Arabs, Whiteness, and Health Disparities: The Need for Critical Race Theory and Data

In the November 2019 issue of AJPH, Abboud et al.¹ petitioned the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) to include Arabs among its “health disparity populations,” a category comprising “Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, and sexual and gender minorities” (https://bit.ly/2BbvUWG). Because anti-Muslim racism targeting Middle Eastern and North African populations has increased since 2001 and it is impossible to document the health implications of racism without access to appropriate data (https://bit.ly/2XakQBB), this petition warrants serious consideration. However, its central arguments—Arabs are not white and Arabs do not benefit from “white supremacy, whiteness, and white privilege” ¹—exemplify the field’s deep disconnect from Critical Race Theory.

Addressing the racialization of religion at the root of anti-Muslim racism requires sophisticated understandings of racial constructs and phenomena; however, at least eight relevant concepts are neither named nor defined (Table 1).^2–6 This is a missed opportunity to offer guidance to the NIMHD about the types of data that are needed and to distinguish data that enable antiracism research from those that may further marginalize these populations. Applying an intersectional lens would clarify how religion, race, gender, ethnicity, class, and legal status are inherently entangled.

TABLE 1—

Definitions of Selected Key Terms and Relevance for the Petition to Include of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Individuals as a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Health Disparity Population

Term	Definition	Selected Implications for the Petition for NIMHD Inclusion
Islamophobia	Religious discrimination (e.g., from Christians) or antipathy toward the Islamic faith and practitioners of it.	Excludes non-Muslim MENA individuals who are subject to discrimination.
Anti-Muslim racism	Racialized “othering” of people based on historical and ongoing social, political, and religious antipathy toward Islam. It is not limited to religious discrimination.	Includes a broader spectrum of MENA individuals. Enables insights about racialization to help explain MENA experiences.
Racism	“The state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”2(p247)	Expands the rubric of research on racism and health inequities to include Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism.
Racialization	The social structural processes that generate groups and ascribe racialized meanings to the newly formed groups in part by producing outcomes that reinforce their purported lower or higher location on existing social hierarchies.	Helps explain why and how since September 11, 2001, MENA populations are increasingly viewed as non-White. Helps identify groups likely to experience racial shifts in the future.
Race	A “vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry.”3	Helps shift attention from identifying biological causes of MENA disparities toward identifying racism-related exposures.
Ethnicity	A two-dimensional, context-specific social construct comprising an attributional dimension (which describes group characteristics such as culture and nativity) and a relational dimension (which indexes a group’s location along a specified social hierarchy such as skin shade).	Acknowledges both the cultural diversity of MENA populations and the ways in which race and ethnicity intersect.
White	As defined by the US Office of Management and Budget, an individual with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.	Only one of the official racial categories that MENA individuals may self-report or with which they may identify.
Whiteness	In the United States, a racialized status reflecting the highest level of social and political citizenship. It enjoys the fullest set of rights and privileges and is marked by its power to define and exclude others from the status.4	Helps to clarify how even MENA individuals who self-report White race nevertheless experience racist treatment.
White privilege	The “basis of racialized advantage” that accrues to some people merely because they possess whiteness. Also refers to the persistent gap between the level of advantage afforded whiteness and that afforded nonwhiteness.4	Can help to clarify why certain courses of action or intervention may not be appropriate for those with limited access to White privilege.
White supremacy	The racialized ideology, whether acknowledged as such or not, that views White people as superior to others and works to maintain a social order in which whiteness dominates.5	Because the nature of White supremacy changes over time, understanding these changes can help explain evolving or changing patterns such as those occurring immediately after September 11, 2001.
Intersectionality	The complex, interlocking nature of co-occurring forms of social stratification (e.g., racism and sexism) and the corresponding inherently intertwined social categories (e.g., race and gender) they produce.6	Can help identify unique or unexpected social exposures to which certain MENA subpopulations are vulnerable.

By contrast, to assert that Arabs have no racial privilege falsely implies that racism affects only people who identify as non-White (https://bit.ly/3ccRXZU). This belies the historical racialization of southern and eastern European immigrants, the persistence of anti-Semitism, and the racist nativism directed at Latinos and others. It also ignores the possibility of any White skin privilege among some Middle Eastern and North African individuals, however contested and limited that privilege may be (https://bit.ly/2zwbur3).

In light of the evidence⁷ linking racism to health disparities in diverse populations, the near paucity of systematic public health training in Critical Race Theory, and the urgent need to improve the rigor and integrity of research on racism, we thank Abboud et al. for their petition. We respectfully request that the NIMHD, which leads the National Institutes of Health in targeting racism, allow Critical Race Theory and scholarship on empire and global “whiteness” (https://bit.ly/3ccRXZU) to inform its response. We broaden the petition to include all groups “racialized” as Muslim whether they identify as Arab, Muslim, or neither (e.g., Sikhs) and to include yet unknown groups facing similar concerns. Finally, we urge consideration of the harms any blanket request for additional surveillance may have for this already heavily surveilled population.