Arab-Americans 2000

  Arab-Americans have now had two decades in which they made a serious effort to organize themselves on a national basis so thatthey could come up on the radar screen of politicians, policy makers, movie moguls, and media pundits

As Arab-Americans approach the end of these second millennium, over 100 years of presence in the United States and almost forty years of organized Arab-American political and informational activity in American society, it is important to pause and reflect on what we as a community can expect in the new century and beyond.
     

     I think that we will, by necessity, see a new generation of leaders emerging who will provide the planning, direction and leadership for
this community. It will be a leadership that has more familiarity and comfort
with all the enormous technological advances that have taken place with
regard to information and communication. It will be better able to create
national networking between the Arab-American society and other segments of American society.
   

      This means change on local and national levels. On the local level, we have the development of social service agencies to provide education and services
to a burgeoning Arab immigrant community in cities like New York, Detroit,
Cleveland, and Chicago. On the national level, we find specialized
Arab-American organizations seeking to determine the ways they can more
effectively cooperate and strategize in the achievement of common goals.
Arab-Americans have now had two decades in which they made a serious
effort to organize themselves on a national basis so that they could emerge
on the radar screen of politicians, policy makers, movie moguls, and media
pundits. They have amassed a wealth of experience through which they can
winnow and separate policies and programs that have failed from those that
were successful. And, it is this process that will help to refine a more responsive,
effective and enabling Arab-American presence.
   

      The time is not far off when the first Muslim-American will gain prominence
on the national political scene as either an elected or appointed official.
Of course, the unrelenting onslaught by sectors of the local and federal
governments such as the Justice Department and Immigration Service will
mean that Arab-Americans will continue to be called upon to expend
considerable resources and energy in defending themselves rather than
in purely proactive programs. The recent decision of the U.S. Supreme
Court in ADC v. Reno, stripping non-immigrant aliens in the U.S. of First
Amendment rights, is a case in point. Another is the two dozen cases
around the U.S. in which the INS is using secret evidence to deny persons
of immigration law benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled.
   

      To the extent that Arab-Americans are forced to engage in these
defensive actions, they are unable to mount many of the more positive
programs that they would like. What is important, however, is that
with each battle we wage, new consciousness is raised, new alliances
formed and new outreach achieved. This is no small benefit. I believe
that the emerging coordination and cooperation between Arab-American
and Muslim-American organizations is an important and potentially
productive development. Certainly, Muslim-American political
consciousness and activity in the U.S. has been on the increase over
the past decade and in some respects parallels that of the Arab-American
community.
    

     Arab-Americans must develop positions on a wide range of pressing
social and political issues that confront American society as a whole.
Perhaps nothing is more important in this regard than the corrupting
influence of money in American electoral politics. No other factor has
shut out the voice of so many small segments of our society as this. In
short, Arab-Americans, while gaining in greater self-identity and group
cohesiveness, must also become more integrated into the ongoing battles
for social, political and economic justice in American society.
   

      Of course, projections of U.S. military, economic and political power
abroad, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, will impact our
work and position. Such projections of U.S. power to the detriment of 

people in the Arab world cannot but evoke anger and frustration among Arab-Americans.

     When we see our own government pursuing policies that are themselves
producers of terrorism and violence which in turn comes back to haunt us
in the images of Arab or Muslim as terrorists, we cannot but feel
marginalized and uncounted. It is at just this juncture when the anger and
frustration must be fashioned into a plan of action in which we can
effectively register our disgust and bring a halt to the genocide by sanction
which has been the weapon of American choice against Iraq. 

Beyond this, in the new century, America is changing from a white 

Anglo-Saxon dominated culture to one in which the large influx of people, particularly Latinos, will have political ramifications that will reflect on 

all minorities. It is when the institutions of power in the society truly reflect

 the actual composition that we will have an opportunity for an opening 

beyond White House and State Department photo-ops.

** Abdeen Jabara is an attorney practicing in New York City
and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. (ADC), Washington, DC

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