The Social Construction of Difference and the Arab American Experience

LOUISE CAINKAR

INTRODUCTION
THEORIES OF IMMIGRANT integration are a tough fit when it comes to Arab Americans. Arabs who migrated to the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century held structural positions and faced barriers of prejudice and discrimination largely similar to those of white ethnics (especially Italians). Although they were barred from a broad range of institutions run by mainstream whites, they settled in urban and rural areas, ran businesses, worked in factories, built institutions, flourished artistically, held government office in a number of places, achieved a degree of economic success, and led social lives that were intertwined with members of white ethnic groups and often resulted in intermarriage. Of course there are meaningful exceptions to this simplification of history, and in specific localities, for example, the right of Arabs to naturalize was challenged.