ABSTRACT
Arab bodies are marked with pre-assigned meanings in the United States: suspected terrorist, presumed religious fanatic, backward; Arabs are “Other,” existing outside of the ideological scope of “belonging” within the United States. Located within a racial paradox, Arab-Americans are simultaneously racialized as white and non-white ( Joseph; N. Naber; Saliba; Samhan). Not legally recognized by the US government as a minority group, and unable to fit into the racial and ethnic categories used by the US Census: black, white, Asian, Native, and Latino – Arabs are not legally “raced” and therefore presumably white. However, at the same time, signified as oppositional to US democratic civilization, Arab-Americans are placed outside the boundaries of “whiteness,” and paradoxically positioned as “not quite white” (Bhabha 1994: 86; Samhan 1999: 210).
