Beyond the Red Carpet: America's Avatar Problem

By all accounts, director James Cameron is poised to win big at tonight's 82nd annual Academy Awards for his truly remarkable blockbuster film, Avatar. The film is nominated for nine different awards, and it's bound to sweep up in the technology and special effects categories. Yet, it's not just the 3-D effects that make Avatar a notable movie, and viewers across America should look beyond the glitz and glamor of the red carpet to the deeper message that lies at the heart of the film -- a meaning that gives the movie real importance for American political, social, and cultural discourse.

Avatar tells the story of the native Na'vi people living on the fictional planet of Pandora, and shows the injustice inflicted by a group of greedy settlers who seek to exploit the land and its people for material gain. As they extract the planet's natural resources using sophisticated technology and weaponry, the settlers inflict mass destruction on the Na'vi population. They justify the pillage by emphasizing the savagery and backwardness of the Na'vi "Other," mocking the blue-colored people's physical appearance, beliefs, and culture with highly racialized and dehumanizing language.

It doesn't take 3-D glasses to see the way that the deep anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist message at the heart of this all-too-familiar plot is applicable to conflicts all over the world. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Israel-Palestine, the film's central conflict between invaders and natives is bound to resonate with the colonized people all over the globe. Indeed, Palestinians living in the West Bank village of Bil'in captured the world's attention when they used the film as inspiration for non-violent protests against the Israeli occupation last month. It's only fitting that the film is competing for the coveted prize of "Best Picture" with The Hurt Locker, a film about the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of U.S. soldiers.

But while the movie very much resonates in countless conflicts across the globe, Avatar should also strike a powerful chord here at home, where we have created our own Na'vi population right before our very eyes: Arab-Americans living in cities and towns all across the country. One wonders what kinds of reactions and emotions the film must evoke for Arabs living in the U.S., who since 9/11 have been racially profiled, harassed, detained, deported, wiretapped, monitored, stereotyped, and most of all, treated as an inferior and disloyal "Other" -- all in the name of national security.

In light of the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day underpants bombing attempt, racism against Arab-Americans is once again on the rise across the country, a sentiment that permeates all walks of American political discourse. If you don't believe me, just ask Marty Pertz, the long-time Editor-in-Chief and owner of The New Republic, who penned a column earlier this week casting off Arabs as an untrustworthy race. Praising today's elections in Iraq as a victory for democracy -- itself a problematic premise -- Peretz writes, "There were moments -- long moments -- during the Iraq war when I had my doubts ... Frankly, I couldn't quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well."

That Peretz could get away with such bigoted language in American mainstream media with no consequence is a powerful reflection of the extent to which this kind of hateful racism has entered its way into the consciousness of far too many Americans. But the problem is not just at the level of ideas: Arab-Americans face rampant and pervasive discrimination, and in turn, are dealing daily with a profound crisis of identity as they try to navigate the complex reality of assimilating to life in the country in a racialized post-9/11 world.

Elsewhere, I have written about the Obama administration's new security and surveillance policies at America's airports that racially profile Arabs and Muslims, as well as the administration's fateful decision to renew the Patriot Act and continue Justice Department domestic wiretapping programs. The problems transcend national political space, however, and enter regularly into local and state politics as well.

Consider, for example, the statements of Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), who convened a town-hall Q&A with about 200 of her very angry Muslim constituents living in the Charlotte area last month, after she suggested that U.S. House and Senate members should not hire Muslims as interns -- because they might be trying to infiltrate the government -- and openly voiced concerns about the numbers of Muslims operating convenience stores across the country.

Or, news earlier this week that the Washington, D.C. based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, called on the U.S. Department of Housing to investigate allegations that a Texas apartment complex is refusing to rent to Muslims. Muslims across the country are abuzz over the allegations that the apartment complex in Euless, Texas violated fair housing laws when managers refused to rent to people with Arab sounding last names -- whom they referred to as "curry people" -- even though there were vacancies.

With the 2008 election of America's first African-American president, pundits and community leaders began talking about a "post-racial" America, suggesting that Obama had somehow ushered in a new era of post-racial politics in the country. Of course, this idea was more idealistic than realistic, but one need not look further than our regrettable treatment of Arab-Americans post-9/11 to see how much racism still very much pervades American society.

Perhaps most telling is the fact that the 2010 Census altogether lacks a box for people of Muslim and Arab background to designate their race, and instead asks Arabs to check themselves as "white" -- a fact which has led a California-based group of Arab-American leaders to launch a campaign dubbed "Check it Right, You Ain't Right." Arabs in this country are literally left off the political, cultural, and social map, representing a marginalized minority that captures headlines only in relation to violence and terrorism. We maintain a toxic double-standard, wherein violence committed by Muslims are unflinchingly dubbed "acts of terrorism," whereas equally as egregious attacks committed by angry white men merely register as "crimes."

Not only is this kind of isolation reprehensible on a moral -- and even, constitutional -- level, it is also counterproductive in America's fight against terrorism. Arabs and Muslims living in the United States represent some of America's greatest allies in the battle against extremism. Not only are countless Arab-American citizens risking their lives daily as they serve in the highest ranks of counter-terrorism and law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military, but Muslim professors and scholars at universities, schools, and think-tanks represent some of our country's brightest and most innovative minds.

Rather than singling out and discriminating against this community, then, it's time that we hold a long-overdue national dialogue on race and begin to recognize the achievements, culture, and history of the Arabs and Muslims living across our country. The fact that the majority of Americans can not name one Arab-American, let alone any Arabs that are not terrorists, simply cannot stand.

As America begins to square its treatment of its minorities with the rule of law and integrates -- rather than singles out -- its Arab and Muslim citizens, so too will it begin to reclaim its status as a model democracy and repair its fleeting relations with the people of the Muslim world. If we continue to toss aside the constitution and isolate our citizens because of the color of their skin, however, we may be heading down an irreversible path of self-destruction.

Regardless of the number of awards Avatar manages to rack up at the Oscars, its worth remembering who the film's real victors are: the Na'vi people and those that stand-up on the side of justice, rights, and freedom against the more powerful, but morally defunct, settler population.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons