the everyday interactions and experiences of female
participants in an attempt to understand how the events of 9/ 11 have affected AD

residents’ everyday lives. By focusing on how the politics of 9/1 1 have affected the

 

personal lives of these women, I illustrate some of the costs of the full citizenship project.

In attempts to mediate government intervention in Arab Detroit, spokespersons account

144

for and censor recent immigrants in AD who appear exceedingly other and foreign. This
project of representation is an attempt to gain full citizenship rights, both multicultural
and civil, and it requires not only the censorship of “boaters” but also the effective
arbitration of government policies and actions that could be potentially devastating for
Arab Detroit’s image.

In this sense, the politics of 9/11 have made the process of representing Arab
Detroit the stuff of “personal things” for AD spokespersons, over what one is and is not
as an Arab American. To represent or speak on behalf of Arab Detroit is to fashion the
image of AD to one’s liking, softening extreme Arab identities for mainstream
consumption. Managing images of foreignness in AD thus becomes central to the full
citizenship project in order to gain multicultural acceptance in mainstream society.

This task becomes twice as difficult when we take into account the ambiguous
aims of government interests in AD, as depicted in the vignettes described in chapter 2.
That the government wishes to portray AD as both a model minority community and
simultaneously as the nation’s central focus in the domestic war on terror poses serious
conflicting implications for any sort of genuine political integration of Arab Detroit.
These conflicting implications can be seen in how AD spokespersons attempt to gain full,
genuine political incorporation by accounting for unassimilated AD residents and by
protecting communal civil rights.

Ironically, the identities that are being protected from civil rights infringements
are also the same identities that are being censored in order to protect AD’s image as a
model minority community. It is no wonder that these identities become the stuff of

spokesperson’s worries; they are the identities that are thought to fuel the fodder for

145

 

 

 

 

political stereotyping. They are also the identities that become symbolically sacrificed
for the perceived good of AD.

While these controversial identities are silenced in the full citizenship project,
they are not the only identities that suffer under the weight of an overt government
presence. As discussed in the last portion of this chapter, relatively mainstream Arab
Detroit residents are also affected by the politics of 9/11 and AD politics that attempt to
combat 9/11 rhetoric. These stories speak to additional costs of the full citizenship
project in which individuals who must conceal their Arab identity for personal and
professional reasons are barred from full AD membership. Incapable of embracing their
Arab identity in public, these individuals are often compelled to remove themselves from
Arab Detroit and the politics of representation in AD. By focusing on how the political
has intruded into the personal lives of AD residents and spokespersons, I emphasize what
is “beyond vulgarity” about politics in Arab Detroit post 9/11: the politicization of even
the most personal affairs and experiences.

Finally, I argue that this blurring of the political and the personal in the full
citizenship project is one of the project’s greatest costs; it enables spokespersons’ to
conceal from others and from themselves what are some of the greatest consequences of
the full citizenship project: the validation of ethnic intolerance in AD and the
perpetuation of negative stereotypes surrounding exceedingly foreign or “Arab”
identities. In spokespersons’ inability to distance full citizenship rhetoric from
hegemonic understandings of cultural and civil inclusion in the national community, they
unfortunately shape Arab Detroit’s identity around what this ethnic group is often

excluded for: perceived moral difference. This enables the politics of 9/11 and the war

146

 

 

 

on terror to define AD’s socio-politico worth to the national community. AD thus comes
to be valued by the government according to Arab and Muslim Americans ability to serve
as cultural experts in the war against terror rather than for Arab Detroiters outstanding
local achievements.

As Kareema relayed, this type of political activism is limiting; it does not allow
activists to truly question the basis of projects of political inclusion in AD. In the project
of full citizenship, spokespersons settle for surface and sanctioned forms of minority
inclusion in the national community in order to create a sense of normalcy in AD. Yet in

doing so, they silence some of the major injustices done against their community post

’9/11.

