How White are Arab-Americans After 9-11? Fear of Crime and the Faustian Pact

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

Until the tumultuous attacks of September 11, 2001, Arab-Americans were generally classified, within US Census categories, educational bureaucracies and other government institutions as part of an undifferentiated white population. However, the last fifteen years have been highly problematic for that status. From FBI sweeps and ethnic profiling at airports to anti-Arab hate crimes, NYPD spy operations against mosques, xenophobic rallies, and demands for ethnic exclusion and profiling, there has been a dramatic and sometimes traumatic reevaluation of the status and sense of belonging of Middle Easterners in the United States.
Drawing on 10,000 surveys and 2800 in depth interviews about fear of crime, attitudes towards police, and sense of safety and belonging in scores of neighborhoods across New York City this paper describes, analyzes, and inter-ethnically compares the responses of Middle Easterner to questions about crucial ontological categories of belonging such as fear, criminal deviance, safety and the role of police/authorities. Findings confirm Tehranian’s “Faustian pact” and suggest that Middle Eastern Americans remain, at the level of subjectivity, effectively white.

Authors

• Naomi Haber, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Mohamed Habib, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Anthony Marcus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Samantha Jean, Borough of Manhattan Community College