The Arab American Studies Association denounces all forms of white supremacy and the policing systems designed to uphold it. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer and in support of nationwide uprisings against state violence and anti-Black racism, we come back to the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who defines racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” Lethal racism has long targeted Black communities, supported police violence and resulted in the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Yassin Mohamed, Michael Brown, Alexia Christian, Mya Hall, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and so many more. Premature death due to lethal racism also manifests as police complicity in white supremacist vigilante violence, as in the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin. AASA stands against all instances of lethal racism and in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives and the Say Her Name movement, and demands an end to institutional racism.
We oppose “divide and conquer” tactics that pit marginalized groups in the US against one another, while leaving white supremacy intact. At the same time, we acknowledge with deep sadness and regret that Arab Americans, both at the community and individual levels, have at times upheld and benefitted from white supremacy. Even as our community struggles against a backdrop of Islamophobia, FBI surveillance, and countries torn apart by US actions and policies abroad, we cannot give in to fear. We recognize that the denunciation of anti-Black racism requires that non-Black Arab Americans reexamine our relationship to whiteness with honesty and humility, and recommit to justice and liberation for all.
In doing so, we recognize that US tax dollars not only support militarized policing in the US, but that such practices are directly related to colonial and imperial policing in Arab homelands. The weapons and military equipment deployed in US-led and US-backed military action in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and beyond are re-circulated to US police forces through program 1033, where they are used to control and suppress BIPOC communities. The militarization of policing is also transnational. Police “exchange programs” between US police forces and Israeli military and police forces exploit Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a “security laboratory” where deadly technologies for racial profiling and surveillance are developed and distributed. Further, the corporate weapons industry capitalizes on the criminalization of Black and Brown people and profits from selling munitions used in imperialist military action as well as to quell protests in the US. For example, Safariland manufactures tear gas and other violent crowd control measures that have been used domestically against protesters in Ferguson, MO and Standing Rock, ND and against migrants at the San Diego-Tijuana border as well as against populations in Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Mexico, and beyond.
These connections call us to redouble our efforts against state and imperialist violences, as well as to recommit to confronting and eradicating internalized colonization, anti-Black racism, heteropatriarchy, and all forms of internalized oppression within our communities and ourselves.
May 31, 2020
* * * * *