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Concluding Chapter

Seen against the backdrop of the empty list that is “America, ” “difference ”
itself marks the space of culture and is at once confined in a bounded space
on the margins and given license to “be itself” ~ Kathleen Stewart

In order to pass through the “torture gate” of American acceptance and into the
mainstream, ethnic communities often come to value their worth according to their
respected fiinction in the national community. Political minority communities
subsequently project these values and their worth into the national arena. This form of

entrance for minorities is based upon an inclusive disciplinary practice that is ultimately

 

rooted in distinction and difference. Minority groups are thus “accepted” on “their
terms” with all of their cultural difference included as long as the boundaries between
what makes “them” vs. “us” remains clear. These boundaries of distinction often quell
what numerous similarities there are between “minorities” and the “mainstream;” they
mask the numerous ways in which the nation’s minority populations are genuinely

integrated in the everyday happenings of American society.

Theoretical Deductions

This study provides several contributions to Arab American studies literature. It
focuses on Arab American spokespersons and the fiill citizenship project during a
particularly crucial time. Eight years past the events of 9/ 11 and approaching a new
presidential election, this thesis captures the full citizenship project at the end of the Bush
administration’s eight-year reign. In this sense, this thesis provides a glimpse of the filll

citizenship project right before a shift in national political rhetoric pertaining to U.S. —

148

 

Arab and Muslim relations.

I capture particulars about how eight-years of Bush administration politics,
namely the politics of fear fiJeled by the events of 9/1 1, affected Arab Detroit
representation. In this sense, this thesis analyzes how the full citizenship project rendered
visible the violence of the 9/11 backlash in the everyday actions and intimate sensibilities
of AD spokespersons and residents. This is the first study of its kind that addresses how
the politics of being and belonging in AD post 9//11 have unfolded amongst prominent
AD spokespersons networks.

Arab Detroit politics of representation speak to the disciplinary nature of projects
of ethnic representation in the United States. While 1 did not initially intend to discuss
issues of citizenship and crisis in this thesis, the interviews I collected beseeched me to
address the problematic nature of Arab American citizenship in Detroit and its
relationship to the events of 9/1 1. In order to address AD spokespersons’ relationships.
with the government, Ihad to look beyond federal force to the internal leveraging point
of inclusive discipline. It was at this point that I realized how important F oucauldian
theories of discipline would be to my work. Rather than look for overt forms of
discipline or state force in AD, I began to examine less discernible forms of discipline in
AD: disciplinary tactics of inclusion that feel good, empowering, and reassuring.

While I draw heavily from the theorists Bourdieu and Foucault, I also place equal
importance on analyzing participants’ feelings and senses in their narrations. In doing so,
I was able to understand what was personally pivotal for participants as they fashioned
AD identity for a post 9/11 America. Here I argued that AD identities are not fashioned

solely for an imagined outside viewer, but that they are also constructed intersubjectively

149

 

 

 

vis-a-vis other Americans and the state. As I began to explore participants’ ardent
affirmations and beliefs in the hegemonic nature of their projects of representation,
Bourdieu’s theory of practice, particularly his discussion of misrecognition, became more
central to the theoretical basis of this thesis. Both Bourdieu and Foucault’s theories
enabled me to move beyond surface understandings of how state power operates in AD.
However, neither scholars’ theories fully accounted for the complexity of the full
citizenship project.

I also draw heavily from Herzfeld, Ong, Shryock, Howell, Jamal, Davila,
Goodman and Mizrachi, and Creed in order to understand the politicized nature of ethnic
communal representation. These scholars’ works impelled me to look for the political in
the seemingly positive projects of AD spokespersons. They inspired me to rightfully
acknowledge when, where, and why ethnic intolerance was being tolerated and
perpetuated by participants.

My methodological choices and analytic framework thus produced a dynamic
analysis of a political ethnic group whose communal identity is being shaped according
to crises events. Pulling from scholars such as Ochs, Capps, Shuman, Hill, Irvine,
Bauman, and Briggs, I used narrative analysis to examine the ways in which the events of
9/11 continue to affect the politics of Arab American representation today. Here, I used
narrative analysis as a tool for understanding the shifting boundaries of being and
belonging in Arab Detroit. This framework enabled me to ask: How do AD
spokespersons narrate the conflict surrounding “Arabness” in America? Narrative theory
similarly permitted me to address issues of entitlement in participants’ narratives. By

addressing issues of entitlement and how participants frame themselves vis-a-vis other

150

 

 

 

 

Arab and non-Arab Americans, I was able to speak to shifting notions of ethnicity and
citizenship in Arab Detroit.

