Celebrating Heritage and Confronting Hate

For years Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month has been an opportunity for us to lift up and celebrate the many contributions of AAPI individuals and communities to our society, and to our country. But this year, instead of celebrating, many Asian Americans are living with a sense of fear.

According to a new study, attacks against Asians in 16 of the largest cities and counties across the United States increased 164 percent in the first three months of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2020. In March, eight people were killed in the Atlanta area, six of whom were Asian women; and in April eight people were killed at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis, four of whom were members of the local Sikh community.

Each of these mass shootings (as well as those in so many other cities and towns across America this year alone) is horrific, and while investigations are ongoing to determine motives in Atlanta and Indianapolis, this deadly violence heightens the alarm many Asian Americans feel.

Of course, it hits close to home when acts of bias and hate affect so many members of your community. But these terrible, deadly acts can also impact us in unexpectedly personal ways.

Among those murdered in the Indianapolis mass shooting were women and men as young as 19 and as old as 74. Two of the victims, Jasvinder Kaur and Amarjit Kaur Sekhon, not only shared my Sikh faith and heritage: after they were killed, I learned they were distant relatives.

Jasvinder Kaur was a mother of two. Amarjit Kaur Sekhon was a mother and the primary breadwinner of her family. They were related by marriage, meaning that, tragically, this extended family lost two members to the violence.

Their loss, and the lives of those we’ve lost in all these senseless acts of violence, reminds us that acts of bias and hate have real and terrible consequences; for the victims, and for all who are touched by them, however remotely. These acts also remind us that across the U.S. strong action is needed.

There are some encouraging signs at the national level. After taking office the Biden-Harris administration issued an Executive Order condemning racism and intolerance against Asian-Americans, and in April the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan anti-Asian hate crimes bill.

But there is only so much the federal government can do. We lack accurate data to assess the problem nationally, and because local law enforcement deals with the vast majority of incidents, most of the information about the problem is scattered and decentralized. Annual FBI reporting is widely known to undercount hate crimes, because statistics are based on voluntary surveys sent to law enforcement agencies across the country. And these statistics only account for reported hate crimes; they exclude bias incidents, such as harassment.

This is where state governments can, and must, step in to bridge the gaps. In New Jersey, we’ve developed a strategy that other states can draw from to address hate and extremism.

First, uniquely, New Jersey law requires all state, county, and local law enforcement agencies to report incidents of bias and hate to the uniform crime reporting system maintained by our State Police. Using this comprehensive data set, we release annual as well as monthly reports detailing bias incidents by location, type of crime, and who was targeted.

We just released preliminary data on bias incidents reported in 2020, so we know that, unfortunately, over the past four years we’ve had year-over-year increases in the number of reported incidents in our state, including incidents against people of Asian descent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of anti-Asian bias incidents hovered between 15 and 20 each year, but in 2019, it jumped to 39. And in 2020 the number of anti-Asian incidents rose to 71, an 82 percent increase from the prior year.

The data both inform and underscore the importance of a second step we’ve taken: understanding and addressing the causes of hate and bias among children and young adults. One critical issue our data revealed is that more than half of all known bias offenders in New Jersey in 2019 were age 25 or younger, and nearly half of that group consisted of young people age 17 or under. In response, Governor Phil Murphy created the interagency New Jersey’s Youth Bias Task Force to generate solutions to root out discrimination and hate among young people.

The Task Force’s report offers more than two dozen recommendations on ways to reach young people before they become radicalized by hateful rhetoric and ideologies. These include incorporating anti-racism coursework into our schools’ curricula, and reforming New Jersey’s hate crime laws to make them among the toughest in the nation.

Third, we need look no further than the assault on the Capitol Building to see that comments lead to conduct, and how quickly and dangerously hateful rhetoric is amplified and spread online. This is why we’ve been working to hold social media companies accountable for their role in propagating hate, urging social media platforms like Facebook to adjust their recommendation algorithms that make it easier to share and promote extreme content—and stop providing community to bigots and violent conspiracy theorists.

