Economic pressure outweighs political conscience in Arab American career choices

Evidence

In the 1990s, the Arab/Muslim population of Michigan experienced steady increases in political incorporation, even as the United States waged war against Iraq, imposed brutal sanctions on that country, and occasionally lobbed rockets at al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Institutions and events now taken as evidence of Arab/Muslim cultural acceptance—for instance, the Arab American National Museum and the Dearborn Arab International Festival—have their origins in the mid-1990s, when Arab American organizations reaped the benefits of increased publicand private-sector funding. The latter came in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) worked out a tentative peace agreement and Arabs living in the United States were brought into the larger geopolitical control mechanism known as “the peace process.” Throughout the 1990s, America’s generalized antipathy toward its own Arab/Muslim citizens gave way to Ramadan breakfasts in the White House and brazen attempts by US presidential candidates to woo Michigan’s Arab and Muslim votes. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Arab American political inclusion was purchased as geopolitics demanded — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688; Second-generation Arab American activists reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives against Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self. — Arabs in America, Understanding and Articulating their ‘Arabness’; Arab-owned groceries serve as stepping stones up America’s economic ladder

Broader Connections

• Arab American political inclusion was purchased as geopolitics demanded #complicates (0.72) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688