In many ways, this theoretical framework has allowed me to address numerous
crucial issues for the Arab American community in Detroit. Through my analysis of AD-
govemment relations and the full citizenship project, participants gain insight into the
overall implications of their work as AD spokespersons. Shryock, Lin, Howell, and
Jamal address some of the political costs and implications of AD-government relations,
such as the limits of AD political incorporation post 9/11. In this thesis, I expand upon
the costs of an AD politics of inclusion to address the personal costs of these projects as
well. In other words, I unearth new knowledge about the problematic nature of projects
of minority inclusion in the U.S.

Here I argue that the full citizenship project fiirther perpetuates the contradiction
surrounding issues of being and belonging in America as Arabs and Muslims, a space of
contradiction that is fortified in Arab Detroit because their value is based upon perceived
difference which is then displayed and promoted. The full citizenship project reinforces
AD difference based upon an imagined connection between their “Arabness” and
terrorism while it simultaneously reinforces their value as a politically strategic ethnic
community. It masks the injustices done to Arab and Muslim Americans. It legitimizes
ethnic intolerance in AD. It places AD residents at the whims of federal and military
recruiting projects, and it militarizes AD for the domestic war on terror. 1 hope that
participants will embrace the findings in this thesis and use them to assess the project of
full citizenship and AD politics of representation in general.

The type of analysis used in this thesis would also be beneficial for scholars

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studying ethnic groups that are targets of the state during times of crises. As I focus on a
population that has not been brought directly under state control, scholars who are
studying overt forms of state authority and government brutality may find this form of
analysis less useful than scholars studying inclusive disciplinary tactics of the state. If we
recall, my thesis question asks: if inclusive discipline is a necessary facet of the full
citizenship project, then what are the costs of projects of minority inclusion in the
national community?

If we look at this study in comparison to the surveillance and internment of

Japanese Americans by the state during World War II, we see that while there are

 

numerous parallels to be drawn between these case studies, there are glaring differences
as well. Unlike the Japanese American experience, Arab Americans have not been
placed into determent camps in the U.S. Thus while Arab and Muslim Americans are
heavily monitored by the state, they have not been physically contained and brought
under direct state control since the events of 9/1 1. Therefore, state forms of discipline in
Arab Detroit post 9/11 are starkly different than the tactics used on Japanese Americans
during WWII. Here, disciplinary tactics of the state must be inclusive of Arab and
Muslim American identities in order to gain influence over Arab and Muslim American
citizens.

In many ways, this thesis analyzes culture at interface with the state. I address the
boundaries of this relationship by looking at how this interaction operates at an
institutional level, as depicted in chapter 3, how it affects participants’ understandings of
their own Arabness and Americanness respectively, and how it shapes communal

interactions, tensions, and personal sentiments in AD. By analyzing this relationship at a

152

personal, political, and institutional, level, I directly address the multifarious costs of a
politicized ethnic representation for a minority population placed in a space of national
contradiction and ambiguity. I believe that this form of analysis would be easily
transferable for scholars studying ethnic groups targeted by the state.

I urge scholars, however, to prioritize socio-political historical contexts of the
target population. Due to the limitations of this study I was unable to include a level of
historical depth necessary for conducting a holistic study. Contextualizing narratives
within a local and national historical context may have show how the conflict
surrounding representation of Arab American identities stretches beyond the politics of
9/11 and into a more distant political past. For the purpose of this thesis, however, I
primarily focused on how participants’ narrations relayed to the events of 9/1 1. An
appropriate follow-up study would be to situate shifting forms of AD representation in
larger socio—political historical contexts, taking such events as the Iranian Revolution and
the Gulf War into account. Future studies may wish to place the issues discussed in this
thesis alongside local and national archives. The limited historical context of this study is

therefore the study’s main limitation.

