Targeting Arab Americans

I stopped in a Conoco gas station in Rapid City, South Dakota, not long after President Bush saved America from Saddam Hussein's hordes. Hanging on the wall was a photocopy of a poster that contained a silhouette of an Arab sitting on a camel, both encircled by a target. Above this picture were the words, "I'D FLY TEN THOUSAND MILES TO SMOKE A CAMEL."

Not wanting to cause trouble, I merely told the attendant that the poster was both demeaning and dangerous to people of Arab descent. It was obvious that mine was the first negative reaction he'd had to the poster, because all that came from his mouth was something sounding like the famous Jackie Gleason dodge, "Ahumma, humma, humma, humma."

Somehow it seems trivial to talk about this kind of an insult when all around me I see the daily desperation of American Indians, of American blacks and others whose lives are on the line each day when they wake up. But Arab Americans have been taking their turn as a target for some years now, and it is in fact becoming much more dangerous.

In 1985, Alex Odeh, a Palestinian American, was murdered by what the FBI termed "Jewish extremists" in Santa Ana, California. The murder was committed during the height of the publicity surrounding the Achille Lauro hijacking. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's (ADC) violence log confirms that each time a crisis bubbles up in the Middle East, something bad happens to Arab Americans here in the United States.

During George Bush's war against Iraq, a great many people who think of themselves as "pure" Americans had great difficulty distinguishing their Arab neighbors from Saddam Hussein. That resulted in drive-by shootings at Arabs in Detroit; there were mosques defaced; and Arab-owned grocery stores were vandalized. Countless anonymous mail and telephone threats were directed against law-abiding Arab Americans, most of whom strongly disapproved of the invasion of Kuwait.

And the FBI made its contribution to our national hysteria both by announcing, then conducting, a nationwide "interview" program designed to root out the terrorists among the Arab-American population. I've recently seen statements by German Americans who, in 1941, were first interviewed, then taken away to be jailed along with Japanese American "detainees."

The media, for a change, was quite good on the issue of Arab-bashing. I saw any number of editorials from all around the country denouncing anti-Arab racism, in some cases perhaps the result of the sense of guilt felt by the editorial writers who behaved shamefully on the question of the Gulf war itself.

BUT AS AMERICAN BLACKS and American Jews and other ethnic minorities know, it takes more than a few editorials to remove the sting out of being a minority in America. To push ethnic racism back down as far under the surface as is possible really requires a major, concentrated effort by all opinion makers, including the president. That, however, is a comforting sight we have not yet seen.

President Bush did make one statement early on, back when Desert Storm was still Desert Shield, asking people not to beat up on decent, hard-working Arab Americans. But comparatively, he made a much bigger fuss about not eating broccoli. In any event, his words were immediately forgotten when he decided on the demonization of Saddam Hussein. That demonization, of course, not only spilled over to Americans of Arab descent, but it also allowed his bombers to incinerate without serious complaint the 100,000 or so people unfortunate enough to have been born Iraqi.

There seemed to be a direct correlation between the times Bush compared Saddam to Hitler, increased bombing of civilian areas in Iraq, and violent attacks against Arab Americans. (It may have been that general who looks like Willard Scott, or perhaps a different one, who, during a press briefing, wondered aloud what on earth all those Iraqi civilians were doing inside the "command and control center" the Air Force had just finished pulverizing.)

Racism against Arab Americans is bad enough, but of what it is symptomatic is a much more serious thing. Many of the same people who this month are seeking to "smoke" Arabs may very well next month want to do the same to Jews, or blacks, or Irish, or Koreans, or whatever.

I've never forgotten the words of Martin Niemoller in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, who said that he didn't speak up when they came after the Jews, because he wasn't a Jew; and he didn't speak up when they came after the trade unionists, or the Catholics. Then they came after him, and no one was left to speak up.

Racially speaking, America is not yet out of the woods, which means that none of us are so safe that we should remain silent about what is happening to our neighbors.

James G. Abourezk was founder and chair of the Washington, DC-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the author of Advise and Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate (Lawrence Hill Books, 1989) when this article appeared.