Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press, December 17, 2009
As a land of immigrants, the United States is home to people from all corners of the world.
And in the past, it has documented where its people hail from by using the U.S. census, conducted every 10 years as mandated in the Constitution.
But the 2010 census form—in a departure from 2000 and previous decades—will not contain a question asking people about their ancestry, prompting concern among metro Detroit’s diverse ethnic communities. Many in the sizable Arab-American population in metro Detroit—who have faced a host of challenges during the past 10 years—are particularly concerned.
Government officials say they eliminated the ancestry question along with several others because they wanted a shorter form that will make it easier for people to complete.
But ethnic groups are worried that they might lose their fair share of federal and private dollars since institutions often rely on census data to allocate funds.
Ethnic groups say ‘white’ isn’t enough on the 2010 census
With her light-brown skin and Islamic headscarf, Khadigah Alasry of Dearborn said she doesn’t see herself as white.
But the Arab American is officially classified as such by the U.S. government, which says that anyone with roots in the Middle East—including north Africa—is white.
“That’s just weird to me,” said Alasry, 23, born to immigrants from Yemen.
It’s also weird for thousands of other Americans who say they don’t fit into traditional categories of race in the United States. As the 2010 U.S. census prepares to tabulate millions of Americans, the issue of racial and ethnic identity is being debated as groups push to get their voices heard.
The census is conducted to get accurate population statistics that are used to determine the number of congressional seats and amount of government funding, and to ensure that minorities are not discriminated against.
{snip}
“There is no such thing as white culture,” said Thaddeus Radzilowski, president of the Piast Institute, a Polish-American group in Hamtramck that is one of 56 census Information Centers in the United States and the only one in Michigan. Having the ancestry question “provides a better notion of our pluralistic society and who we are,” Radzilowski said.
Polish Americans and members of other European groups, such as German Americans—two of Michigan’s most common ethnicities on the 2000 census—are interested in keeping the ancestry question. But the issue has somewhat faded for them given that they, on average, are more culturally assimilated and not as visible in the post-Sept. 11 world as Arab Americans.
Discrimination and advantages
Since the 2000 census and 9/11, many Arab Americans say they have experienced bias. On the other hand, they also are being recruited for federal jobs and invited to participate in conversations with top U.S. leaders as the government finds itself involved in conflicts across the Middle East and the Muslim world.
{snip}
“It’s unfair because we are not treated as white in society and by the government, but we also don’t qualify as minorities to get the benefits of some programs” such as minority contracts, said Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Still, Hamad and other Arab-American leaders are pushing Arab Americans to fill out the census forms because, in the end, they are part of wider communities, which would be adversely affected if there’s an undercount.
Whites and blacks are not given the choice to further specify what their backgrounds might be. In the past, one out of six households would receive a long form with 53 questions, one of them asking about ethnic origin.
{snip}
Locke [Gary Locke, secretary of the Commerce Department] and census officials said the ancestry question will be retained under the American Community Survey, which is done every month. But that survey reaches a much smaller percentage of the population than the full census.
{snip}
The imperfect racial label
Arab Americans and Chaldeans are 10 times more likely to identify their race as “other” as compared with the general population, according to the Detroit Arab American Study, a survey in 2003 of 1,000 Arabs and Chaldeans in metro Detroit.
“I’m often told by Arab Americans that they check ‘white’ on official forms but do not feel that they are ‘white white,’ ” Shryock said.
In 1997, Mostafa Hefny, an Egyptian-American Detroiter, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Management and Budget—which classified Arabs as white in 1977—in order to be classified as black. In the lawsuit, Hefny said, because of his dark skin and kinky hair, he was more African than blacks such as former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. The case was dismissed in 1998.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Niraj Warikoo
at nwarikoo@freepress.com .