Concluding Thoughts
By pushing for full citizenship rights and for a solidified Arab American identity,

spokespersons, in their calls for full civil incorporation, safeguard and simultaneously
relinquish—knowingly, semi-consciously, and subconsciously—some of the
community’s civil rights by engaging in rigorous dialogue and participation with federal
agencies. This is an unfortunate paradox of the fiill citizenship project. While

spokespersons have softened federal operations in AD by protecting Arab Detroit

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residents’ legal rights, they have also placed AD residents at the whims of federal and
military recruiting projects. This not only figures the government centrally in the
everyday lives of AD residents, but it also militarizes Arab Detroit into a zone of cultural
expertise ripe for recruitment for the war on terror. Arab Detroit’s value to the national
community is thus being redefined around what the area can provide to the nation during
this particular time of crisis rather than around the communities numerous political,
economic, and social contributions to the local area.

In the project of full citizenship, spokespersons’ settle for surface, sanctioned, and
overtly politicized forms of minority inclusion in the national community in order to
create a sense of normalcy in AD. Yet in doing so, they silence some of the major
injustices done against their community post 9/ 11 such as the pervasive monitoring of
residents at home and at work, the deportation, illegal detention, and interrogation of AD
residents, and the infiltration of federal agencies into the everyday lives and activities of
Arab Detroiters. These are the costs of the full citizenship project.

As a project that attempts to gain the full acceptance of Arab and Muslim
American people in mainstream American society, the contradictions inherent in the full
citizenship project could have potentially devastating affects for a community that simply

wants to be seen and recognized as American.

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APPENDICES

Introduction

 

I The quotes depicted above were not taken verbatim. They are rather an expressive literary style that I use
in an attempt to recreate the feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview depicted. As I mention in
the field notes above, my computer and additional research data were stolen in a petty theft the week prior
on the West side of Detroit. In my attempts to recreate the material I had lost, I quickly wrote down
impressions of the interviews that were conducted in the days directly prior to the theft. Due to the theft,
Kareema did not want me to audio record her interview. I therefore wrote an impression of her interview as
well and will continue to denote which “quotes” are paraphrased reenactments of the words exchanged in
the interviews lost. If quotations are used for the lost interviews, they will be denoted in endnotes as not a
direct quote but rather used for expressive literary style.

The narration above was taken from my field notes, recorded on 7/17/08. My field notes comment upon
an interview 1 had with Kareema earlier that day. I took the liberty to use my own narrative and poetic
license in the rendering of this account. I make no claim that this is an objective, linguistic account of our
meeting. I rather took narrative and poetic license to recreate the mood and tone of that interview.

There are spokespersons who represent both zones of Arab Detroit. These “zones” should not be viewed
as definitive in their cultural, religious, political, and economic markers, but rather as fairly distinct zones
that overlap and coexist in Arab Detroit. According to the DAAS survey, residents in both zones wish to be
better understood by society at large, want to be better represented, hope for more social integration and
tolerance of ethnic difference in AD, and think AD residents need to be more open to mainstream American
culture. While spokespersons have similar aspirations for AD, they may envision different avenues for
representation and often have competing reasons and/or understandings of Arabness. For more on this
topic see Shryock and Lin in “Arab American Identities in Question” in Citizenship and Crisis: Arab
Detroit After 9/11.

For more information on Arab American security in Detroit post 9/11, sec Howell and Jamal in “The
Aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks” in Citizenship and Crisis.

5 Here, I refer to first generation Arab Americans as those who were born in the United States. I do not
refer to immigrants as first generation Arab Americans, but rather refer to these participants simply as
immigrants. I thus consider the immigration line to proceed as follows: immigrant, first generation, second
generation, third generation, fourth generation, etc.

Social capital is defined by the authors as interracial socializing, intemeighborhood socializing, levels of
socializing with friends in the home, trust of the general population, frequency of religious practice, and
volunteerism and social participation in local organizations, clubs, and organizational meetings (2009, 172-
178)

7 Journalist Geneive Abdo, in Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America after 9/11, argues that the
events of 9/ 11 fostered amongst many “moderate” Muslims an “urgent need to embrace their beliefs and
establish Islamic identity as a unified community” (2006, 3).

