I Want To Grieve Like Everyone Else
By: Mike Enayah/Ambassador Blogger
As I do every morning, I pick up my phone to check any missed messages, and glance at some news feeds.
Last Monday I was horrified by the news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas. As I was reading the details of the attack, my heart sank as any red-blooded American. Honestly, I have to take it back my heart sank twice as deep as most red-blooded Americans, once for the victims and their loved ones, and twice while waiting for someone to draw a link between the shooter and one of the latest terror groups with an Arabic sounding name.
Grieving over any act of mass violence for Arab Americans is compounded as it goes through a unique process. It is always mixed with fear and apprehension over an event that they had nothing to do with and muzzled by the aura of suspicion.
Arab Americans are used to the onslaught of suspicion and deliberate dehumanization that follows an act of violence and continues until everyone is certain that the crime was committed by a good old lone wolf, a man who suffers from mental or psychological issues, and not by a darker skin terrorist with an Arabic sounding name and of Muslim faith.
It is unfair that Arab Americans are always expected to be apologetic for acts of violence committed in the name of one cause or another.
Arab Americans understand that Arabs are the main victims of violence in the world perpetrated by forces from the outside and from within. Asking or expecting the victims to explain or apologize for the perpetrators has such devastating effect on the personal and collective self-esteem.
As we have almost stopped describing the Irish as drunks, Italians as criminals, Polish stupid, … We have transferred these discrepancies to more recent immigrants because the man who holds the highest office in the country is sick of “ political correctness”, and most legislators are looking for what divides us.
Arab Americans are not the first or only immigrant group to be persecuted but hopefully, it will be the last as we evolve as one nation. The fabric of the American society can only be great again by embracing all Americans with equal respect and justice.
Yes, I want to grieve like everyone else.