Introduction

In this exhibit I focus on environmental racism/ residential segregation which is a form of racism in which hazardous waste is disproportionately placed in communities of color, creating disparities among them. I look at the history of redlining in the United States and see how that impacts the health of people in those respective areas. I show two examples of environmental racism, the cancer alley in Mississippi and nuclear colonialism in New Mexico.

Overview Essay

Redlining

Redlining refers to the discrimination that happens when banks, insurance companies, etc., map out who loans are going to.  This involves the refusal of loans, mortgages and insurance  and how they are limited to certain people. The history of redlining is a diblilitating. The term itself redlining refers to the redlines on maps that separate “hazardous” predominantly- black neighborhoods. The use of the map started in the 1930s , when the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Home Loan Board would use this map to deny loans and investment services to African Americans. In 1934, The National Housing Act was passed , providing loans strictly to white neighborhoods. The Federal Housing association acts as a source of housing reassurance for home buyers. It is key to know they have played  a huge role  in housing segregation throughout history. In which they promote restrictive covenants, which mainly included preventing houses to be sold to African Americans. Their loans were also at one point only being used in white neighborhoods. Another important piece of information is that, If  black people were able to buy homes in white neighborhoods, the FHA would not  insure anyone in that neighborhood because they’re now looked at as a threat to integration. 

Access to loans in African American Communities

As stated before it is harder for African American to get loans from banks for many different reason but it all comes back to race and social inequality. Racial discrimination has caused an undereduction of financial well being in the black community. The lack of resources and education throughout history has  created what is referred to as the “ Wealth gap” between black people and white people. Which reveals that the median net worth for white families is 8x as much as black families.

Gentrification

Gentrification refers to the process when wealthier people move into poor neighborhoods and change housing, which changes the quality of that neighborhood. One common example is New York, we go there as tourists to see the bright lights and get the vibe from this big city but what we don't see is the increase of rent, decline in diversity  and expulsion of residents. Along with higher rent, gentrification can have a very negative impact on neighborhood efficacy, decreasing social cohesion and need for social control. This can lead to what is called white fight and white flight. White Fight the resistance to integration of diversifying within neighborhoods, by white people towards black people. They began to riot and do everything in their power to get black people out of  “ their neighborhoods”. When the act of white fight fails, the result is white flight. White Flight involves the migration of white people from integrated areas/ neighborhoods.Take Ruby Bridges as an example. American Civil Rights activist and the first black person to go to an all white school in the 1960s. Even as a young child Bridges had to experience  discrimination, harassment and hatred all because she challenged segregation . When those actions failed, white parents  pulled their children out of school in efforts to stop integration. 

Eminent Domain

Eminent Domain is the idea of compensation without consent. Eminent domains often target low SES areas and neighborhoods because of their lack of financial or political power to demand change. Low SES areas tend to be largely black or latino making the minority population an objective target. Properties or land are cleared out for areas that must be useful to the public, often these are freeways, pipelines and other methods of public use. 

NIMBY

“Not in my backyard” is a slogan made by people and communities subjected to and surrounded by harsh chemicals. Landfills and other wastelands emit harmful pollutants and toxins both into the and sometimes even drinking water. A second perspective debates that due to the knowledge that these minority communities lack the power to have these substances removed, this is why they are disproportionately placed there. This also depletes the market demand for these homes, making it harder to move out. These kinds of disparities leave more than enough space to develop/contract unavoidable illness or disease. Flint, Michigan for example STILL suffering to find a sufficient source of drinking water: a crisis they’ve been facing since April of 2014. Flint is in the top 5 of the poorest but also blackest cities in Michigan. Our very own community is on a pedestal for health disparity and lack of basic human needs. In this cae drinking water. 

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy is among the most basic measures of a population's health, it's crucial to point out the trend that something as simple as the neighborhood you live in can determine your life expectancy. In fact an article states that “We found a 19.6 (±0.6) year gap in life expectancy between the socio demographic groups with the longest life expectancy (highest SES quintile of Asian females; 84.9 years) and the shortest (lowest SES quintile of African American males; 65.3 years).” This observation, based on a large and representative US population, confirms prior reports of a mortality disparity between African-Americans and whites after accounting for various measures of SES.

Well Being

The neighborhoods that we live in can affect our wellbeing, one prime example is policies that holistically improve the physical quality of neighborhoods for example, policies that simultaneously improve the conditions of housing, that create engaging public spaces, that enhance walkability, reduce reliance on automobile transportation, and promote mixed land use. These physical changes will not only enhance the physical qualities that we think might be relevant to health but will also trigger changes in health-relevant social environments.