(Posted on December 21, 2009)
Comments
Whole books have been written about the heartbreaking injustice of denying Middle-Eastern-Americans their pound of white flesh. Check out, e.g., John Tehranian’s “Whitewashed:”http://www.amazon.com/Whitewashed-Americas-Invisible-Minority-Critical/dp/0814783066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261437139&sr=1-1
Here’s a solution for the Census Bureau: Have a category “European-American.” If you check that, then that means you’re “White.” They could also have “Arab-American,” “African-American,” “Asian-American,” etc.
But of course they won’t do that. Why? Because the federal government under the Mulatto Messiah wants to start obscuring the fact that America is becoming steadily darker. They don’t want Whites to be really aware of it, and able to do something about it, until it’s too late.
That’s interesting to me. I don’t consider Arabs as white neither. See, there is some common ground we can find with minorities. I wouldn’t want my daughter to bring home an Arab (especially one who sued the government because he wanted to be black- wait a minute… huh?) Someone who really wants to be black and not just in dress and pop culture and vernacular degeneration. But Arabs, again, can say they don’t want to be considered white. If I, on the other hand, say that I don’t want any Arab to be considered white, I’m the bad guy. Can you say hypocritical!
All these groups are counted as white to inflate the number and percentage of whites in the U.S., so that whites don’t wake up to their own dispossession. And of course, Hispanics (even if they’re almost pure black Afro-Caribbean) are counted as white in crime perpetrator stats (but Hispanics are given a victim category) and welfare collection stats, to make whites look worse than they are.
There are a lot of whites who don’t know their true ethnicity, so the ethnic question on the census might not answer much. It is estimated, though, that half of America’s whites are at least one-fourth German. The reason many whites might actually not know is because anti-German bigotry during WWI caused many German-Americans to change their last names to Anglo-sounding ones. For instance, a “Miller” might have been “Mueller” five generations back. Rush Limbaugh’s family was “Limbach” when they emigrated from the Rhine valley to Pennsylvania way back when, though they changed their name in the next generation after moving from eastern PA to what is now southeast Missouri.
Nation of immigrants. Yeah, that’s it.
Explain that to my ancestors who “immigrated” to a wild wilderness in 1620. Who invented and constructed America with their bare hands. No roads. No churches. No banks. No schools. No courts. No Federal Reserve. No jobs. No welfare.
No, my ancestors came here to build a world — not move to one someone else built for them, with their hands out, looking for a job.
Immigrants go home. We do not want you here.
Joe of the Mountain
In the past, one out of six households would receive a long form with 53 questions, one of them asking about ethnic origin.
If the short form is good enough for the President, it’s good enough for me.
The census form should be broken down like this
Race: CAUCASIAN
- Northern Europe (list of designated countries)
This will provide an accurate measure of ethnic nationality, as well as allowing Arabs to continue to proudly assert that they are Caucasians also.
So these artificial categories that the government illegally puts people in were created so as to divvy up benefits from the government. What a surprise that is!
This could be to the advantage of Whites, if the ambiguity of the “Hispanic” category is also compromised. When Whites are a minority in places such a schools, liberals often use the uncertainty of the term “Hispanic” as an attempt to invalidate someone’s argument that notes the minority status of Whites. I’ve seen this happen several times. They need to include “Mestizo” or something for non-White Hispanics to check to avoid confusion.
Don’t believe it!
Forget the drivel!
Forget the “ethnic pride”!
When push comes to shove outside of a few “spokespeople” ALL “near whites”, “almost whites” “semi-whites”, “just about whites” want to be called and accepted as White-even if they would stick out at an American Renaissance Conference.
#2 wrote: “They don’t want Whites to be really aware of it, and able to do something about it, until it’s too late.”
My wife and I did something about it 15 years ago. We decided to never have children. I realize that our decision is appalling to many of our fellow European-Americans. We know that many of you believe that it is our duty to procreate. We disagree.
We see the world far differently. The fact of the matter is that we have no control over your life. The government owns its citizens, lock, stock, and barrel. They own your kids even more, and they’ll own your grandchildren more still.
Look around, my friends. The government’s puppet masters are determined to create a world of dumbed-down, obedient, drones!
They want the world to largely consist of a single race of mongrels and miscreants who are easily pacified and controlled.