8 Words italicized in the participants’ narrations are words I chose to stress as the ethnographer of this
thesis for my own analytic purposes. Additionally, in order to clarify what topic was being referenced in
narrative excerpts, use parenthetical inserts to make clear what issue the narrator is referencing. These
words are not the words of participants, but my own efforts to enhance the readers understanding of the
topic discussed.

9 For more on tellability, see Ochs and Capps in Living Narrative, pages 33-36 and Amy Shuman in Other
People 3' Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy, pages 12-17.

'0 Here I refer to Ochs and Capps depiction of experiences that are more difficult to discuss and relate than
others. Less tellable accounts are thus narrations in which narrators struggle to formulate a narrative
account that conveys the appropriate or desired interpretive frame for their experience while relaying the
complexities of this experience (Ochs and Capps, 2001).

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Chapter 1

I This is not a direct quote, but rather my own formulation of this participant’s words. As this interview’s
audio recording was stolen in a petty theft, 1 reconstructed the tone and content of the interview to the best
of my ability.

2 Howell and Jamal, in “Detroit Exceptionalism and the Limits of Political Incorporation” argue that Arab
Detroit faired particularly well, in comparison to other Arab and Muslim communities post 9/ l 1, due to the
areas history of political involvement, public service, prominent Arab American politicians, businessmen,
lawyers, and activists, and, most importantly, to the areas many firmly established Arab organizations that
provide a number of public services to the greater Metropolitan Detroit area such as ACCESS, the Arab
American and Chaldean Council (ACC), the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC),
American Arab Chamber of Commerce, and many more. Howell and Jamal argue that these networks
enabled prominent organizations and AD spokespersons affiliated with them to intervene in the
government’s law enforcement agencies numerous operations at work in AD post 9/1 I and engage state and
federal authorities in dialogue pertaining to their operations in Arab Detroit. The authors also note that this
engagement, despite its effectiveness in easing the implementation of harsh federal policies and actions in
Arab Detroit, could reframe Arab Detroit’s image around that of foreignness and threat.

For Arab Americans who consider themselves white and assimilated, they may come to define extreme
displays of Arabness as heritage and/or cultural tradition,2 depicting traditional practices as cultural
leftover baggage that will recede as recent immigrants assimilate (AANM Cultural Competency Workshop
field notes, 5/18/08). Affluent Arab Americans may depict their Arabness as ethnicity (Shryock, 2004), a
multicultural depiction of phenotypic and cultural differentiation from Anglo-Saxon society that allows one
to still claim whiteness if desired.
4 For more on Arab Detroit’s local prominence in the public, private, and political sectors, see Howell and
Jamal in “The Aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks” in Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11.
5 For more about how identities in Arab Detroit have been historically defined by crisis, see “Crisis and
Citizenship” by Baker and Shryock in Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11.

This process of representation is detailed at the institutional level in chapter 3.

7 For more information on this topic please see the film “Planet of the Arabs” and/or “Real Bad Arabs:
How Hollywood Vilifies a People.”
8 For more on the history of Arab American political identity formation Nabeel Abraham in “Anti-Arab
Racism and Violence in the United States” in The Development of Arab American Identity, Ron Stockton
in “Ethnic Archetypes and the Arab Image” in The Development of Arab American Identity, Jack Shaheen
in Real Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, and Andrew Shryock and Chih Lin in “Arab
American Identities in Question” in Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11.
9 The dialogue denoted in brackets are comments made as interjections in conversation. The brackets
attempt to replay the flow of conversation as well as the level of interjection of the bracketed text.
For more about the values and morals of Arab Americans, see Baker and Jamal in “Values and Cultural
Membership.”
ll ACCESS, Arab Detroit’s most prominent Arab American organization, received $4 million plus in the
months after the attacks (Shryock, 2004284). For more information on the funding of Arab American
organizations post 9/11 sec Shryock in, “In the Double Remoteness of Arab Detroit: Reflections on
Ethnography, Culture Work, and the Intimate Disciplines of Americanization” in OflStage/On Display:
Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture and Howell and Jamal in “Detroit Exceptionalism
and the Limits of Political Incorporation” in Being and belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11.
For more on the structure and language of racism, see Jane Hill in “The Everyday Language of White
Racism.”

