Friends & neighbors

The changing face of Black and Arab relations in he aftermath of Sept. 11

It was like a bad skit on Saturday Night Live.

Black civil rights activists and Arab leaders arguing, pointing fingers and hurling insults at each other. Except this tension was real, and on a special Detroit television news program, Cultures in Crisis, no less. Black activists were charging Arab merchants with racial profiling and economically exploiting Black communities. Arab activists were countercharging that it was Black people who endangered hard-working Arab merchants - stealing from them, and sometimes worse - that it was Black people who, at bottom, simply resented Arab economic success.

It was raw, and bitter, and for anyone watching that day, it was going to be hard to forget.

Just two weeks later, though, the world changed dramatically.

Terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, and in an instant shifted the nation's reality.

The terrorists were identified as Arab-born, and suddenly in the United States, Arabs and Arab Americans were under siege, targets of a shaken nation's suspicion. Hastily crafted, broad anti-terrorist legislation with ominous implications for civil liberties and civil rights was developing on the national and state level, understandably frightening Arab communities in metro Detroit, which has the largest concentration of Arabs living outside the Middle East.

Arab Americans again were battling over issues of racial profiling, only this time they were the ones making the accusations. And to whom did they turn in search of an ally? The Black community.

Naturally, African American civil rights leaders were just as concerned as Arab leaders about potential injustices, and they quickly spoke out against any abuse of Arab Americans.

But there is a peculiar kind of madness gripping Detroit these days, and while Sept. 11 changed quite a bit, there are some things that didn't change much at all, some things that are hard to forget.

The Roots of Discord

It wasn't long before those common civil rights concerns among Black and Arab residents were crashing head-first into the longstanding problems between the two communities. The alliance forced by the immediate circumstances of a post-- Sept. 11 America was by its nature a delicate dance. While some Black activists rushed to the defense of the Arab community, the Detroit NAACP, along with others, seemed to be asking: "What have you done for me lately?"

Heaster Wheeler, executive director of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, said just that in a memo to Michael J. Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Wheeler noted that the local NAACP had signed a Sept. 21 coalition statement to Northwest Airlines expressing deep concern over apparent racial profiling of four Northwest passengers of Middle Eastern descent After being asked a third time to sign yet another coalition statement, however, Wheeler reminded Steinberg of the serious unresolved issues between Detroit's Black and Arab residents.

"There is no question as to where we (the NAACP) stand on the issues of racial profiling, period!" wrote Wheeler, who was one of the guests on the television show. "The question is where do so many of the others stand?

"Just two weeks prior to Sept. 11, African Americans, Arabs and Chaldeans (Iraqi immigrants) were arguing (on television) over respect, service quality and business issues regarding gas stations and grocery stores in Detroit.... Few of these merchants provide scholarships or support Little League or even provide safe passage in and out of their businesses.

"Where was this coalition in response to African American frustration?"

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, says that he is keenly aware of the civil rights/civil liberties issues at stake, but that Wheeler's memo was quite necessary.

"We cannot spend all of our energy concerned with our Arab American brothers when at the same time they do not express the same concerns about us," he says. "I believe we do have more in common than differences. However, it is only going to be resolved when leaders of the African American and Arab communities sit around a common table and address those issues."

The ACLU and Arab American activists were flabbergasted. Beyond expressing surprise at the position, however, the Michigan ACLU's leadership declines to comment on the matter.

Terry Ahwal, a Palestinian-born Arab American and longtime activist, is a different story.

"People in the African American community have to understand the trauma the Arab community has been going through since Sept. 11," she says.

Ahwal has lived in the United States for more than 25 years and is a Democratic Party activist in metro Detroit. She cried, she says, for three weeks after the terrorist attack.

"It is the worst type of trauma when you feel you are constantly under siege. Your loyalty and commitment to the country is constantly being questioned and you have been accused of the worst crime against humanity. How do you convince the world you are not the terrorist everybody thinks you are?"

