The Whitewashing of Arab Identity
Recently, I paid a visit to the Arab American National Museum. Initially, I was extremely excited — as a Sudanese American, I’m not used to seeing my identity represented positively anywhere. I had a few pre-existent apprehensions: there is a strong history of marginalization of Black Arabs and of course racism exists in the Arab world, just as it exists all over the world. So, I knew there was a good chance that the Sudanese experience wouldn’t be represented in the museum and, in any case, I wasn’t even sure whether or not I self-identified as an Arab.
The museum started off with a map of the 22 countries included in the Arab League. Our guide made much of the fact that there were some non-stereotypically Arab countries included, such as Sudan and Somalia.
Unfortunately, this mention of Black Arabs was one of very few in the museum. We watched a video which pretended to show the full spectrum of Arab Americans. The only mention of Black Arabs? An out-of-context clip of a Sudanese wedding, presented without commentary. Every one else was both very white and very enthusiastically American.
The erasure of Africans in the museum is part of the much larger whitewashing that exists in our communities. All of the pictures displayed also showed Arabs who were conventionally attractive by Western standards, women done up like Hollywood bombshells, perfect white skin and, for the most part, all Western dress.
Source: muslimgirl.net