The fourth aspect of our strategy involves innovation, making it easier for residents, especially victims, to report incidents in their communities. In November, we launched an online portal, bias.njcivilrights.gov, which offers a simple way to report bias incidents anywhere, anytime.

There is much more to be done, and our efforts to understand and prevent hate and the violence that often accompanies it continue. We invite other states, and the federal government, to collaborate with us, and borrow pages from our data-driven playbook. In doing so, we can return again to celebrating the diverse cultures and heritages that comprise who we are as a nation, without grief and fear.

Gurbir S. Grewal is New Jersey’s Attorney General. Follow the AG's office on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube @newjerseyoag.

 

When corporations deceive and cheat workers, consumer laws should be used to protect workers

A janitorial company lures low-wage, immigrant workers to become “franchisees,” offering the promise of small business ownership and steady income. An online food delivery company provides a place on the app for customers to tip workers. A training program for jobseekers promises a position at the end of the costly course.

But in reality, the franchisees can barely survive, the company keeps the tips, the training is bogus, and the promised job is nonexistent.

Some public enforcement agencies (and even private lawyers) have recently attacked corporate misconduct of this sort by enforcing laws traditionally used to protect consumers in order to address unfair and deceptive labor market practices that target working people, often immigrants and people of color. More enforcement agencies and lawyers should follow their lead. Public enforcement agencies that focus on enforcing consumer protections, including federal agencies, attorneys general, and state and local consumer offices, should take an expansive view of their mission, and take action to protect worker-consumers in their often-complex relations with large corporations that use abusive and predatory practices.

A few recent cases provide examples of how this can be done.

Earlier this month, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson used consumer fraud laws to sue National Maintenance Contractors, a janitorial company that, according to the complaint, exploited immigrant workers by selling them franchises that seemed to offer the opportunity to become business owners, but in fact left workers making subminimum wages and paying grossly excessive fees.

Last year, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine recovered $2.5 million from DoorDash, including $1.5 million to be distributed to workers. His office had filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against the company based on misrepresentations to consumers about how their tips would be used. DoorDash effectively used consumer tips to satisfy its own promised payments to workers, a practice that was deceptive and misleading to customers, who intended tips to increase worker pay.

Along similar lines, in 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced an eye-popping $61.7 million settlement involving Amazon Flex for its handling of tips meant for delivery drivers. The enforcement theory in this case was also that Amazon was engaging in “unfair or deceptive” practices, this time directed at workers, because of the assurances that Amazon had made to workers that they would receive all their tips.

In the above cases, there was also an argument that the workers were misclassified as “independent contractors” or franchisees, and should have been employees entitled to minimum wage, overtime, and of course, all of their tips. (In fact, enforcement agencies have brought employment law challenges against platform companies: the attorneys general of California and Massachusetts sued Uber and Lyft; the San Francisco and Los Angeles district attorneys sued the platform housecleaning company Handy, and the San Diego City Attorney sued grocery delivery company Instacart.) While use of consumer laws to protect workers does not address misclassification directly, it does allow public enforcement agencies to obtain relatively swift relief for basic consumer protection violations that cause workers substantial harm: DoorDash and Amazon deceived workers and consumers about tips, and National Maintenance Contractors preyed on workers who were also prospective franchise purchasers by convincing them to buy a predatory product.

Another example relates to noncompete agreements. In 2017, the Illinois Attorney General sued a check-cashing company based on its inappropriate use of provisions preventing employees from getting a job with a competitor. These “noncompete” agreements, increasingly used in a wide range of workplaces, have been shown to restrain workers’ job mobility and suppress wages, and many states are now passing laws to prevent their abuse. The Illinois AG’s lawsuit opposed these noncompetes on several grounds, including under consumer fraud laws at the core of the AG office’s enforcement authority. The complaint asserts that by requiring legally unenforceable noncompetes of low-wage workers, who believe the contracts are valid, the company’s conduct violated consumer laws because it was deceptive. (And also, according to the lawsuit, “immoral, unethical, oppressive, and unscrupulous.”) In other words, the employer engaged in unfair and deceptive acts in the marketplace.

