Opinion | Black, Arab or Black Arab is irrelevant when it comes to student trauma
Maisune Abu-Elhaija, graduate student studying Education with a Cultural and Curricular Studies emphasis
As an Arab, Muslim second-year Ph.D. student at Chapman University enrolled in the same Ph.D. program Ahmed Younis — an Introduction to Human Rights professor — graduated from, an incident where he used the N-word as part of his classroom lectures lingered on my mind these last two months. I reflected on how our Education program teaches critical pedagogy and I disagree with his implementation of our program’s teachings.
The core of this incident: it’s not OK for a non-Black person to say the N-word — regardless of academic context — because the Black community has said so.
They don’t need to qualify it with argumentative points, because true solidarity is listening when we’re told exactly how to be allies — even allies to our own communities. To stand in support of Black lives means we don’t get to decide what language is going to make them feel supported. This occurred in a human rights course, and though language is not an all-encompassing solution to human rights issues, it certainly can be utilized as a tool for activism when done correctly.
Younis is Egyptian and told The Panther he self-identifies as Black. Aissata Sall, the freshman student who led the complaint process, refuted this claim by providing a U.S. Census definition of white people, including those of Middle Eastern, North African (MENA) origins. Academically, MENA is becoming Southwest Asian, North African (SWANA) to reclaim this identity from colonization. It is not the core of this incident but remains important. To bypass the U.S. ban on Asian immigration in the 1960s, SWANAs were marked “white” upon arrival. I can’t tell you how many SWANAs have graduated college, or what their study retention rates or health disparities are because we are not counted — categorized under white without white privilege. In the last few decades, a U.S. sociopolitical movement rose to separate MENA/SWANA from Caucasian on the Census to identify racial needs.
This calls attention to Afro-Arabs and Black SWANAs. It is not my place as a non-Black SWANA to tell another Arab whether they can identify as Black. There exists narratives of Black people identifying as Black to preserve their racial ancestry, who identify because of colorism and certainly additional narratives. As an Egyptian who self-identifies as Black, it is imperative for Younis to consider the privilege he has. Though he may have experienced injustice due to the color of his skin, he is privileged with Egyptian origins in language, heritage, norms, traditions, food, clothing and more. Many Black people were stripped of their names and ancestry, and identifying as Black is about legacy. Younis needs to be aware that being Black has different meanings to his Black students.
Anti-Blackness is not a white issue. It exists and is deeply rooted in many communities of color, including Arabs and Egyptians. When highlighting his Black-Egyptian identity to qualify using the N-word, Younis did not hold a space to discuss how oppressive identities shift. While his colorism experiences as Black-Egyptian are valid, he was the perpetrator of oppression in his classroom when he used the N-word in a way that hurt his students. Impact is more important than intent as an instructor holding power over his students. Instead, he should host dialogues dissecting “-isms,” anti-Blackness in communities of color and how privileged and oppressive identities shift in different contexts.
In a comment Younis gave in The Panther’s initial article, he mentioned it is painful for students to experience learning about human rights, painful for Muslims learning Islamophobia and children of soldiers studying post-traumatic stress disorder. If it is painful for students to learn about their oppression, Younis should reexamine how to create a less painful classroom. The “pain” being discussed is an unexpected activation of trauma students are suddenly forced to recollect. Classrooms need to shift from traumatic to developmental. Critical pedagogy teaches to avoid tactics of oppressors when teaching the oppressed. Pedagogists like Paulo Freire would recommend Younis support students overcoming intergenerational trauma by working harder to mitigate classroom triggers.
This incident is not an isolated issue from Chapman. When students invest emotional energy into feedback on how to better serve them, Chapman should be grateful. As a historically white-serving institution in the middle of several racially-charged incidents, our campus has a choice to make. They can continue to allow students like Sall feel excluded and exhausted from just going to class, or they can see this as an opportunity to cultivate a better future for Chapman University.