Chapter 2

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l This narration was taken from a personal interview conducted in the summer of 2008. In order to conceal
this participant’s identity, they have not been given a pseudonym.
2 These initiatives were further legitimized with the passing of the PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001 and

the reauthorization of the Protect America Act, an extension to the PATRIOT Act, by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (F ISA) Amendments Act of 2008.

3 In the months that followed 9/11, President Bush proposed that citizens shop in order to fight terrorism.
According to Evelyn Alsultany, a wave of patriotic advertising appeared post 9/11 that attempted to sell
consumers on buying consolation in the wake of the attack. Patriotic advertising was used not only by
corporations but also by non-profits that similarly sought to “ ‘sell’ ideas about an imagined American
community and redefine American identity and citizenship” (Alsultany, 2007: 593). The American
government thus conflated consumerism with nationalism by defining good citizenship through capitalistic,
and subsequently anti-Arab, practices. Capitalist consumption thus became intricately anti-Arab,
essentializiing Arabs and Muslims as backwards and immoral. Through these discursive actions, the state
was able to reify its moral authority, justify state domestic and international actions, and to perpetuate the
national myth of an egalitarian, multicultural, and just United States.

For more on Orientalism, please see Edward Said in Orientalism.

5 Governmentality is a concept created by Michel Foucault in the later years of his life. Governmentality
can be understood as the practices or tactics employed by the state in attempts to produce loyal citizens.
These practices of governance include shaping the mentalities and common sense assumptions of the state’s
citizens. For more on governmentality see Foucault in “Governmentality.”

6 Dearbom and Dearbom Heights are often depicted in Arab Detroit as “the enclave.” Not only did I hear
this term used several times in my own research, but the term has also been proven to be widely used in a
recent survey, DAAS, conducted in AD by a number of researchers known as the Detroit Arab American
Study Team (Shryock and Lin, 2009: 271). For more inforrrration on the results of this research, please see
Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11.

7 This handout was produced by the U.S. Department of Treasury in collaboration with Dow Jones
International News.

8 This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

9 As Shryock and Lin explore in “The Limits of Citizenship,” legal citizenship does not equate to a
“publicly recognized sense of membership, or belonging, in America as Americans” (2009: 266). This is
particularly true for the Arab and Muslim American community whose cultural and moral values are often
pgrceived to be un-American and as potentially threatening to national security.

This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

I This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

'2 This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

'3 According to Kathleen Puckett and Terry Turchie, former FBI agents, the FBI has been the target of
numerous power hungry politicians who have fought and won legislative battles to diminish the F Bl’s
power. Since the FBI’s successful investigation into the Watergate scandal, the FBI has been seen as a
threatening investigative body for politicians looking to run Washington without interference. Politicians,

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Congress, and the Senate, have since successfully made the F Bl’s intelligence and criminal investigative
units less effective and incapable of monitoring the illegal actions of Washington politicians and
corporations. After 9/11, the Bush administration effectively altered the F Bl’s mission statement and
geared the FBI for a new era of 9/ 11 politics. Today, the FBI has become, more or less, an extension of the
CIA. The CIA is known for working closely with politicians in Washington and for abiding by the corrupt
politics and policies of White House administrations (Puckett and Turchie, 2008). For more on this topic
please see Homeland Insecurity: How Washington Politicians Have Made American Less Safe.

4 http://despardes.corril?p=6299.

'5 In order to protect the identity of this particular participant, I have not disclosed the name of the
company in reference.

'6 The narration detailed was taken from a personal interview conducted with Majid on 8/5/09.