Morbidity

In relation to gentrification, a study actually shows relocated public housing residents reported more physical and mental health problems and poorer self-reported health compared to current residents of the broader community. Essentially when people are removed and reallocated from their neighborhoods they experience more health issues.

Food Deserts

Food insecurity is a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, have a healthy lifestyle. In lower SES areas, there a lot of food deserts where. Another problem low-income residents face is accessing grocery stores. Even if the funds were available to purchase healthy food, there may not be a grocery store that is geographically accessible to those residents. This lack of access to a grocery store is typically referred to as a food desert

Hello All and welcome to our Webpage! As you will see throughout the following pages, we have collected many items that will highlight the relationship race and gender have with sports. I had originally settled on this topic due to my lifelong involvement in sports which gave me lots of background knowledge and ideas before I even started. Yuanpei later approached me to collaborate, and we were able to refine both of our ideas down to what we have now.

Our first task was to decide the topic of each page. We decided to have the first two pages cover our two main points, race and gender, and then the following three pages be examples of areas where they intersect.

              On our first page we chose three items that we thought would do a good job encapsulating a wide range of interactions between race and sports. We first highlighted the unique relationship between the Florida Seminole Tribe and Florida State University athletics. Unlike many sports teams in the US, the university has the tribes permission and full support to use their name and likeness. The image of the 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute was the next item we choose. We felt that this was a great, somewhat, early example of black athletes using their global platform to bring awareness and insight change. We finished up our first page with the film 42, using its release poster as our item. The film follows Jackie Robinsons journey to breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier and the unimaginable hardships and abuse he faced throughout and even once he was in the MLB.

              Our second main connection to sports was the topic of our second page; gender. The first item we chose came from the 1967 Boston Marathon and is quite famous. The race director, Jock Semple, was upset that Katherine Switzer, a woman, was running in “his” marathon, resulting in the iconic image. We followed that up with a YouTube video Professor Hagan had sent me after my project proposal. The discussion in the video surrounds the differences in accommodations that men’s and women's basketball players got at their respective NCAA tournaments. Closing out the second page Yuanpei found a great report that connects well to our theme. It outlines a boatload of statistics on accessibility and leaders in sports for girls and young women in the US.

              The third page is where we began to take both gender and race in sports and apply them to certain areas. On this page we decided to look at the impact outside of the US. The first item we had was another YouTube video, this time from LaLiga, a soccer league in Spain. A player is shown trying to inbound a ball, but before he can, a banana is thrown at him from the stands. Instead of reacting adversely, as this was clearly racially motivated, he calmly bends over and takes a bite. Following this are two articles that I am less familiar with since Yuanpei did this page, but the two topics he chose I was quite intrigued by at first glance.

              Next, given the name of this project is media, we focused on the portrayal of minority athletes in sports for our fourth page. Our first item is an article focusing on the way that golf media talked about Tiger Woods. Woods is debatable one of the best golfers of all time and unlike the old school norm, is not white. Our next item is very close to me personally since I play ultimate here at MSU. But it is a criticism of the panel of analysts that selected a preseason top 25 entirely white players when there were players that deserved to be on the list that were not white. We closed the page with a very current topic in sports. The drama between LSU and Iowa in the NCAAW Basketball tournament made waves in the media and then again when peoples initial reactions were almost blatantly racist or racially motivated.

              On our final page we decided to focus on money, the one thing that seemingly drives all sports in the US. Upon another suggestion by our wonderful professor, we focused somewhat on HBCU’s and their funding struggles. Our first item is a journal entry completely focused on the financial effects on HBCU’s competitive status with other universities. Our next item discusses USWNT and their lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation. The result of this lawsuit, as outlined in the article, is split pay for both men and women of all earnings from either team. Finally, we finish our project by talking about NIL deals, the new fad in college athletics. Our third item is an article that discussed the positive and negative effects on HBCU’s that the rise of NIL deals has brought.