This enforcement strategy has several benefits. In many instances, by using consumer protection laws that prohibit “unfair and deceptive acts and practices,” agencies that don’t have explicit authority to enforce labor standards protections nonetheless have a powerful hook to attack corporate efforts to undermine worker power. The FTC doesn’t have jurisdiction to enforce minimum wage laws against Amazon for misclassifying its Flex drivers, but it can protect workers under its general authority to go after corporate fraud.

Using consumer laws to protect workers can also allow for immediate relief for workers by temporarily sidestepping more complex questions that may arise when enforcing more traditional labor standards laws. Moreover, this approach directs public enforcement resources to emerging challenges affecting workers that fall outside of traditional labor agencies’ authority.

In these extremely challenging times for workers, with stagnant wages, routine retaliation for union organizing, inadequate enforcement resources, and the terrifying threat of workplace exposure to COVID-19, our country’s workers need all the champions they can get. And consumer agencies would be neglecting an important part of their work if they take a rigid and overly narrow understanding of who their agencies exist to protect. Consumer protection agencies should take action to address a range of complex practices at the intersection of the consumer and labor markets.

Examples of additional potential cases abound. Jobseekers enroll in training to be security guards or long-haul truckers based on the promise of a solid job, and end up deep in debt, sometimes with no job to speak of. Temp agencies suggest that they're an on-ramp to full-time employment, when in reality, almost no one gets a full-time job, likely in part because of conversion fees— hidden from workers—that job placements must pay in order to hire a temp worker as a regular employee. Students enter so-called “income share agreements” with finance companies under which the company pays the students’ tuition in exchange for a share of their income going forward. And employers increasingly offer (either directly or through third parties) short-term loans or “early wage access” programs that can operate like payday loans to allow workers access to quick cash but that come with high fees and effective interest rates.

In cities like New York, with sky-high unemployment rates following the onset of COVID-19, online job placement agencies and training schools have become a common scam. Construction workers dished out hundreds of dollars for online Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) training courses, offered by employment agencies, that promised a job at the end of the program—illegal under NYC law because such agencies cannot charge jobseekers for classes, trainings, or other services. Other jobseekers attended eyebrow microblading schools offered online, which are useless for a job that requires a Department of Health license.

In some jurisdictions, policymakers should update consumer protection laws to ensure that they reach arrangements where a business provides credit to its workers to purchase training or tools of the trade. Some consumer protections don’t apply to business-to-business transactions and have thus been presumed to exclude transactions between misclassified workers and the companies that employ them. For example, New York City’s consumer protection law covers goods, services, credit, and debts “primarily for personal, household, or family purposes.” Treating car loans from Uber to its drivers as business-to-business transactions exempt from consumer protection laws would leave drivers in limbo, without the protection of employment or consumer laws. Statutes should also explicitly protect limited English proficient worker-consumers, who are often the target of deceptive advertising and abusive contracts with usurious interest rates.

Finally, all consumer agencies—even those without jurisdiction or resources to aggressively enforce consumer protection laws when worker-consumers are harmed—can play a role in preventing these scams, through robust and multilingual public education and strategic use of outreach and media. This may involve agencies stepping out of their traditional roles to get the job done. For example, to enforce New York state’s safe business reopening guidelines, New York City recently deployed multijurisdictional teams of consumer protection inspectors, as well as teams from the departments of buildings and health, to respond to consumer and worker complaints.

Use of consumer laws to protect workers is a necessary addition, not an alternative, to aggressive and well-resourced enforcement of worker protection laws and organizing to increase workers’ power. But in our constantly evolving labor market, and in the face of post-pandemic life uncertainty, we must ensure that our legal system catches up. Workers, consumers, and the public must demand creative and expansive uses of the laws in the books to fight these multi-faceted abuses of corporate power.