Whites are not easily pacified or controlled, so the “deciders”
Why would any sane person leave part of himself/herself behind to face that? The answer is beyond us!
The world as you knew it is over. I feel deep sorrow for any White person who has children or grandchildren. I feel deep sorrow for my young nieces and nephews. They will never have a remote chance of rebelling, primarily because every facet of their lives is destined to be controlled by the state. They haven already been conditioned unless you keep them hidden in the cellar.
Arabs are NOT Euopean. They could be White though…so am I.
Pan-Aryanism only applies in Midwest America(a la rural Wyoming).
The biggest problem with African Americans is that they DO NOT have their OWN culture.
What about those of us who are mutts? I am a European-American of Hungarian and British descent, would I have to pick one? I think European-American would be fine. My brother’s kids are Hungarian/British/Irish/Italian, where would they fit in other than European?
——————————-
Indeed, Mr. Radzilowski? That would probably come as a huge surprise to your Polish ancestors who spent millennia helping to BUILD the White culture that we Whites (and every other resident of our nations) enjoy today.
Yes Virginia, there is a White culture. And you should be eternally grateful for that fact.
Better invent a new category. Arabs are not white. They are the opposite to Europeans in almost every way. They are yet another ‘gimme’ culture.
Gimme residence in your country
They are no different from any other Third Worlder except they are more agressive. Begging bowl permanently in hand.
I’m in total agreement with these Middle Easterners. They aren’t White and should not be included in this category. There should be a separate category for European-Americans and when you separate the various groups that come out of the Middle East you end up with an actual White population of 60 percent, not the 65 percent the Census Bureau likes to quote. It’s time Whites started realizing how much their percentage has shrunk just in the last 20 years.
I would not argue with a Mexican over who is a real Mexican, nor with a Turk over who is a real Turk. Likewise, since “White” is an English word, used in the racial sense to describe people of European origin, I don’t need any non-White south Asian or Latin American wannabees to tell me who is White. We know our own, and imposters are not welcome.
11 — Anonymous at 7:43 PM on December 21:
I really get tired of these kinds of posts. If it’s not the “I’m not going to have children because we are all doomed” then it’s the Ivy League educated black woman with a White supermodel husband who has trouble spelling common words. I especially love the pretend caucasians on here who manage to include the phrase “Whites and Northeast Asians” in their writing. Anonymous, your post is as transparent as they come and frankly this tactic is a little stale at this point.
I caught this:
Arab Americans and Chaldeans have varying views on the issue of race, said Andrew Shryock, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His research showed that religion can affect racial identity, with Arab-American Christians much more likely to see themselves as white than Arab-American Muslims.
Exactly… Lebanese Maronites are much more likely to identify with, say, the Italians and French than are Muslims from Yemen, for obvious reasons.
My wife and I did something about it 15 years ago. We decided to never have children. I realize that our decision is appalling to many of our fellow European-Americans. We know that many of you believe that it is our duty to procreate. We disagree.
We see the world far differently. The fact of the matter is that we have no control over your life. The government owns its citizens, lock, stock, and barrel. They own your kids even more, and they’ll own your grandchildren more still.
Look around, my friends. The government’s puppet masters are determined to create a world of dumbed-down, obedient, drones!
They want the world to largely consist of a single race of mongrels and miscreants who are easily pacified and controlled.
Whites are not easily pacified or controlled, so the “deciders”
Why would any sane person leave part of himself/herself behind to face that? The answer is beyond us!
The world as you knew it is over. I feel deep sorrow for any White person who has children or grandchildren. I feel deep sorrow for my young nieces and nephews. They will never have a remote chance of rebelling, primarily because every facet of their lives is destined to be controlled by the state. They haven already been conditioned unless you keep them hidden in the cellar.
Some Arabs are white. Look up Mayor Slay of St. Louis (Lebanese descent).
