The last fifty years has been awash with a misunderstanding between Arabs and Westerners. The problem has mostly arisen out of conflicts of cultures, religion, and resources and in some cases ignorance. In this essay, I focus on highlighting mechanisms that could be helpful in improving relationships between Arabs and Americans in the United States. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides a definition of an Arab as someone who is “ a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula who speaks Arabic as the primary language. Arabs are Afro-Asiatic people and they populate Northern Africa and Southern Asia (Merriam-Webster, 2009). Schwartz, (1999) reported that Arabic territory spans from Morocco in North West Africa to Yemen in Eastern Arabic Peninsula. The United Nations lists twenty-one Arab countries and territories including the Palestine. While Arabs live in varying countries and territories, they are bound by one common culture, language, and identity.
While the term “Arab” is both linguistic and cultural (Al-Hazza & Lucking, 2007), Arabs in America are distinct in several ways. In the United States, Arab Americans are divided on the basis of race, social classes, language, extent of westernization and political opinions (Hassan, 2004). In America, Arabs are challenged with a stigma of perception arising from terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and racism. In the United States, 90 percent of Arab immigrants were Christians who flew the Arabian countries on the basis of religious intolerance, majority of immigrants in the recent past have been Muslims (Haddad, 1994).
Perhaps the biggest challenge to the Arabian course in North America accrued from the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Pentagon. The American Arabs have been target of discrimination since the American public has constantly associated terrorism with Islam. Accordingly, most American people tease Arabs for being terrorists or are denied jobs for fear of harming American citizens. This arguably the biggest challenge for Arab immigration in North America. This rampant discrimination has often led to psychological problems of self-esteem or radicalization. Addressing this problem requires that Arab population in America to come out in the media, and all channels condemning terrorism and also engaging in the army, sports, and all other events that give America honor and integrity.
Another challenge faced by Arab Americans arises from personal identity crisis. In the Western society, there is a greater influence on the role of the individual on the society. On the other hand, the Arab culture places emphasis on family loyalty and extended community engagement. The children of Arab immigrants in America often have a problem finding a balance between the two very distinct aspects of the cultures. In the light of the common problems, it is important that solutions are realized.
In my view, the problem is having a global mindset on the way things work. Cultural understanding is an important facet. When student go to school, they bring not only their physical bodies, but also physical, emotional, and cognitive differences. Introduction of multicultural literature in school would be the first step towards the embracing of Arabs in America. If the students learn that Arabs are also regular people instead of having the belief that Arabs are potential terrorists, there would be more realized.
Griffin and Moorhead, authors of Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior, defined workforce diversity as the similarities and differences in such characteristics as age, gender, ethnic heritage, physical abilities and disabilities, race, and sexual orientation among the employees of organizations. Globalization presents opportunity for companies to realize diversity at work. Workforce diversity has become an increasingly important issue in the last few years as employees, managers, consultants, and the government finally recognizes that valuing diversity only benefits the workplace and when a workplace does discriminate, an issue arises. Today’s workforce in America is a variety of different races, ages, genders, ethnic groups, religions, and lifestyles. As a manager for a luxury brand that is represented worldwide, it is becoming a key task in the job to ensure that there is no discrimination and to help guide the variety of different people in the organization in a way that each of their individual talents are maximized in order to improve the organization. Diversity in the workplace can bring a competitive advantage to and organization. If not, however, the work environment can become harsh, uncomfortable and unwelcoming, not only to employees, but customers as well.
It is important to know that while being a global citizen, culture still stands out to be greatest impediment to global harmony. In many respects, globalization has come to mean that buying everything that is pro western. So much so, that globalization heavily markets and promotes western ideas while the ideas from “others” are marginalized. It is interesting even to point out that the paradigms that promote these ideas of globalization are not the same. In the case of the United States, the biggest struggle is the misconception of Arabs as people with many ills or terrorists. In order to solve this, there must be a strong and genuine desire on the part of all the stakeholders. If there is not such commitment, the pursuit of harmony would be hard to realize.
Even though Anthropologists have argued that there is nothing like race but it will take time before people realize this and practice it in life. This is because the idea of race is so much complex and associated with pride which the dominant people are not ready to loose for the sake of equality; this means that the minority should be given more power; money and influence which will make them develop the self esteem and confidence to fight this social evil. The dominant people will also respect them because of the status they have achieved in the society. Scholars of multiculturism realize that it will take a long time for equality to be realized.
The world today is homogenous in culture; almost every country in the world is multiethnic, multiracial and multilingual. The need for cultural and racial enlightenment is imminent yet little is done to correct the situation in this world full of ethnophaulism and discrimination. Bad words such as” nigger”, “bitch and redskin are still being used and no action is being taken. In US jails, people of different races are not mixed together because of fear of violence. What is this? Who can save mankind from this evil? Most people acknowledge this racial conflict that exists in the world but they remain dumfounded because of nothingness, the feeling that they can do nothing! It is our time to stand up.
Work Cited
Al-Hazza & Lucking. The Minority Suspicion:Arab American. Multicultural Review, 14 (3), 32-28, 2005. print
Schwartz, M. W. Introduction: The Arab immigrant experience. In M. W. Suleiman (Ed.), Arabs in America (pp. 1–25). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1999.
Merriam Webster Online. Semitic. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.merriam-webster.com. 2009.