This blog was originally published by the Economic Policy Institute.

Are You Still With Us?

I have a memory from high school that I keep returning to in recent years. Though I usually got a free lunch at school, on this day I decided to bring something from home: a Chinese bun containing “meat floss.” One of my friends bemoaned he’d forgotten his lunch money and was starving. I ripped my bun apart and gave him half. He took one bite and spit it out, proclaiming his disgust. I quietly “agreed” that I didn’t like the bun either, and threw the rest away.

Now as a lawyer, someone who is supposed to advocate for others, I keep returning to that failure to advocate for my own people and culture. Unfortunately, I’m sure many immigrants or their children have similar stories of burying themselves to try to erase their alienation. Now, in the wake of increased violence against Asian communities (though such violence has always been there), it feels strange when allies ask what they can do to support me. I’ve gotten used to fighting for others, but I’ve never really thought about fighting for myself.

I have spoken to some who, like me, grew up as one of the few Asians in their areas, struggling to fit our own identities into the fight for racial justice. How do we collectively organize when we can have very disparate lives? How do we raise awareness of discrimination against Asians to build bridges between all victims of white supremacy, without engaging in an “oppression Olympics?” How do we advocate on behalf of AAPI communities when “AA” often represents Far East Asians only, excluding other Asian American communities, and the “PI” is ignored? How do we fight anti-Blackness when there is so much of it among our people, perhaps in our own families? I’m not sure how to address these questions, but I know that we cannot answer them if we don’t engage with the questions in the first place. And we can’t answer them alone amongst ourselves, but must do so in active dialogue with those we seek to support and seek support from.

This dialogue must also be broader than the narrow confines of “representation” that it is so often confined to. If you truly care about “stopping Asian hate,” then it’s not just representation in TV shows or movies that matters. You have to fight for our inclusion in court rooms, board rooms, and other halls of power. And together we must do so on behalf of Black, brown, and indigenous communities too. Yes, a younger me eagerly browsing the comic stacks could not have imagined that one day Marvel would feature actors like Chloe Bennet and Simu Liu, and I appreciate how their presence will inspire today’s children. But just as important is how these actors use their platforms to loudly proclaim “Black lives matter,” advocate for more diversity in politics, and highlight the struggles of communities beyond our own. Maybe some of today’s younger fans will then discover real-world superheroes as well: emulating Dale Ho’s fight for democracy, Ai-jen Poo’s organizing of vulnerable workers, or Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu’s defense of Native and trans rights.

I raise this issue of the need for holistic and meaningful representation because I am worried that folks will focus on this battle—increasing representation in media—and ignore all the other work that is needed. Despite being so prepared for other fights for justice, I have seen many feel unmoored by the fight for AAPI communities; it is because, for the first time, they are just starting to reckon with AAPI discrimination and its intersectionalities.

Do you really want to know what you can do as an ally? It’s what I must commit to doing more of myself—learning more about people, communities, and cultures, and finding opportunities for connection, especially ones that exist within our own backyards. If we are not supporting these communities where we live, what good can we do for those elsewhere? Get engaged with AAPI organizations locally. Asian Americans, broadly speaking, are the fastest growing demographic (and voter block) in more and more states. Just here in Philadelphia, we have advocates like Esther Castillo working to address the stigma surrounding mental health, or Anna Perng who fights for disability inclusion. Groups like Asian Americans United have been around for over thirty years. After the Atlanta shootings, I saw so many non-Asian “allies” in Philadelphia sharing social media posts from national organizations; I doubt that they’ve heard of VietLead, the Woori Center, or done any basic research on what local groups are doing in the community.

If there are Asians in your area, then there are Asians who have experienced discrimination nearby, and the burden should not be on them to cure your ignorance. If a lot of the hurt in the AAPI community seems unheard, to some extent it’s probably because there weren’t willing listeners on the other end. Thankfully, in this moment as more of us find our own voices again, I do believe there is finally that audience for our pain and real solutions, instead of the false paeans for policing that end up endangering all communities of color. Ultimately though, what must happen is the acknowledgment that we exist all the time, not just when tragedy and guilt demand it. Long after the news cameras have moved away, the shame and fear in our communities will still be here. Then, we’ll see if you’re still with us.

