Oh anti-Arabic sentiment in academe.
Every season of my academic life has brought surprises - the biggest of which is my naïveté.
Perhaps, being raised in a third culture and cognizant of my mixed race heritage, I was not trained to see color or ethnicity.
I was part of a privileged expatriate culture.
Brown, yellow, white, black, it didn’t matter - as long as you got the jokes, went to the same school, and were not a jerk - you were welcome - we were all immigrants after all.
Sure there were issues - but mostly - they were tied to behavior - bc as outsiders - as visitors - we bonded & explored the world around us.
We learned to see & appreciate the person - expatriate or local - it didn’t matter - it mattered that you were decent & could keep a trust.
Only when I returned to the States did I see racism based on skin, ethnicity, or religion - especially among people of equivalent education and social status.
I found it difficult - bc America was not the city on a hill - that I expected.
That ability from my youth - to see the person - has framed my academic life.
When I see my collaborators, I see the person, their strengths, and liabilities.
I don’t see their skin, religion or their passport.
I see their talent & their contributions.
I’ve worked with people from everywhere.
Where America was not a City on a Hill, I felt like academia might become one.
I thought most, if not all, my academic friends shared that colorblind worldview.
This last week, I learned that I was wrong.
I visited Saudi Arabia and made a series of posts about my experience.
I saw the people & liked them.
Yet.
I find myself receiving anti-Arab messages, based on stereotypes.
From challenging whether it is safe to visit to questioning whether the women I met were really free to being called a pawn of the KSA, the sentiment has been incredibly negative.
I have been shocked by the comments’ intensity, by people that are otherwise sane.
These comment line up with negative academic stereotypes I’ve heard about placing Arab students, their willingness to work, & ability to listen, in more general conversations, about PhD programs & recruiting at conferences.
None of these commenters - all academic - saw past the rhetoric to see the people.
They saw the espoused policies of some Arab states.
None of these commenters had visited an Arab state.
I am sometimes wrong, sometimes drama, & sometimes spot on.
Today, I am spot on.
These negative assessments that vilify people who ascribe to different values & ways of living are wrong.
Academics need to do better.
We need to go to Arab states & actually meet the people.
Only then, can we make fair assessments.
I did.
My views broadened.
There is no place for prejudice in scientific communities. It makes us all smaller.
The Academy needs to open its mind, see people, & welcome their contributions.
When we do, perhaps then, we can seize the moral high ground and change the world.
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