The white catagory on the census should be changed to European-American. And who is a European-American? If all of your ancestors were living on the continent of Europe circa 1500 then you are a member of this group. This would clear up any confusion, with the singular exception that gypcies (or roma) might qualify. Perhaps the only exception that could be made is if the person in 1/8th american Indian and 7/8ths Euro-American. Tradionally the Fed. government has regarded such people as ‘white.’
Here’s the email I sent to the author of this article:
This is certainly much deeper than a simple categorical issue. Like every non-white racial/ethnic group Arabs have a strong collective consciousness and don’t see themselves as “white” because it generally implies a definitive European ancestry, something alien to them. Arabs are healthy and normal enough to recognize their distinctiveness even if the clueless white liberal can’t. As a racially conscious white man though I have no sympathy for the Arab race hustlers and shake-down artists immigration has produced. They made the decision to come to this country and if they can’t hack it that’s their problem not ours. Although America’s white elite is certainly to blame for inviting friction and decay by letting them in, immigrants are all too happy to come here and then cite “discrimination” as a way to reap unearned privileges. Like it or not it is the ingenuity, discipline and hard work unique to the white race that has made America what it is. For a look at the sort of societies Arabs would build themselves one need look no further than the failed states their castaways leave behind.
With her light-brown skin and Islamic headscarf, Khadigah Alasry of Dearborn said she doesn’t see herself as white.
Well, you know what? I don’t see you as white either. It seems to me that the Arabs don’t want to be white so they can cash in on government handouts, affirmative action job hiring schemes and the like. What ever happened to assimilation?
From the full article:
“…Later that night, a woman in her late 60s was beaten by a group of Somali boys and relieved of cash while walking in Kennedy Park…Five nights later, another man was jumped by a group of similar description. He resisted the gang and was beaten badly. He required surgery.
Deputy Chief James Minkowsky said, ’ In some cases, they seem to do it for the thrill of it…. many of the suspects had dropped out of school.’…”
Here’s Newsweek’s take on Lewiston:
“…’The Refugees Who Saved Lewiston: A dying Maine mill town gets a fresh burst of energy.’ The article quotes Morrison and Paul Badeau, marketing director for the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council, in a story that credits the city’s new Somali residents for its economic rebirth.
‘We’ve welcomed the Somalis and worked every day to help make them a part of our community!’ Morrison said…”
In 2006, the Maine Department of Labor says the unemployment rate among Somalis in Lewiston was 51%. The jobless rate in Maine at that time was 6.2%.
Refugee Resettlement Watch reports:
“…Census bureau estimates show that between 2000 and 2008 the ‘Black or African American’ population of Lewiston exploded by 615% to roughly 2,700… the town’s white population is down about 13% during the same period.
83,991 Somali Shariah-supporting immigrants have been admitted to the US in 25 years. More than half, 43,682, came since September 11th.
African resettlement was not a priority until, according to a report by Heidi Boas the Congressional Black Caucus got involved…. in her lengthy 2007 paper entitled, ‘The New Face of America’s Refugees: African Refugee Resettlement to the United States:’
Several of the individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States…”
From the Refugee Watch Fact Sheet:
“…For the first 30 days the refugees are funded with an $850 per family gift from the State Department. At 30 days they are eligible for all forms of welfare.
A newly arriving refugee aged 65 can immediately retire on SSI/Medicaid never having worked a day in the U.S…”
http://tinyurl.com/yzofyfx
If this doesn’t enrage WHITE NATIVE BORN AMERICANS I don’t know what will.
It seems it’s possible for states to opt out of being forced to take in refugees, as has Wyoming. This country is going to increasingly Balcanize and break up along racial lines—I say the sooner the better.
http://tinyurl.com/ye7rreg
Bon
No matter how you slice it, government should not be in the business of categorizing people by race. It is not their job to do so and they can never do it well. For many years, I’ve been boycotting questions (on forms) about my race. I simply ignore the question. If there’s no way out, I put “other”. I shall ignore it on the census as well or fill in something humorous such as “Martian”.
If, some day, there is a white nation based on white ancestry, then yes, the government of such a state would have to ascertain who is “white” and who is not. Unfortunately, this is not the case in America today.