Chris Lin is an ACS Assistant Director of Chapters, and can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @chrislin412. 

Prosecutors Need to Center Wage Theft in Their Fight for Public Safety

People aren’t safe if they’re being robbed of wages.

In this emergent wave of prosecutor reform, district attorneys must foster a new vision of public safety, centering economic security as an integral piece of a community’s well-being.

Beyond declining certain types of charges (such as drug possession and disorderly conduct), no longer seeking cash bail, and resentencing — efforts aimed at decarceration — the best prosecutors are focusing on a new understanding of public safety, which more broadly encompasses the financial health of their residents.

These district attorneys understand that true safety runs much deeper than the mere protection of the physical body or the integrity of property. Instead, this more holistic understanding incorporates factors that allow individuals and their families to participate — safely and more fully — in society. People aren’t safe if they’re victims of consumer fraud. People aren’t safe if they’re being robbed of wages.

Offices championing economic protection and opportunity — especially for the historically underserved like low-wage workers, people of color and immigrants — are those fighting for the true meaning of public safety.

Wage theft prosecution is not novel; there has been a healthy smattering of these cases in the past. Notably, the Brooklyn DA’s office produced a series of wage theft cases — a story of “greed and deception,” many of which resulted from employers’ failure to pay prevailing wage for government contracts.  More recently, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin and Los Angeles DA George Gascon teamed up to file a high-profile civil lawsuit against Handy, the home services company, for the egregious misclassification of its workforce as independent contractors.

This shift in work will have effects far beyond putting hard-earned wages back in the pockets of workers and offering meaningful accountability for employers shirking the law and their responsibilities. This new area of casework will transform what and how the work is done.

First, as the system currently stands, many prosecutions arise out of police interaction or incidents reported from the community, but wage theft cases are much less likely to come from a “complaint” to law enforcement or a particular event, as people are often scared to speak up and compromise their livelihood; some are not even aware they are being wronged. (As was the story for many individuals in the Handy case.)

Instead, prosecutors must dedicate investigatory resources and invest in authentic partnerships with community-based organizations; these cases will not materialize without developing trust and connections within immigrant and communities of color, decoupling from the traditional case work-up, and less reliance on the police.

Second, wage theft efforts will reveal the interconnection of economic harms. According to a 2019 survey conducted by the Public Rights Project, nearly 54% of Americans said that they had suffered at least one incident of corporate abuse, including wage theft. And of those who had, eight out of ten said they had also suffered at least one additional harm, such as predatory debt collection, mounting debt, or housing insecurity.

In other words? Wage theft cases are just the beginning for these offices. Once they delve into these communities and the workers’ stories, there will be many more cases to explore surrounding economic security and civil rights.

The growth in wage theft prosecutions is an important trend line to follow in the coming years. As more district attorneys recognize the systemic racism in our criminal justice system, it is crucial they deploy resources focused on supporting the groups that have been historically targeted by law enforcement.

If done correctly, wage theft and other economic fraud cases will illustrate the power and potential of law enforcement to advocate instead of exploit, to protect not merely police. Those cases that side with the community — that center economic opportunity as a lynchpin in public health — will serve as the necessary breakthrough to fulfill the promise of policy reforms.

Jonathan Miller is Legal Director of Public Rights Project; PRP is currently accepting applications to its fellowship due May 24.

 

Free the Immigration Courts from DOJ to Take Politics Out of Immigration Cases

A First Amendment lawsuit by immigration judges against their office in the Department of Justice (DOJ) was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last week, calling off oral arguments that had been scheduled for today. The immigration judges, through their union, challenged a policy of the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) that prohibited them from speaking in their personal capacity on any topic “related to immigration law or policy issues.” According to the complaint, immigration judges were denied permission or received no response to requests to speak at events such as legal training programs, law school classes, and even a middle school class. The Fourth Circuit ordered the stay to allow the new administration officials “to become familiar with the issues on appeal and determine how they wish to proceed.” The parties had jointly moved for the stay, suggesting that the immigration judges’ union and EOIR may consider resolving the issue by renegotiating the policy.

A new and more relaxed speaking engagement policy might be a short-term win for the immigration judges, but it could prove to be a long-term loss for the independence of the immigration courts. The fundamental problem underlying EOIR’s restrictive speaking engagement policy is the fact that the immigration courts are not really “courts” at all, but an office within DOJ, a law enforcement agency. Under the current agency structure, immigration judges are the attorney general’s delegates. The cases they decide in immigration court can be taken away and re-decided by him at any time, for any reason, through a process known as “self-referral.” As long as DOJ controls the immigration courts, the attorney general and EOIR retain the power to impose restrictions not only on what immigration judges say and do outside their courtrooms – a possible affront to the judges’ First Amendment rights – but on what they say and do within them – an affront to immigration justice itself.

During the Trump administration, the power of the attorney general to manipulate immigration adjudication was exposed. Trump’s attorneys general used the self-referral power 17 times over four years, nearly four times the rate of any prior administration. Moreover, the attorney generals’ decisions were unprecedented in their scope, purporting to rewrite broad policy questions that even federal prosecutors had believed to be settled. These cases included decisions restricting asylum for individuals fleeing domestic violence or violence against their families that was not controlled by local authorities.

Other cases directly affected the way immigration judges handled cases in their courtrooms. For example, when a Guatemalan youth named Reynaldo Castro Tum failed to show up for his immigration hearings, Immigration Judge Steven A. Morley sought to temporarily close the case to allow DHS time to demonstrate that it had sent notices to the correct address. Instead, Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred the case to himself and announced a decision that immigration judges lack the power to close cases for administrative reasons at all – an issue that was not even presented in the underlying case. That process, known as administrative closure, is not merely a procedural nicety but an essential safeguard for immigrants with valid legal claims to residence. When a U.S. citizen spouse or employer files a petition to sponsor an immigrant who is in removal proceedings before the immigration courts, the immigration judge must temporarily close the case in order for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) to review the petition. Without administrative closure, immigration judges have no power to do so. They are instead expected to hear the court case and potentially order the individual removed from the country – even someone who has a meritorious petition pending before USCIS.

The startling self-referral decisions of the Trump administration focused public attention on a system that had been broken since its inception. My research has revealed that the location of the immigration courts within DOJ resulted from historical accident, not from coherent notions of good government or just adjudication. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles to meet with Hitler, Mussolini, and others about the state of war and future peace in Europe. Welles returned home convinced by rumors of a “fifth column” of Nazi sympathizers who looked like locals and would undermine the Allied nations from within. Welles convinced Roosevelt to move the immigration services from the Department of Labor, where they were viewed as part of workforce development, to DOJ to catch would-be spies and saboteurs. Though Roosevelt had resisted congressional pressure to make such a move for over a year, within three days of Welles’ recommendation, it was done.

In fact there was no “fifth column”; the rumor was largely Nazi propaganda designed to stoke fear and undermine Allied morale. It worked then, and its effects are tragically still being felt in the immigration courts today. Attorney general control over the immigration courts has remained in place for eighty years largely because, before the Trump administration, attorneys general rarely intervened in immigration cases. A movement to give the immigration courts greater independence gathered some momentum in the 1990s, but the events of 9/11 once again shifted the country’s focus. As President Bush and Congress responded by creating the Department of Homeland Security, the best that could be accomplished was to keep the immigration courts in DOJ, separate from the immigration enforcement activities of DHS. The risks of leaving the immigration courts in a law enforcement agency headed by a political appointee were shrugged off again until 2017, when the actions of Trump’s attorneys general exposed the ways that the system can be manipulated to achieve political goals.

The Biden administration’s willingness to review DOJ’s speaking engagement policy may make life a little easier for immigration judges today. But if relaxing a few restrictive policies has the effect of deflecting attention away from the dangers of having the immigration courts within a law enforcement agency in the first place, it may result in another tragically missed opportunity for fundamental reform. As long as the immigration courts remain part of DOJ, the possibility of abuse “lies about like a loaded weapon,” to borrow a phrase from Justice Robert H. Jackson, for any administration to use the immigration courts to further any political goals.

To prevent further abuses, President Biden should call for Congress to create independent, Article I immigration courts, similar to the U.S. Tax Court or the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Judges on these tribunals are appointed by the president subject to the advice and consent of the Senate, but thereafter are insulated from politics for the remainder of their terms. Moving the immigration courts from DOJ to an Article I court system would not change the underlying immigration laws or DHS’s right to enforce them. It would simply ensure that immigrants receive a fair hearing in the courts of the United States, insulated from the shifting winds of politics.

Alison Peck is Professor of Law and Co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law and the author of “The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts: War, Fear, and the Roots of Dysfunction.”

 

 

 

Arab-American Representation and Identity in American Society

As an Arab-American in the progressive law and policy space, it is sometimes difficult to navigate the amount of power, or lack thereof, that Arab-Americans hold. Representation, especially in positions of power and influence, is rare. I often feel that it is rare to see people in positions of power who look like me.

Oftentimes, when society, organizations, or individuals think about race, they look at it through a prism of a white/Black binary, failing to look at the many experiences that do not fit into either category. Beyond that, many people become confused about who exactly is an Arab-American, and where do they fit in this societal prism. I believe that this lack of awareness, whether purposeful or due to plain ignorance, acts as a hindrance to Arab-Americans who are attempting to advance their careers.

While there are a number of factors why Arab-American representation is lacking in positions of authority, I believe that much can be traced to our country’s long and disturbing history with race. As an Egyptian, I find that many people do not know where to place me in the white/Black binary that dominates America’s construction of race. The federal government puts me into the white aisle, as North African is, curiously, grouped in with Caucasians. It is imperative that the U.S. government begins to implement a categorical system that fully captures the diversity of the American people. Being labeled as ‘white’ when I am Egyptian strips away not only how I identify myself, but also makes a mockery of my experiences, which does not afford me the privileges that being white generally entails. On the other hand, individual people place me wherever they wish – white, Black, Arab, Asian – I have heard it all.

As Khaled Beydoun writes, “The OMB’s [Office of Management and Budget] designation of Arab Americans as white by law is rooted in early- to mid-twentieth-century immigration and naturalization jurisprudence… Nearly 110 years after the first Arab immigrant came before a judge seeking citizenship, Arab Americans still find themselves interlocked between an existential and legal paradox: per se classification as white, but pervasive profiling and policing as pariah.”

The Arab-American community is one which is incredibly diverse, and I think that is lost upon many Americans. Arabs come from at least a dozen different countries spread across at least two continents. Arabs make up every religion, or no religion. Arabs come in all shapes and sizes. Further, many people who are grouped into the “Arab” construct do not even personally identify as “Arab” but find it easier to do so because they do not fit within the American societal “boxes.” In a nutshell, Arabs are people and make up all the diversity and nuance that other Americans make up. This misunderstanding and “othering” of Arab-American individuals denies true recognition and acceptance of us and can sometimes act as a hindrance to visibility within the legal and political fields.

Arab-Americans must be more thoroughly included in American, national discourse, and that can begin with full recognition and the dismantling of the extremely binary view on race that American society has. It can continue with conscious efforts to educate people about Arab-Americans and the history of a region of the world that is too often simplified in ways that removes much of the history and diversity which it has. As we close out Arab-American heritage month, I am hopeful that continued conscious efforts to educate people about Arab-Americans can lead to more accurate representation within American society.

Sam Fouad is the Assistant Director of Network Communications at ACS and can be followed at @_saf155