Some Arab-Americans change their names and pass as Latino to escape stigma.

Evidence

But the loudest silence in the book concerns those young Arabs, a minority, who have abandoned their ethnic roots or religion out of either shame or fear or both. They have changed their names and try to pass as other-than-Arab—Latinos most often. Perhaps it is fitting that “The Biography of the Ex-Arab Man or Woman” is present here only by its absence. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 58

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: the undocumented archive of ‘ex-Arab’ passing as Latino, and the ironic solidarity between two communities sharing a common immigrant/racialized experience.
• STORYSTEM: The figure of the ex-Arab passing as Latino is a quietly powerful narrative seed for a character story about identity erasure and chosen ethnic survival.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why Latinos most often, and what does the choice of that particular passing identity reveal about the racial hierarchy of stigma in America?