'7 AD spokespersons regularly frame sacrifice as an emblem of Arab and Muslim American belonging in
the U.S. It is thought that by highlighting Arab and Muslim American military service that the non-Arab
public will recognize Arab and Muslim Americans as genuinely patriotic U.S. citizens. Discussions about
Arab and Muslim service in the military are often widely circulated in AD cultural education workshops in
order to reassert Arab and Muslim Americans’ loyalty to the state. I detail this further in chapter three as I
look at how the Cultural Competency Workshops at the Arab American National Museum frame military
service as the ultimate means for reaffirming Arab and Muslim American patriotism.

'8 For more about Arab Detroit residents’ identity perception see the DAAS findings in “The Limits of
Citizenship” by Shryock and Lin in Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11.

 

Chapter 3

I Joan Scott remarks on the importance of contextualizing and. explicating identity and narrative formation
in “The Evidence of Experience.” Scott argues that social scientists aught to attempt to “understand the
operations of the complex and changing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or
embraced, and which processes themselves are unremarked and indeed achieve their effect because they are
not noticed” (Scott, 1991: 792). Here, I argue that it is this type of contextualization and explication that
must shape our understanding of the identity “Arab American.”

2 Goodman and Mizrachi define techniques as “sets of practices through which individuals and groups are
conceived, shaped, acted on, and allowed to act. The notion of 'techniques' or 'technologies' in relation to
human capacities, experiences, and subjectivities is derived from Michel Foucault's (1994) understanding
of modern power as a form of practical reason, conceptualized as 'governmentality."’ (Goodman and
Mizrachi, 2008: 96-97).

3 Geoffrey White argues that personal narratives are formative in the creation of national subjectivity as
they can emotionalize dominant memories and also create space for alternative ways of remembering the
past.

In Das and Das's piece “How the Body Speaks” in Subjectivity, they show how a Western medical lexicon
affects ill Indian participants' abilities to articulate and understand their illness. Here, they attempt to
authorize what the real cause of their sickness is and in doing so try to take control of their bodily and
personal experience.

For more on notions of U.S. Victimization and innocence post September 11, see Marita Sturken in
Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero.

Marita Sturken argues in her work Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from
Oklahoma City to Ground Zero, that kitsch consumerism surrounding national days of mourning and
violence perpetuates a type of tourist mentality that does not critically engage events of national violence.
Sturken points out that kitsch is highly tied to political culture for it dictates certain emotional responses
and registers (Sturken, 2007: 21). “Kitsch does not emerge in a political vacuum; rather, it responds to
particular kinds of historical events and indicates particular kinds of political acquiescence” (Sturken,
20007: 22). In this vain, Sturken asks “What does the American dependence on kitsch consumer culture

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ultimately tell us about American national identity, and how does the deeply ingrained belief in American
innocence shape the American worldview?” (Sturken, 2007: 34).

For more on illegal government activity post 9/11, sec Sally Howell and Andrew Shryock in “Cracking
Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America's 'War on Terror."’

Fogelson, in “Ethnohistory of Events and Nonevents,” inquires into the overall lack of “authenticated
history” amongst Indian populations. Within this framework he seeks to identify seeming “events” vs.
“nonevents.” Through this process he comes to identify the nonevent as that which is imaged, epitomized,
latent, and traumatic; each of these nonevents do not actually occur in Fogelson's theory for they are
relegated to realms of that which historians cannot access either due to their ephemeral quality or their
inability to be expressed. The nonevent is that which in many ways is historically unknowable.

For more on the American culture of comfort, see Marita Sturken in Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch,
and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero.

0 Controversial Arab Ameircans in AD are discussed at length in the 4‘h chapter, “Accounting for
Difference in Arab Detroit.” In this chapter, I look at why these identities are controversial in AD and how
these persons confound the ethnic American uniform, Arab American.

11 . . . . .
For more on the paradox of Western ethics see Joseba Zulaika rn Witness and Memory: The Discourse of
Trauma, “Excessive Witnessing: The Ethical as Temptation.”

Chapter 4

I The hijab is a head covering worn by Muslim women. The term also refers to general modest forms of
dress.

