Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America's "War on Terror"

Abstract

[Note to Readers: This essay was submitted to Anthropological Quarterly on March 14, 2003. Since then, U.S. has invaded Iraq, deposed Saddam Hussein, and commenced its military occupation of that country. We have decided not to update our arguments, largely because recent events support our original conclusions ways we had not entirely anticipated. In a brief postscript, we will try to explain how.] Introduction It is hard now to portray Arab Detroit outside framework provided by attacks of September 11, 2001. idea, popular not so long ago, that Arabs of metropolitan Detroit had finally entered cultural mainstream, producing U.S. senators (Spencer Abraham) and union bosses (Steve Yokich, President of UAW) and captains of industry (Jacques Nasser, CEO of Ford), is likely to be dismissed today as wishful thinking. Once hailed as immigrant success story, as the capital of Arab America, image of Arab Detroit changed within hours of 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, it was a scene of threat, divided loyalties, and potential backlash. In suburb of Dearborn, home to 30,000 Arab Americans, began, after 9/11, to describe their neighborhoods as ghettoes and enclaves, a terminology of Otherness that was popular 19th century newspaper accounts of Detroit's newly arrived immigrants from Mt. Lebanon. Non-Arabs, for their part, began to use terms like you people when talking to Arab neighbors, relatives, and friends. In language of polite society, you people is replaced by unctuous, incessant references to the Muslim American or the Arab American community, a double-edged jargon that effectively subordinates individual citizens to a logic of collective responsibility even as it protects them from accusations of collective guilt. The 9/11 attacks, Arabs Detroit tell set us back a hundred years. collapse of history is a powerful motif. It captures much of what is happening Detroit. Arab community has played a critical role development of Detroit's economy and culture throughout 20th century, and its influence on high politics and everyday life Arab homelands-which are linked to Detroit by an irregular flow of money, information, ideas, and people-is so pervasive, so taken-for-granted, that scholars of Arab immigration to Americas are only now beginning to study it systematically (Khater 2000). As Bush administration's War on Terror expands, however, Arab Detroit's rich history of domestic integration and transnational connection is truncated, questioned, re-politicized, Americanized, and selectively erased. This radical transformation is rooted anxiety about boundaries: Arabs and Muslims are clearly in Detroit, with us, but their hearts might still be over there, with them. opposition is stark, and unrealistic, yet having it both ways, cultivating an identity that is both here and there-a sensible option that, an era of multicultural tolerance, is still possible for many immigrant and ethnic Americans-is no longer a position Arabs Detroit can easily embrace. defense of boundaries, we will argue, only accentuates centrality of state placing them; it also points to moral dimension of boundary maintenance, to being on right side of line and law. Rules, regulations, security protocols, and law enforcement technologies are never adequate to task of moralizing national boundaries. Loyalty to state (also known as patriotism) is affective medium which proper identity placement is made and measured. In aftermath of 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans have been compelled, time and again, to apologize for acts they did not commit, to condemn acts they never condoned, and to openly profess loyalties that, for most U.S. citizens, are merely assumed. Moreover, Arabs Detroit have been forced to distance themselves from Arab political movements, ideologies, causes, religious organizations, and points of view that are currently at odds with U. …