Foundations for an Arab/MENA Psychology

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110609
Author(s):  
Germine Awad ◽  
Ayse Ikizler ◽  
Laila Abdel Salam ◽  
Maryam Kia-Keating ◽  
Bahaur Amini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
Multicultural Psychology ◽  
North African ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
American Psychology

Arab/Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) American psychology is a field rooted in ethnic studies and multicultural psychology. Although its study is relatively nascent in U.S. psychology, it has slowly been growing since the 1990s. The events of 9/11 resulted in an increase in psychological research on the Arab/MENA population in the United States, providing empirical evidence to inform the historical and social foundations for an Arab/MENA psychology. This article seeks to identify key elements and factors present in an Arab/MENA psychology focusing on issues of identity and recognition, discrimination, cumulative racial-ethnic trauma, acculturation, and cultural values, such as hospitality and generosity, morality, family centricity, honor and shame, religiosity, and communication style.

scholarly journals The United States Supreme Court case Ziglar v. Abbasi and the severe psychological and physiological harms of solitary confinement

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Ordway ◽  
Jessica Djilani ◽  
Alexandria Swette
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Court Case ◽  
North African ◽  
Federal Prison ◽  
Asian Men ◽  
Supreme Court Case

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a group of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian men was arrested for immigration violations, held as “terrorism suspects,” and detained in federal prison for months. Each of these men was, or was believed to be, Muslim or Arab. These men (the “Detainees”) alleged that they were detained solely on the basis of their religion or race, and that there was no individualized basis to suspect them of terrorism. They further alleged that, during their detention, they were abused physically and verbally and subjected to inhumane conditions, including solitary confinement. After several months, the Detainees were cleared of any connection to terrorism and deported. The Detainees allege that they suffered severe psychological and physiological harms as a result of the conditions of their detention and that they continue to suffer the effects of this trauma today.

White Categorical Ambiguity: Exclusion of Middle Eastern Americans From the White Racial Category

2020 ◽  
pp. 194855062093054
Author(s):  
Kimberly E. Chaney ◽  
Diana T. Sanchez ◽  
Lina Saud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
North African ◽  
Racial Categorization ◽  
Racial Category ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racially Ambiguous ◽  
Middle Eastern Americans

Despite legal classification as White, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans experience high levels of discrimination, suggesting low social status precludes them from accessing the White racial category. After first demonstrating that the rated Whiteness of MENA Americans influences support for discriminatory policies (Study 1), the present research explores ratings and perceptions of Whiteness of MENA Americans by demonstrating how MENA ethnicities shift racial categorization of prototypically White and racially ambiguous targets (Studies 2–4), and how MENA Americans’ social status influences rated Whiteness (Study 5). As few studies have explored the relative Whiteness of different ethnicities in the United States despite the fluid history of the White racial category, the present studies have implications for the processes that inform White categorization and lay categorizations of MENA Americans.

scholarly journals Arab Diaspora Women

1970 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
North African ◽  
Middle Eastern Women ◽  
Women And Girls

Portraying the lives of North African and Middle Eastern women and girls in places as diverse as Argentina, Canada, France, India, and the United States accentuates the artificiality of the concept "Arab diaspora." As many of the articles in this file point out, a constructed sense of group identity was initially externally imposed. It was based more on the defining power of host societies than on any common denominators easily recognized by the respective Arab immigrant communities themselves.

Racing the Muslim: Strategies for Teaching Race and Ethnic Studies in the Education Curriculum

2020 ◽  
pp. 004208592097244
Author(s):  
Stanley Ilango Thangaraj
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Education Curriculum ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Global War

In this paper, I insert the importance of teaching race through Middle Eastern America and Muslim America. By bringing in critical analysis of Middle Eastern America and Muslim America, I offer theoretical insights and pedagogical strategies in the education curriculum to teach race that will deconstruct, destabilize, and interrogate the dominant White-Black racial logic in the United States. While my theoretical engagement with Critical Race Theory complicates how we theorize race in the United States, I couple the theory with transhistorical, transnational, embodied, performative pedagogical strategies to enable a wide assortment of ways to engage with the dynamism, fluidity, and constantly shifting nature of race and Whiteness through an engagement with scholarship on Middle Eastern America and Muslim America. I present a way to teach race that enriches the curriculum on race in the education program while preparing future educators with resources to support students and expand the conversation on race and racism during this time of the “global war on terror” and rising Islamophobia.

scholarly journals After the American Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-127
Author(s):  
Mojtaba Ebrahimian
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The United States ◽  
North African ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
American Century ◽  
The World ◽  
American Media ◽  
P 16

