Column: Celebrating Arab-American Heritage Month

04/15/09 - After Sept. 11, 2001, I was one of many who was awestruck and horrified at the racial profiling taking place in airports, train stations and highways. It wasn't just because racial profiling is wrong, but also because deep down, I feared I would become a victim.

I remember weeks after the tragedy, when I was taking a stroll with my father down Blackstone Boulevard in Providence one day, and he told me to do something that never sat quite right with me: to keep my nationality out of conversation.

My skin doesn't reflect my Lebanese heritage much - I was somehow blessed with Irish skin that burns at the sight of sunshine - but he was still worried that if I went around spreading word about my "Arab roots," I'd somehow get myself into trouble.

It all seems a bit silly now, seeing as much of the hostility toward Arab-Americans that came after the terrorist attacks has died down. But with so many major American news outlets bombarding readers and viewers with enough information on a war-torn Middle East to fill volumes, it still makes me uneasy to see so many stereotypes still being applied to Arab-Americans.

There are some places in the United States, however, that are addressing common views on Arab-American culture and attempting to give Americans the stories behind the news stories. The month of April, in fact, is Arab-American Heritage Month in Maryland.

Two years before Sept. 11, the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland deemed April as "Arab-American Heritage Month" in celebration of its Middle Eastern population.

The month highlights several unknown aspects of Arab culture (not only are Arab-Americans stereotyped as "terrorists" and "women-haters," but they are also sometimes boiled down to an old language and falafel wraps.)

But there is more to Arab-American culture than baklava and Allah, the most important aspect of their traditions being the prominence of family.

This is what I couldn't wrap my head around after the terrorist attacks in Manhattan took place - people were being tormented for their dark features and olive skin when a majority of Arab-Americans were stricter about family values than a lot of Irish, Italian and German families I knew.

I used to resent it. Let's be serious - no third grader wants to spend every weekday with his or her grandparents. No third grader wants to eat spinach pies when he or she could be eating Domino's pizza either.

But despite this, my young self saw no malice associated with my nationality. My grandparents "came off the boat," so-to-speak, and as far as I knew back then, their ability to make kibbeh balls in no way suggested they were capable of "Anthraxing" Tom Brokaw. They were peaceful, Christian people who cared about nothing but family. This also made it hard for me to make the connection from Islam to the Middle East as others did after 2001.

Lily Qi, the Asian-American and Middle-Eastern American liaison of Montgomery County's Office of Community Partnerships, recently commented on the common misunderstandings about Arab-Americans in light of this month's ceremonies.

"Many Americans are surprised that two-thirds of Arab-Americans are Christians," Qi said in an article in The Gazette last week. "People often consider Middle Eastern, Arab and Muslim the same things."

An old friend of mine from high school once said it didn't matter that I was Middle Eastern because I was "white as a sheet of paper" and had an Irish name. I'm also not a Muslim.

In a way, she was right - there was no one calling my home spewing hateful words like "sandnigger" over the receiver. There was no one accusing me of being linked to Al Qaeda (at least not seriously.) But the trend in which this month's celebrations are trying to combat is one that has trickled through history over and over again, and I still somehow feel affected.

In all honesty, I never thought of myself as much more than just a plain old American.

But it happened to German-Americans and Japanese-Americans after World War II. It's happened to the Irish who, when coming over to this country to find hope, found signs like "Irish Need Not Apply" plastered on storefronts. I guess I had thought after all this time, history might not have to repeat itself after the Sept. 11 attacks. It's happening now in an era of post-Soviet Russia.

The only way to really celebrate Arab-American Heritage Month is not to kick back with some red pepper hummus, but to continue to keep an open mind in a world of cultural divides.