Race, Remembering, and the Dialogics of Oral History in an Arab American Tragedy

Black Lives Still MatterIn the spring of 2020, protests and outcries for racial justice arose all over, as yet again the spotlight was thrown on the rash of police killing unarmed African-American citizens.The news media throughout the world posted pictures of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, to name only two of the people who would become tragic symbols of the United States' violent policing of Black folks.Within our field, there were a host of webinars on race in the Middle East.Al-Jazeera English did a number of stories about blackface performance in the Middle East.For perhaps one of the first times, the expertise and experience of Sudanese scholars and students was seen by our field.The presence of Afro-Turks, of Afro-Iranians and Afro-Iraqis was brought into clearer view in our Zoom meetings, our annual meetings (online) and on our social media.As any American with a sensitivity to Black history could have predicted, the backlash did not take very long.Soon there were Blue Lives Matter and then All Lives Matter.It was with a certain horror that a friend and I saw, as we were walking on a beach, a sign of Black Labs Matter, with the picture of said dog.This brought home a chilling idea of what my parents and my grandparents faced generations ago, for daring to walk or drive while Black.The backlash is growing, particularly around American universities, against BDS and against Critical Race Theory; often support for Palestinians is muzzled with the same heavy hand that would silence all discussions of the legacies of slavery and racism in this country.With our combined experiences and expertise, MESA is an excellent community for holding serious discussions about race and racism.My predecessor Dina Khoury saw this clearly and created the Committee on Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination (CAA), a huge part of her effort to integrate, literally, Blackness and Black Studies into MESA's range of studies.And the work of this committee is not easy; sometimes it is quite painful.In the 30 years that I have studied how race and racism works in the Middle East, I have been repeatedly told that racism is not, cannot, be indigenous to Middle Eastern societies and cultures.It has been a sorrow for me to hear my younger colleagues on this committee repeat their experience with these same statement, or other conclusions that there is racism, but it was imported from Western European colonizers and American imperialists. Members Resolution PassesOn March 22, 2022, the voting membership of MESA passed a resolution (768 votes in favor, 167 votes against) endorsing the 2005 call of Palestinian civil society for the boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel.For the full text see page 6The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, non-profit, learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world.From its inception in 1966 with 51 founding members, MESA has increased its membership to over 2,800 and now serves as an umbrella organization for approximately forty institutional members and forty affiliated organizations.The association is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council of Area Studies Associations, and a member of the National Humanities Alliance.As part of its goal to advance learning, facilitate communication and promote cooperation, MESA sponsors an annual meeting that is a leading international forum for scholarship, intellectual exchange and pedagogical innovation.It is responsible for the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the premiere journal on the region, the MESA Review of Middle East Studies and Issues in Middle East Studies, a biannual newsletter.An awards program recognizes scholarly achievement, service to the profession, undergraduate education, and exemplary student mentoring.MESA is governed by a nine-member Board of Directors elected by the membership.