Being Handed the Short End of the Stick

Dear W. and M.,

Laila Lalami is a Muslim Moroccan-American. Sometimes American society considers her White, sometimes Black. Never Christain, which seems to be citizenship requirement in the minds of some Americans. She presents her story and that of Muslims here. She writes well. She's emotionally dispassionate, allowing facts to ellicit the reader's disgust for events facing Lalami or other Muslims.

You should read it someday. (Again now you're too young.) She shares two versions of "immigration." She dwells on American slavery, noting that many Africans taken to America were from the continent's west coast. Probability says there were Muslims among them. So, Muslims settled on North America before the forebears of most European Americans.

Second, she protrays the struggles that Muslims and Muslim immigrants have had in America. Her accounts should remind most Americans that their forebears too were not accepted in this country. They struggled for two or three generations before being "accepted" by the dominant culture. In my case, that dominant culture was Anglo-Saxon.

The struggle of immigrants does not mitigate the struggles of African Americans or Native Americans for that matter. The typical immigrant never endured centuries of inhuman treatment that the European American inflicted on those who did not want to come to North American and to those who settled the land long before Europeans knew it existed.

Based on my experience, dominant cultures --even when they are the minority, such as the original Spanish explorers in North and South America -- rarely accept or respect the culture, religions, and traditions of the cultures they have subbordinated. Maybe America can break that arrogances. Maybe Americans can take one or two difficult steps forward and embrace each other. We may become the first society to eliminate the distinction between the dominant and subordinate cultures within our nation. God, I hope that day comes soon.