I have to agree with them on this. I do not consider muslims from any country to be white. They don’t either, it seems.
“There is no such thing as white culture,” said Thaddeus Radzilowski … “
Yes there is, you fool. It’s called Western Civilization.
A while ago I listened to an East Indian immigrant who advocates for more integration of races. He married a white woman, and his legacy will be his brown-eyed half-white Indian child.
For him it was a desire to be white, by adopting our country, our culture, our identity, and finally our genetics. His gain was our loss. Census catagories that make no racial distinctions give state approved legitimacy to this man’s belief in the non-exclusiveness of the white identity.
We whites have to be the ones demanding our own European white catagory on the census forms. We are the ones who must differentiate ourselves. We are the ones who must say we do not wish to be lumped in with mulattos, Arabs, Hispanics and others who claim whiteness.
If we don’t, this bureaucratic stroke of a pen takes us another step closer to disappearing into the beige soup.
I find this article surprising, as many Arabs wish they could pass for Italian or European in some way.
It rankles the Arab mind that they are second-class to whites in white countries. This ever-present burr under their saddle makes many of them aggressive to prove something to whites, and they drift between extremes of conservative Islam and hedonism.
In England an Arab would never,ever described as being ‘white’.
“Explain that to my ancestors who “immigrated” to a wild wilderness in 1620.”- Josephus Montagnus Joe, not only are we in the same boat, we were on it!! P.S. Your “signature” is the coolest thing since I ran across a business card that said, “Jeff Andrews, Part Owner of Texas”
The real kick in the teeth by the federal government (your smiling congressman) is their recent use of “Hispanic” as the new benchmark. This travesty must be thrown out and the people responsible should have their American citizenship revoked.
“American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. Respondents will be able to select one or more of these racial categories. The minimum categories for ethnicity will be Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino.”
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/racefactcb.html
Some of the confusion in the government is because they are not separating Arabs (and Turks) into subcategories. As has been noted in many places, nearly all the Turks of Western Anatolia are really turkicized Greeks. Also think of all the eastern European women brought their during Ottoman days! The actual “Turk” Turks are more towards the mountains and on into Central Asia.
In the case of Arabs, they are a diverse lot in the same situation as Hispanics. As everyone has noted, Hispanic or Latino is not a “race.” There can be white Spanish speakers, black ones, Indian ones and mestizos. All they have in common is language. Even their cultural patterns are different.
Arabs are the same way. The only real Arabs are the ones in Arabia, Jordan, southern Iraq and parts of Egypt or Syria.
Most North Africans are biracial mixes of black/original Egyptian/Greek/Latin/Germanic visigoths, etc… Half the people of Libya have, ahem, Italian blood in them from the days of Italian colonialism and the settlements and occasional bouts of mass rapes of Arab women by Italian soldiers that went along with it.
Many coastal Algerians are more French than anything else for similar reasons. But all of those above people are not “Arabs” or white either, for that matter. They are basically mestizos of the Mediterranean. Even Sicilians are in the same category!
The so-called Arabs of Lebanon and Syria are, again, basically mestizos. They are a mix of Greeks (Alexander the Great and his army marched and planted their seed all over the place!), Romans, Arabs, Nabateans, Mesopotamians and Persians.
Because of the Greeks, Romans and even the 200 year Crusader presence, some Syrians are as white in color as you and me and have a wide variety of hair and eye colors. I think that is one reason that some anonymous government beaurocrat categorized Arabs as white.
Remember that this designation was made earlier in the century, when nearly all early Arab immigrants coming in were from the Levant, and to immigration officials, they were no different in appearance than many Eastern Europeans.
I, personally, think the census should be broken down into more categories so that, yes, euro-americans truly have an accurate look at the numbers and how they stack up against others. I know some Arabs, and they also bristle at the idea of being labelled as a white european american.
If American blacks are “African” Americans, then whites deserve the racial classifications European Americans .
I’ll buy that for a dollar.
Good, because they’re not white. There should be a category specifically for people of indigenous European stock.
