The Expansion of “White”
14th November 2009
Arab student Yasmina Raiani wrote that the regulation “clumps individuals of North African and Middle Eastern descent into ‘white,’ which is not only superficially inaccurate—in that the actual skin tone range of North African and Middle Eastern peoples is more akin to that of Hispanics/Latinos than it is to Caucasians—but also historically insensitive…To identify Arabs as ‘white’ is to disregard our history as members of the colonized world and to dismiss all acts of racial discrimination against our community.’”
The horror! The horror!
No mention of how the slave trade was dominated by Arabs for over a thousand years, of course. Any African-American who adopted the practice of punching in the mouth any Arab s/he met on historical grievance principles would get no criticism from me.
And don’t get me started on the “you can’t make this up” nature of black people becoming Muslim … “Hey, this religion has absolutely no problem with me and my people being enslaved! Obviously, it’s the right choice for me!”