BallotVox

Obama Is Not an Arab — But So What If He Were?

[John Weise / Flickr]

At the same Minnesota rally last week at which McCain said Obama wasn’t a scary guy, he also clarified that Obama is not an Arab. “No, ma’am,” he said, in response to a woman who felt Obama was of Arab extraction, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues…”

A lot of people jumped on McCain for the way he phrased his defense. Jodha, who writes on a Sikh-diaspora blog called The Langar Hall, explains that McCain failed to say anything positive about Arabs. He also feels that Obama hasn’t been front and center championing Arab Americans or Muslim Americans, either. (Thanks to volunteer curator Roshan Abraham.)

McCain did not say that Arabs are decent people, instead we are left to infer that “Arabs” and “decent, family man” are somehow antonyms. Barack Obama should not be let off the hook either as he is just as complicit. Earlier when his Democrat primary opponents were trying to smear him, he distanced himself from being Arab and Muslim (which of course he is not!), but did not stop that conversation and say Arabs and Muslims are just as American as anyone else.

Jodha goes on to say that after 9/11, when many Sikhs were confused with Arabs, they at first denied being “the enemy”; then they realized it was more productive to say, “We are all Americans.” To this day, Jodha continues to do that:

I am a proud Sikh. And if someone asks me about my religion, culture, ethnicity, etc., I have no problem to take the time to explain something about our Sikh qaum. However, I remember I was at a bus station, when a man came up to me and said, “Are you a f—ing dirty Ay-rab?” I said, “Yes I am, what the f— are you going to do?” Although I probably didn’t handle the situation in the best manner (and I hope I’ve grown up since then, but am never really sure), still even today I would make the same statement (although hopefully in a better manner).

So today, as I see the political discourse allowing for sinister Arabophobia and Muslimophobia, I stand in solidarity and say “Yes I am Arab….even though I am a Sikh.”

Will we hear anything similar on the campaign trail?