Young Arab Americans read their lives through the pages of American history.

Evidence

What I have found is that young Arab Americans understand both the adversities they face and the opportunities they have with an enviable maturity. They have a keen awareness about their lives, an acute kind of double consciousness that comprehends the widening gap between how they see themselves and how they are seen by the culture at large. They live with their multiple identities and are able to draw connections to the struggles others have faced in our American past. These young men and women have been raised by immigrant parents and educated in a post-civil-rights-era America. They bring with them a deep, sometimes firsthand, understanding of the conflicts raging in the Middle East and at the same time are well versed in the recurring battles for equality in the United States. They often draw lessons from this past to their own lives, reading themselves through the pages of American history. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 60

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the double consciousness concept from W.E.B. Du Bois, which Bayoumi explicitly invokes.