Arab-Americans yearning
Long for inclusion, change in Michigan city
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Sixth in a series of occasional articles.
DEARBORN, Mich. - This is a city whose streets were paved for Fords. There is
But there's another striking set of names on signs here: the Al-Ameer Restaurant, the Arabian Town Center, Yassine's Royal Pastries.
Dearborn has two claims to fame - it is the headquarters of Ford Motor Co., and it has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans of any US city - and the last eight years have seen dramatic changes in both arenas. The automotive industry has been in steep decline, taking Michigan's economy down with it, while the Arab-American population has been growing, maturing, and facing complex challenges flowing from Sept. 11 and the Iraq war.
As America prepares to vote, the large and diverse Arab-American community of Dearborn finds itself striving but shunned, eager to engage but often unwelcome, and with concerns born of ethnicity overshadowed by concerns about the economy.
"We need to stop the war and work on the local economy," said Norman Hamood, 48, who has been helping out at a convenience store since losing his job when his auto plant closed in 2005. Hamood, who was born in Michigan after his parents emigrated from Lebanon, went on to say, "America should be first."
About 35 percent of the city's 100,000 residents are Arab-American, most of them Muslim, whereas statewide most Arab-American residents are Christian. Dearborn is home to five mosques; the city's Fordson High School student body is 90 percent Arab-American, and there are streets where most of the signs are in Arabic as well as English.
"When I first came, you could hardly see anyone talking Arabic - now you drive down Warren and that's all you see," said Hassan Beidoun, who came to Dearborn from Lebanon in 1978. Beidoun owns a BP gas station on a busy corner here, but says the amount people spend on extras like cigarettes, soda, and chips is down by 20 percent. "The economy is getting bad - we are working twice as hard, and not making any money," he said.
Beidoun, 51, has five sons, and says his goal is that their lives will be easier than his. His eldest son, Ali, is the president of the student body at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, and thinks about a career in politics - last year he worked on a successful ballot measure for the Detroit Zoo - but his dad worries that an Arab-American can't succeed in political life, and wants his son to be a lawyer.
Father and son both thought of themselves as Republicans until this year. "I was a Republican for the social issues, and fiscally," Ali said. "But now, times have changed, and we need to adjust."
The Arab-American community has become more Democratic, according to Ronald Stockton, a political scientist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Stockton said elements of the community had leaned Republican for economic and social policy reasons. But, he said, the community's concerns about civil liberties, widespread opposition to the Iraq war, and a sense that the Democratic Party is more welcoming to ethnic minorities, have pushed them toward the Democrats over the last eight years. Stockton said many immigrants are wary of US politics, "But in this community, the leaders have been so aggressive in trying to get people registered to vote."
At mosques and community centers, young Arab-Americans are signing up friends and elders as part of an ambitious drive called Yalla Vote, meaning let's go vote.
"We want to make a statement, because that will enhance our position politically as a community," said Hassan Jaber, executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn.
In 2000, leading Muslim organizations endorsed GOP nominee George W. Bush after he criticized the government for using "secret evidence" against Arab-Americans. But many Arab-Americans are furious with Bush over the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, and what they see as ethnic profiling after Sept. 11. This year, the organizations are not endorsing candidates, and polls suggest Arab-Americans are favoring Democrat Barack Obama.
The Arab-American population in Dearborn dates back more than a century, because of Ford's open hiring practices, and surged as people fled the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s. Others have come from Yemen and, most recently, Iraq.
A new Arab American National Museum, affiliated with the Smithsonian, has opened directly across from Dearborn City Hall. Exhibits trace the first arrival of Arabs as slaves from north Africa, the waves of immigration that began in the late 19th century, the accomplishments of prominent Americans of Arab heritage, and trivia: There were 154 people of Arab heritage on the Titanic. The museum also tackles the identity issues that Arabs face in the United States, including a provocative video of Arab-American teens wrestling with an identity that often marks them for ridicule or worse.
Many Arab-Americans criticize both parties for their uncritical embrace of US policy in the Middle East, including unqualified support for Israel.
But the decline of the auto industry, which drove Michigan into an earlier and deeper economic swoon than in the rest of the United States, has introduced more pressing concerns for many here. The unemployment rate in Dearborn has more than doubled over the last eight years, rising from 2.9 percent in August 2000 to 6.6 percent in August 2008, according to the Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Growth.
"What rocks the entire country rocks our community," said Imam Hassan Qazwini, the Iraqi-born spiritual leader of a booming new gilded and multi-domed mosque here called, ambitiously, the Islamic Center of America. "The economy has become a major factor among the entire Muslim community."
Eight years ago, on the eve of the Bush-Gore election, Qazwini, visited the University of Michigan at Dearborn to try to persuade Muslim students that participating in politics was not un-Islamic; since that time, he says, "the community grew up," numerically, economically, and politically, and civic participation is no longer debated.
The last eight years have brought a new trauma for Arab-Americans - the aftermath of Sept. 11. Community officials say Arabs are targeted and profiled at airports and borders, and that the process for Arabs becoming American citizens is slower than for other immigrants.
"Our community is disproportionately investigated, and there is a selective enforcement and execution of our laws," said Nabih Ayad, a lawyer who works with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Michigan.
That's one reason Muslim institutions have become more engaged with the community.
"Muslims started to look harder at their American identity, and started to think of themselves as Americans as well as Muslims," said Mohamed El-Fakharany, 36, interviewed at the predominantly Yemeni Dearborn Mosque. "They started to become active in defending civil liberties."
There has also been a demographic shift, with the rise of a generation of Arab- Americans born in the United States, and therefore less preoccupied with the Middle East than their parents, and more fully assimilated into American culture.
"My generation grew up in an era when we feared calling ourselves Arab-American, but my kids' generation carry their Arabism as a badge of honor," said Jumana Judeh, a Palestinian-American who served for a time on the Dearborn Heights city council and who now works as a real estate appraiser. For the first presidential debate, Judeh hosted a gathering of influential locals who, while munching on falafel and humus and sweet Mediterranean pastries, reflected on changes in their community.
Many of those at the debate party said that, even as the community becomes more politically active, its members feel unwanted by either political party.
"What's upsetting to me is you're completely discounted by both parties," said Ahmad Ezzeddine, an associate vice president at Wayne State University. Ezzeddine, who immigrated to the US from Lebanon 20 years ago, said he voted twice for President Bush, but now feels politically orphaned, adding, "There's no attempt to reach out. Obama wants us, but is so afraid because he doesn't want to be labeled, and the Republicans . . ."
Nawal Hamadeh, also an immigrant from Lebanon, has founded three charter schools in the Detroit-Dearborn area, and reports a similar experience. "I used to be solicited all the time, with invitations to dinners, phone calls and letters asking for donations, but I have not seen this lately," said Hamadeh, who said she voted for Bush in 2000 and independent Ralph Nader (a Lebanese-American) in 2004.
The Democrats at the gathering were disdainful of GOP nominee John McCain; the Republicans were just sad.
"There were a lot of Arab-American Republicans, and I don't know if they've become Democrats, but they've become frustrated - President Bush lost us," said Tim Attalla, a second-generation Palestinian-American lawyer. "We're Americans, and we should be included like anybody else - the same concerns that concern the Smiths concern the Alis."
Michael Paulson blogs about religion at boston.com/religion and can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
