Issues

Civil-Rights-and-Civil-Liberties

Truth Over Fear

Posted on Friday June 12, 2009

A major workshop on the 2008 elections and Islamophobia was organized by AAI at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) on May 29 in San Diego, California. “Race, Politics and the Presidency: How Arab-baiting and Islamophobia in the 2008 Elections Pose a New Civil Rights Challenge” was co-presented by AAIF director Helen Samhan, Salam Al-Marayati, Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and Ken Maxey, Democratic political strategist and a former Obama ‘08 campaign coordinator in California.

Conferees from dozens of U.S. colleges and universities attended this timely discussion of how the Arabs and Muslims were racialized during the 2008 presidential campaigns, especially during the highly publicized efforts to ‘smear” Barack Obama as a secret Muslim. MPAC’s Truth Over Fear video was featured in the workshops which also included an overview of Arab and Muslim participation in U.S. politics, relationships developed between African American and Arab American activists, and how post-9/11 political discourse and the controversies of Middle East politics affect the acceptability of Arab or Muslim visibility in American politics today.