The American Dream
So, why does a Palestinian-Jordanian 20-something-year-old feel enraged watching the violence unfold in D.C. from Amman? Why do WE all feel like we have something particular to say to America?
I’ll tell you my part. I grew up understanding myself through the lens of American Exceptionalism. As a child, I believed I was unlucky to not have been born in the United States because I could not be exceptional as an Arab. It wasn’t until I was in college that I was introduced to understanding myself as the Orient, as the product of Orientalism, and in turn the product of self-Orientalism. It wasn’t until then that I even thought of myself as a person of color. But before that, American history was integral to my education. From Christopher Columbus and the great discovery of the Americas in social studies in the 7th grade to learning about Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, and the American Dream, words like democracy, freedom, and opportunities flooded my mind and my vocabulary. I consciously chose to forgo my mother tongue only to have a shot at being great, being seen, being heard. I was/am not an American but I wanted the American Dream. I wanted to be Exceptional.
This today, I understand is frightening. Because the American Dream and American Exceptionalism is a hoax. Saying “This is not America” in response to white supremacists flooding the Capitol without any resistance is to overlook the very foundation of the country. To grow up with a narrative that in order to be exceptional, I needed to look outside, to look to another is violence in and of itself.
To think, for merely a second, that I could not be heard or seen as an Arab in any lens other than human is problematic. We are constantly looking at ourselves through the lens of another. We don’t look at ourselves as Arabs. We don’t look at ourselves as humans. If this year has taught me anything, it is the fact that we are all “same, same but different.” I have given my power away by giving others the power to define who I am, what I want, what I can have, and what standard of greatness I should be held against. We are Arab. We can be exceptional. We are exceptional because we are human.