The Rev. Horace Sheffield, pastor of New Galilee Baptist Church in Detroit and Michigan president of Al Sharpton's National Action Network, also participated in the televised discussion on Detroit's Channel 7. He has been the city's most outspoken critic of what he considers to be the contemptuous attitude of too many Arab merchants toward Black consumers. With a moment's notice, he can unfurl a list of grievances: the death two years ago of Kalvin Porter, a 34-year-old Black electrician who, as his children watched, was fatally beaten by two Yemeni immigrant gas station attendants; an incident during the summer, in which a Black woman accused an Arab merchant of attacking her, and another incident shortly after in which an Arab gas station attendant was charged with assaulting a 13-year-old boy whom he suspected of stealing. Those incidents prompted Sheffield to initiate a 30-day Black boycott of Arab-owned gas stations in August.

"It's similar to Blacks and Koreans in L.A. and Blacks and Pakistanis in Chicago. In every city it's the same," Sheffield says. "They adopt the prototypical perspective. One that allows them to be comfortable with a relationship based upon the economic subservience of Blacks."

"There needs to be some earnest evaluation of whether this collaboration (on civil rights and civil liberties) will continue after their threat has passed," he says. "We want people to partner with us and continue to deal with us, not just because they need us, but because they respect us."

Ahwal says she understands the frustration of African Americans, who have waged a long struggle against discrimination in Michigan. She understands the feeling that poor Black communities have about outside merchants - Jewish, Asian, Arabs - who seem to be able to get a stronger foothold economically in those communities than the people who live there.

Still, she has questions about the way some of its activists deal with those issues.

"Blacks perceive the Arabs as economically exploitive of their community and disrespectful," she says. "Arabs believe Blacks are people who will steal from them or even kill them. And people like Horace Sheffield come in and instead of saying, `How do we get to know each other?,' they like to divide and conquer. It doesn't help anyone.

"But having said that, shame on us in the Arab community who see something wrong in the African American community and not say anything."

Great Migrations

The Great Migration brought thousands of African Americans from the nation's rural South to the urban North. Millions of Black people traveled to states like Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan seeking jobs and a better life. They carved out those lives making steel in places like Youngstown and Gary or processing livestock into meat on Chicago's killing floors. In Michigan, though, they built their new lives with jobs in auto plants. And by the time that industry was losing steam, African Americans had produced Motown and political mavericks like Coleman Young. Today, Michigan's population is about 14 percent African American, and in Detroit itself, Black people make up more than 80 percent of the residents.

The Arab migration started as a steady trickle of immigrants into the United States - including to Detroit, where some went to work in the auto plants that picked up dramatically after the Arab-Israel wars of 1967 and 1973.

"After '67 war, that's when you had a floodgate of Arabs come over," says Imad Hamad, midwest regional director for the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee (ADC). Many of those who came to the United States were merchants fleeing war-- devastated economies. They weren't wealthy but had some resources and were arriving just as Detroit businesses were fleeing civic unrest in the city.

"With the riots in Detroit, businesses that had been in Detroit moved out in droves, and the Arab merchants saw an opportunity," Hamad says.

According to Nasser Beydoun, a Lebanese American and executive director of the national American Arab Chamber of Commerce, about 75 percent of the Detroit area's 1,400 service stations are owned by people of Middle Eastern descent. They also own about 90 percent of the 47 independent convenience stores, or party stores, as they're known in Michigan.

Today, the largest majority of Michigan's Middle Eastern population lives in Dearborn, a western suburb of Detroit, with a general population of about 100,000, a third of which is of Middle Eastern heritage.

Dearborn has become a hub of Arab economic and growing political influence. The nation's largest mosque, the $15 million Islamic Center of North America, is currently under construction in Dearborn. And just this fall, Abed Hammoud, a 35-year-old Wayne County assistant prosecutor, ran unsuccessfully for mayor.

