Ambiguous ethnic appearance blurs Arab and Hispanic identities in mixed neighborhoods

Evidence

The place was empty except for two young Latina women in tight jeans, with pierced belly buttons and glittered fingernails. They sat with small coffees and laughed into their cell phones for hours. I ordered a large coffee and waited for Akram while a group of young Hispanic men walked in noisily. Akram followed shortly afterward and salaamed one of them before sitting down. “He’s my cousin,” Akram told me, a drag racer who had gotten into trouble for his driving exploits in the past. I thought he was Hispanic, I said, and we laughed, since Akram is always kidding around with me about how I look South Asian and he looks Jewish. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 482

Categorization

• CANDY: The running joke that Bayoumi looks South Asian and Akram looks Jewish, plus the Hispanic cousin of the Egyptian Arab, is a light conversational fact.
• SEED: The permeability of ethnic categories in Brooklyn — where an Arab’s cousin can read as Hispanic — could anchor an essay on how identity categories fail under proximity.