Brian T. Edwards’ book boasts of an insightful interdisciplinary approach thatdraws upon his expertise in anthropology, literary and cultural studies, Americanstudies, and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) studies. His approachand overall argument can benefit both the specialists in these disciplinesand the non-academic audience interested in the MENA region’s contemporarycultural history and connection to the United States’ international cultural politics.Edwards introduces two principal concepts to formulate his arguments:the “ends of circulation” and “jumping publics.” In his view, the former describes“new contexts for American texts” and the latter explicates “the wayculture moves through the world in the digital age” (p. 27).He offers four reasons why the circulation of cultural products “acrossborders and publics” is important to the contemporary American audience. First, “The U.S. Department of State has invested time and funding in propagatingthe circulation of American culture.” Second, “American media venueshave a continuing interest in this topic, whether in the coverage of theEgyptian revolution or in the popular fascination with books such as ReadingLolita in Tehran (2003) that depict Americans or American culture displacedin the Middle East.” Third, many “popular and influential writers,” including“the developmentalist Daniel Lerner in the 1950s to Thomas Friedman in the1990s and 2000s to media studies journalist Clay Shirky, assume a technocentricor cyberutopian determinism,” and thus consider “access to newtechnologies and media” and “modernization and freedom” inevitably intertwined.And fourth, “In the fields of American literary studies and comparativeliterature, the ways in which the American culture and literature aretaken up around the world puts pressure on the ways of doing things in thosedisciplines” (p. 16) ...

Changing Boundaries of Whiteness? Demographic and Social Determinants of Middle Eastern and North African Marriage Trends in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 233264922096049
Author(s):  
Elyas Bakhtiari ◽  
Deenesh Sohoni
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
Period Effect ◽  
North African ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
Changing Patterns

Intermarriage is an important indicator of immigrant integration trajectories and the rigidity of ethnoracial boundaries. Although questions of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) integration and social exclusion occupy a central place in public discourse, little is known about their marriage patterns. The authors use the 2017 American Community Survey to estimate patterns of coethnic, panethnic, and intergroup marriages for MENA populations. Compared with other immigrant groups, rates of intermarriage are relatively high, and there is little evidence of “panethnic” patterns of marriage. However, more recent marriages have become less exogamous. Hierarchical age-period-cohort models suggest that this is driven by changing patterns among more recent cohorts, with some evidence of a post-2001 period effect among men. Compositional changes in the country of origin account for some, but not all, of these cohort effects. The findings highlight the importance of further research on MENA Americans to understand their unique social experiences of the U.S. ethnoracial hierarchy, particularly in the context of increasing racialized anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination after 2001.

Middle Eastern and North African Studies: Development & Needs

1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Morroe Berger
Keyword(s):  
International Education ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Department ◽  
North African ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Education Act ◽  
Near Eastern Studies

The following report was prepared by Morroe Berger, professor of sociology and director of the Program in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University (and president of MESA), at the request of the assistant secretary for education in the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It is one of the series of reports on the world’s regions in connection with the implementation of the International Education Act. This report reflects, of course, Professor Berger’s views which are not necessarily those of the agency which requested the report or of MESA. The Bulletin Invites comment from MESA members on the report and on any of the issues raised in it. Readers should bear in mind that Professor Berger prepared and submitted the report early in May 1967, before the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

scholarly journals Alternate Cultural Paradigms in Psychology: Long Overdue Recognition and Further Articulations

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110481
Author(s):  
Andrés J. Consoli ◽  
Linda James Myers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
American Psychological Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
North African ◽  
American Psychological ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Mainstream Psychology

Many ethnic-acknowledging psychology researchers, practitioners, and their allies have expressed dissatisfaction with Eurowestern, mainstream psychology in the United States as it shows serious shortcomings when used to understand and serve minoritized communities. Eurowestern psychology has been criticized for its imperialistic, one-size-fits-all view of humanity. Accordingly, we challenge the neglect of the history and value of ethnic acknowledgment in psychology perpetrated and maintained by Eurowestern psychology, including mainstream psychology in the United States. We operationalize such challenge by articulating the construct of alternate cultural paradigms, by following it with a series of contributions authored by leading figures from each of the Ethnic Acknowledging Psychological Associations (EAPAs) in the United States, and by closing with a commentary by a renowned scholar in the field. The current article, followed by five separate and distinct articles from authors identified with each of the EAPAs (i.e., the Association of Black Psychologists [ABPsi], the National Latinx Psychological Association [NLPA], the Society of Indian Psychologists [SIP], the Asian American Psychological Association [AAPA], the Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African Psychological Association [AMENA-Psy]), together with a concluding commentary conforms the Special Issue on alternate cultural paradigms in psychology in the United States.

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