2 In “New Images of Arab Detroit: Seeing Otherness and Identity through the Lens of September 11,”
Andrew Shryock discusses how the events of 9/ ll sparked an elevated use of other terminology in Arab
Detroit. Residents in Dearbom began to increasingly refer to their neighborhoods as “enclaves” and/or
“ghettos” (Shryock, 2002: 917). While the nation and popular media was focusing on Arab Detroit as a
potential domestic terrorist threat, Arab Detroit spokespersons were attempting to mediate this
“uncomprehending eye of the American mainstream” in order to conceal images of extreme foreignness in
Arab Detroit (Shryock, 2002: 918). This process of mediation is still underway today. For more on this
topic, please see Andrew Shryock in the American Anthropologist, volume 104, number 3, 2002.

Reported speech is a linguistic anthropological term that refers to how a narrator will use other’s speech
in the rendering of her own story. In this sense, reported speech are those words which the narrator relays
that are not her own, but that which the narrator frames herself against in attempts to situate her own
opinion on political, social, economic, cultural, religious, and moral issues. In other words, reported speech
is the shaping of oneself vis—a-vis the telling of others words. Here I draw from linguistic Anthropologists
such as Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, Charles Briggs and Richard Bauman, Jane Hill and Judith Irvine as
well as F olklorist, Anthropologist and Literary scholar, Amy Shuman.

4 The interview depicted above was conducted in person on 8/13/08 in Northville Michigan with Janan.

5 In Living Narrative, Ochs and Capps describe how moral stance is conveyed in everyday conversations as
a means for questioning “existing moral horizons” and determining new moral truths (2001: 102). Ochs
and Capps argue that the main method in which morality is conveyed through individual narrative is by the
narrator’s “focus on the unexpected turn of affairs, hence the reinforcement of what is normative and
valued” (2001 : 102).

6 While terror related discourse has been naturalized in political nomenclature, it has, as Janan’s story
relays, not been placed outside the boundaries of ideological conviction, enabling Janan and others to
confront such beliefs as seen fit. In other words, terror related discourse that posits an innate connection
between terror related activities and Muslims and Arabs is not perceived to be as neutral discussion, it has
not been naturalized in the everyday as common sense understanding (Fairclough, 2001). Janan may
therefore confront those who hold this ideological stance without sever recourse.

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7 Here I refer to Sigmund Freud’s depiction of the uncanny in which something may seem familiar and yet
strange at the same time, creating cognitive dissonance for the experiencing individual.
8 The interview depicted above was conducted on 8/13/08 in Northville Michigan with Janan.

For more on theories pertaining to the national imagined community, see Ben Anderson in Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.

‘0 Norman Fairclough, in his book Language and Power, provides analytical tools for the academic lay
person so that she may begin to unpack everyday assumptions embedded in structures of discourse and
relate them to dominating social ideologies. Throughout Fairclough’s book, he looks at how ideologies are
embedded in discourse and how these ideologies are subsequently understood as matters of common
sense—what he calls “common sense in the service of power” (Fairclough, 64: 2001). In chapter 4,
“Discourse, Common Sense and Ideology”, Fairclough relates Bourdieu’s misrecognition of the arbitrary
nature of legitimized power to that of his term naturalization and the creation of ‘common sense’ or
‘common sense assumptions’ in society.

H My analysis here refers to a text displayed alongside an art piece at the Arab American National
Museum. The text states: This room includes two large walls...the walls show historical and more recent
stereotypical depictions, while the video presents a series of street interviews. On the opposite side of the
room images of the real, everyday people whom negative images aim to degrade are portrayed, along with
a collage of illustrations showing Arabs and Arab Americans contemplating their selflimage as they
actively take charge of establishing a positive, self-determined identity in an intensity of activity and
creativity (Arab American National Museum Text).

'2 This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that 1 use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

4 This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

'5 This is not a direct quote, but rather my own depiction of this participant’s words. I attempted to
transcribe the words as true to their spoken form as possible. This is not an attempt to replicate objective
linguistic transcription, but it is rather an expressive literary style that I use in an attempt to recreate the
feeling, tone, and mood of the particular interview/meeting depicted.

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