“It’s unfair because we are not treated as white in society and by the government, but we also don’t qualify as minorities to get the benefits of some programs” such as minority contracts, said Imad Hamad
And thus we see the crux of the issue. If they’re qualified as white to the state, no free handouts for them!
Isn’t it funny with all this “white skinned privilege” these days that many don’t seem to want to be categorized as white? If it’s such a great advantage, why do some white people claim to be something else?
In reply to Jay, it seems that many Americans (such as Jay himself) I rather clueless as to phenotypical differences of asiatics and europeans, and unfortunately this ignorance extends to the classification department of the US census bureau.
“There is no such thing as white culture,” said Thaddeus Radzilowski, president of the Piast Institute, a Polish-American group in Hamtramck that is one of 56 census Information Centers in the United States and the only one in Michigan. Having the ancestry question “provides a better notion of our pluralistic society and who we are,” Radzilowski said.
Couldn’t agree more. Race alone is NOT enough to create a viable nation, nor is it the sole basis for culture. In order to establish a genuine culture, you not only need common ancestry, but common history, language, tradition, sense of destiny, myths, etc.
People here seem to think that as long as everyone is pale, things will be A OK! WRONG! Race is just one ingredient in a much, MUCH larger recipe.
39 Historama: You are right. Once we get the country genetically cleaned up, we will need to clean it up culturally as well. Those Whites who have discarded their patrimony can live out their lives doing useful labor, under the kindly direction of wise overseers. Their fit offspring will be given to racially aware couples to raise. In 30 years, rather than the multi-cultural cesspit that the MSM promises us, we’ll have a new nation, filling all of the present day United States and Canada with a population half of what it is now. Let the Third World fix itself, while we tend our own garden. In the struggles of the future, we don’t need to be burdened with a couple hundred million parasites, predators, layabouts, and turncoats.
As an interesting aside, the Teutonic destroyers of the Roman Empire were well aware of the phenotypic distinctions between northern and southern Europeans.
I think one thing we can all agree on, is if looked at close enough the perception of any subject becomes debatable. People will never be in perfect agreement on anything but the simplest subjects. The northern Germans (I believe) tratitionally looked down their noses at the Bavarians… The northern Italians looked down on the southern Italians..The English looked down on the Australians… The whitest(lightest skinned) Europeans are likely the most northern,..the Mediteranian are usually more olive complected..the Slavs have their variations.. The Greeks theirs and I’d be surprised if there weren’t admixtures ..especially in borders between racial types. PURITY if taken to its extreme… leads to sterility or a vacumn. Every system of beliefs will likely have a variation within it from the right to left…accomodating the yin and yang spectrum found in all nature. The subject of Race…to me, demands subtleness but not illusiveness. In the slave revolt of Spartacus…if I’m not mistaken there were some 70 thousand rebels…fighting against what to them was a brutal insensitive regime that in its opulence lost touch with the horrid existence for slaves and gladiators. 10 thousand of these apparently were German and refused to march with the others, likely considering themselves superior.. these were quickly decimated to the man. The others together triumphed amazingly well but for their own lust for material gain and glory came back toward Rome where they too were decimated. Yes there are differences amongst the European ethnicity’s and in my opinion there should be room for the preservation of these differences…but if what makes us different is exhaulted above what we have had in common for thousands of years… I’m not sure that will serve our collective interests best.
Arabs are often of darker complexion (but some could pass for Italians, Spaniards, Greeks), they are third worlders and they are practice a hostile religion.
That said, I wouldn’t call them “non-white.” Pigmentation isn’t that important to anthropology. Bone structure matters much more.
A similar instinctive grasp of what ‘white’ actually means is held, curiously, by the Russians.A ‘real’ Russian (ie a slavic Russian)regards the people of the caucasus (ie Georgians, Chechens etc) as being ‘black’ even though they are actually fairly light-skinned and usually only having black hair and eyes.
Interesting. Do Russians consider southern Europeans like Greeks or south Italians “black” as well?