Business as Usual

Jack Saad runs the Happy Four, a party store on the west side of Detroit that his family has owned for 37 years. Outside, the parking lot is strewn with litter and broken bottles, a half dozen, gaunt, inebriated Black men loiter by the entrance underneath an enormous awning that shouts "Liquor" and "Beer & Wine." It's 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. Inside, past the deli section offering sub sandwiches and pizza, Saad, 52, a Lebanese immigrant with a heavy accent, is jovial when speaking with a reporter and regular customers, many of whom work at the main post office across the street.

Saad's nephew stands before shelves of liquor six bottles deep and countless rows of cigarettes, manning the cash register and lottery machine from behind bullet-proof glass. Business is brisk. Saad says three-fourths of his customers are Black (the others are white and Hispanic) and that he has good relationships with them. Because his store is in a commercial area where most patrons are employed, he says he doesn't face many of the problems merchants in metropolitan Deroit neighborhoods encounter.

As he leaves the store, a Black postal worker, who declines to give his name, says that problems exist between the two groups, because Arab merchants don't respect the African American community. Customer Allen Smith, 36, an African American, agrees that there is tension, but says Black people are unfair to Arabs. He says during the last couple of months, while riding the bus, he's often overheard Blacks saying that Arabs "look dangerous," but he hasn't ever heard whites making such comments.

Saad sees no permanent problems between Blacks and Arabs. Since Sept. 11 he says, "No one, Black, white, or Spanish, has said a bad word to me. They treat me better I think."

Common Ground

The issue for Arab Americans and African Americans is not the shared disdain for racial profiling or the coalition's objectives of justice and fairness for Arab Americans, says Ronald Walters, professor of political science and government at the University of Maryland. It is about the principles of reciprocity and respect.

"It (the NAACP's) is an appropriate position to take," Walters says. "If they ask for our help then they ought to be equally willing to support our concerns too." He believes, however, that there ought to be a way to work out these problems.

"This is an issue that crosses ethnic and racial lines because so many people in the Black community are Muslim," he says. "We have responsibility to protect them too. If we don't, racial profiling will intensify. And people who want to racial profile Arabs don't give a damn and don't [care] who is Arab, Black, or not." Harold Curry, a life member of the national NAACP and Detroit area attorney specializing in alternative dispute resolution, says the issue is more fundamental than that.

"The NAACP has an unconditional obligation to fight racial profiling regardless of who is the victim, or their racial ethnicity," he says. "It's not about reciprocity. It's an independent obligation not conditioned upon receiving anything in return. To do anything less is a betrayal of its own principles," says Curry, a member of the North Oakland County (Michigan) Branch of the NAACP.

"These guys are bartering with the NAACP, and that's inappropriate. Justice shouldn't be conditional."

Anthony says it's wrong to suggest the Detroit NAACP is compromising its commitment to fighting racial profiling, or insensitive to the plight of Detroit's Arab community.

"I have personally been to the White House [and] Capitol Hill to testify about this nefarious issue of racial profiling for years," he says. "I've stood with my Arab brothers to denounce it."

But "the issue of how you treat people when they come in your store has to be addressed by Arabs," he says.

Imad Hamad of the ADC, acknowledges that the NAACP had reached out to ADC to offer support early on.

Still, he adds, there is a lot of work left to be done to build more trust between the two communities.

"Everybody realizes this is a challenge beyond one community," he says. The "USA Patriot Act," signed into law by President Bush in October, will haunt both Blacks and others who cherish their civil liberties, Hamad says.

Critics of the federal law argue that it gives sweeping new powers to both domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies. Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's national office in Washington, says it eviscerates many of the checks and balances that were put into place after these agencies' previous misuse of surveillance powers, including spying on innocent citizens.

James E. Turner, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University and a professor of political sociology, says the federal bill and similar state bills are essentially omnibus security legislation of which both African Americans and Arab Americans must be leery.

"The bills themselves are so loosely constructed in terms of their targets that they can be used later for all forms of investigations and security investigations are by definition politically motivated," he says.

And those tensions between Blacks and Arabs?

