Arab Americans embrace identity during heritage month

DYLAN HEMBROUGH reporter

April is National Arab American Heritage Month and calls for reflection in the U.S. on our history of discrimination and racism.

Isra Chaker is a Syrian American civil rights activist. Chaker spoke at a virtual opening event for Arab American Heritage Month about her experiences with racism in the U.S. directed towards her ethnicity and her religion.

Chaker, who was in fifth grade in Boulder, Colorado, when 9/11 happened, said her world changed for good that day. Beforehand, no one talked about her ethnicity, but afterward, it became her defining feature.

“At recess, nobody spoke to me, at lunch, nobody sat with me,” Chaker said. “I finally went up to my teacher … and she said, ‘I think you need to speak to your parents,’ so she didn’t offer any comfort either, just more confusion.”

Chaker said her family was not served in restaurants and her house was vandalized many times, including being egged and having the word “terrorist” written across the wall. Despite this, Chaker said felt a sense of responsibility to her identity. As she was proud of her faith and wanted to be a role model, she began to wear hijab, the head covering worn by some Muslim women.

“I knew people misunderstood my faith, my culture, my ethnicity,” Chaker said. “I felt that if I could be that representation … and show them that I’m just the same as they are, it would make a difference.”

Chaker said the racism she experienced after this decision only increased, and she recalled times when other students would try to rip off her hijab or write notes to her telling her to “blow herself up.”

With help from her guidance counselor, Chaker said she organized a diversity panel so she and other students belonging to marginalized groups could speak their minds.

“We were taking a risk, right? The bullying could get worse if they knew how vulnerable we were,” Chaker said. “I’ll never forget the energy shift in that room.”

Steve Tamari, a professor of Middle East and Islamic History, started his job at

SIUE just weeks before 9/11.

“I was not prepared to teach religion,” Tamari said. “After 9/11, everybody needed to learn about Islam, so I remember giving a lot of public talks that first year or so, focused on Islam more than history.”

Tamari said he did not experience the hostility Chaker did, but he said that historically, Arab immigrants in prior decades wished to assimilate into American society rather than take pride in their identity. Tamari said many Arab immigrants were able to pass as white in American society, especially as not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab.

“I think there is a trend, especially among Muslim American women, of embracing both their Muslim identity and perhaps their Arab identity, as well as their American identity,” Tamari said. “Like Isra said, after 9/11, she made the conscious choice of starting to wear hijab, and not trying to hide or assimilate, but standing up for who she was and who her family was and where they came from.”

Tamari said a lot of the damage done to the Arab identity in the U.S. has been perpetrated by Hollywood. The late Jack Shaheen, a former professor at SIUE, wrote a couple of books on the topic of Arab vilification in television. To help counter this, Tamari said he tries to focus on the more human aspects of Arab and Muslim culture.

“In the popular culture, Arabs and Muslims are so often associated with violence and war and death and destruction,” Tamari said. “I don’t focus on politics. There are two ways of looking at it. Learning about Muslim and Arab culture and history and the positive aspects of it, or the funny aspects. There are Arab American comics, there are all kinds of words … like coffee, like sugar, things that we love and that are sweet, and they come to us from the Arab world.”

Tamari said he hopes people will look for the more positive aspects of Arab culture, and that over time the American perception of Arabs may change.

“I would just like people to seek out those aspects of Arab American or Muslim American culture. They’re not about politics or war, but there’s so much richness in the history of these people. People are just like other people.”

Chaker is no longer a college student, now working in advocacy and campaigning, particularly in regard to issues like immigration.

“I know the power of my voice, and I will always continue to use it and move mountains with it,” Chaker said.