"The NAACP is right to say, `Hey, let's talk about this.' Yes, this is the critical issue of the moment, but we have to look beyond the moment to see what will be the long-term relationship and what will be mutually beneficial," Turner says, adding that being distracted from the implications of the anti-terror legislation would be a dangerous error.

Ronald Stockton, interim director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, also says Detroit civil rights leaders have a legitimate grievance.

"If I were advising the NAACP, what I would say is go to the Arab American community and say, `Whatever you need, we will back you,"' he says. "That would make that community beholden to them."

Barriers to Trust

The Rev. Horace Sheffield, pastor of New Galilee Baptist Church, understands the points made by Turner and Stockton, but he has another point:

The Black community can't ignore the possibility that some Arab Detroit residents do have ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations - even if they are only tenuous, such as sending money home to those who may belong to organizations hostile to U.S. interests.

Noting that a high-ranking commander of the Michigan State Police publicly acknowledged this as a concern, Sheffield says, "Even before the Michigan State Police released their information, there had been some concern in our community that we might be financing and fostering domestic terrorism perpetrated against American people by our spending our money in these party stores."

Nouhad El Hajj, a Lebanese American and publisher of the Detroitbased Arab American Journal, takes strong exception to such allegations.

"There has never been any proof of any ties between any Arab groups in Michigan to any terrorist groups in any country," he says. "Even the Michigan State Police backed off from that earlier statement and apologized to the Arab community."

Beydoun, of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce, goes a step further. "I think Horace Sheffield is a crackpot," he says. I have the utmost respect for the Rev. Anthony and Heaster Wheeler, but Horace Sheffield is a crackpot who doesn't know what he's talking about." Sheffield, he says, is using Sept. 11 to promote his own agenda.

"There are issues between the Arab American community and African American community that need to be resolved," Beydoun says. "But it can only happen with serious African American leaders and organizations such as the NAACP, the Urban League and New Detroit.

"The differences are not racial. They are economic, and I think it is incumbent upon us as Arab Americans to ensure that African Americans enjoy the same economic opportunities that we enjoy," Beydoun says.

Arab condescension toward Black people is at the root of the problem, Sheffield argues. Black residents do resent that Arabs, in less than three decades, have come into their communities, economically exploited them and then blamed them for being upset.

And yet, Sheffield concedes, African American civil rights activists can't sit by silently in the face of injustices such as racial profiling, whether it's against Arabs or anyone else.

World's Apart

Abdullah El-Amin is an orthodox Sunni Muslim. An African American, he was born in Arkansas 56 years ago, but grew up in Detroit. He converted to Islam in 1976 and currently is the Imam at the Muslim Center in Detroit, the Michigan editor of the Muslim Observer and the executive director of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan. He's also a lifetime member of the NAACP.

His feet are firmly planted in both worlds. El-Amin says he vividly remembers sitting in his living room staring at a television screen as Black and Arab activists went at it. He could only watch so much before his frustration and disgust made him turn it off.

"It was very disturbing from a human standpoint," he says. "That they would be at each other's throat like that, when the bigger devil goes scot-free. I think there should be more dialogue so there will be more understanding."

He speaks highly of the NAACP's Anthony, calling him a man who has reached out to other people of color, including Arabs. And he distinguishes between African Americans and African American Muslims, citing that it is the religion that generates his and other Black Muslims' bond with Arab Americans.

"From the Muslim perspective, the Muslim community, which includes Blacks and Arabs and Pakistanis, we are very, very close. We have a very good relationship based upon the religion.

"We as African Americans have suffered the most discrimination and worst treatment of anybody on the face of this Earth and in the history of mankind. We understand when attention is focused on you in a negative manner.

"Because we understand this, and because we know it is so wrong, we are going to have to try to bring civil liberties across the board to all people."

It's equally urgent that Arab communities simultaneously address the issue of Black mistreatment.

Unless they are both given the same sort of weight, El-Amin says, neither is going to be resolved.

Trevor W. Coleman is an editorial writer and columnist for the Detroit Free Press.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Nov/Dec 2001
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