              In our opinion, the piece of information induced me to remember the topic of culture in our curriculum. We mentioned that culture is intersectional with diverse areas including tradition, international, policies, identity, art, customs, and academy. In addition, the reason why culture is related to them is that it not only represents people's think and behave, and is the whole way of living, from beliefs and norms, but also people have a trend to share a common cultural system organize and shape the physical and social world around them, and are in turn shaped by those ideas, behaviors, and physical field. In addition, the information is related to our curriculum because they both illuminated that gender discrimination is omnipresent nationally and culturally. A case in point, a black woman in a workplace has more possibilities to undergo discrimination than a white man because not only people might disdain her due to her colored race but also owing to her gender. Besides, under the culture of patriarchy, a group of people are concerned that women are inferior to men. For instance, in Think Marketing Magazine website, according to “ Women VS Patriarchy: Challenges They Face In Workplaces And How They’re Overcoming Them”, Think Marketing discerned that “ based on a true story, a woman had posted on social media before that some of her colleagues were discussing this matter and their opinions were that some men would actually find jobs if women stopped working. What people don’t know is that this goes under the description of being a ‘Sexist’”. As a result, the information confirmed to me that these people have the implicit denial issue, representing that people recognize the problem but they fail to act because they are emotionally uncomfortable or troubled about it. In this case, these people are aware of being a ‘Sexist’ and gain a little information about it, but they don't take any action, make no behavioral changes and remain apathetic. In conclusion, to overcome gender equality, men not only need to recognize the problem of “ sexism” under the culture of patriarchy, but also, they need to practice behavioral changes without an apathetic perspective and they need to treat the women as if women can accomplish their goals of their work well like the men.

This project's central topic is the issue of Arab American discrimination within America, with a particular focus on its prevalence in a post-9/11 society. In alignment with class themes and concepts, this project focuses on a particular racial group, Arab Americans, and how societal racialization and stigmatization has negatively impacted this group through discrimination. I chose this topic as I feel passionately about bringing awareness to the matter as an Arab American myself, along with many relevant items involving psychological research, an academic area I am interested in as an incoming clinical psychology PhD student. The overarching topic is divided into three primary subtopics, being an introduction of the reality of Arab American discrimination, the different ways Arab American discrimination negatively impacts members of the population, and how both Arab Americans and society as a whole can push back against the hostile environment Arab Americans have been finding themselves in for decades. These subtopics are divided into five pages within the exhibit, with the first two pages covering the first subtopic, the third page covering the second sub-topic, and the final two pages covering the last subtopic. I make 3 direct relations to class concepts through each of the three subtopics, all of which can be found later within this overview essay. This topic and much of what can be learned from all of these items are incredibly important to me and my culture, and I hope to spread awareness regarding Arab Americans and their experiences through this work.

For the first of my three central subtopics, I introduce the overarching concept of Arab American discrimination, as it is a reality of the modern Arab American condition that does not receive as much attention as it should, and one that is encouraged by our own government and politics. The first two pages of my exhibit include items that lay a foundation for understanding the issue of Arab American discrimination, and that bring awareness to the various forms it exists through. My first item is an article by Kiara Alfonseca titled 20 years after 9/11, Islamophobia continues to haunt Muslims. She discusses how Arab American discrimination has been a real issue over the last 20 years, bringing up statistics that show a huge increase in hate crimes and Arab insecurity during the time period. Not only that, but she talks about how American politics have only worsened the issue, particularly through the Islamophobic rhetoric spewed by Donald Trump during his election campaign. I chose this article as it not only introduced easily understood figures that painted the picture of the issue's existence, but it also highlighted the part our own government and politics plays in the matter, a key class connection I made between my research and course readings. Next, I include a video of an ABC News reporter interviewing residents of Dearborn, Michigan, one of America's largest Arab communities, about their experiences with discrimination since 9/11. Interviewee sentiments expressed that discrimination through avenues such as hate crimes, employment discrimination, and harassment are common, and that the anti-Muslim rhetoric expressed by Donald Trump has validated racist tendencies in Americans. I included this video as it provided more support for the place our politics have had in encouraging Arab discrimination. I then include a San Diego Tribune article by Doris Bittar and George Majeef Khoury that specifically highlights how Arab Americans are particularly unprotected within our society, along with highlighting how Palestinian Americans have been targeted by a government that doesn't advocate for the rights they deserve. It supports this through bringing up a number of examples, particularly of Palestinian Americans getting shafted through the legal system, and I chose to incorporate this article as it is important to me as a Palestinian American myself, and for how it further addresses our government's place in the issue. 

The next page of the exhibit further covers the topic of outlining Arab American discrimination, with a focus on explaining the different ways Arab American discrimination has shown itself within our society. The first source of this page, an excerpt from the Journal of American Ethnic History, Louise Cainkar specifically outlines many of the ways Arab American discrimination takes form, such as through government policies, media representation, mainstream cultural representations, employment discrimination, public perceptions and attitudes, discriminatory behaviors, and social/political exclusion. She explores these issues as vessels through which the social distance has grown between Arabs and other American populations over the last few decades. I chose this source as it provided an abundance of nuanced explanation regarding many of the numerous ways Arab American discrimination takes form, many of which being relatable to me and what I have witnessed in my own life. Following this, I discuss an article within the American Studies Journal written by Ghada Quaisi Audi that further highlights the ways discrimination takes form against Arab Americans. The author specifically focuses on the domains of racial discrimination, hate crimes, employment discrimination, and civil rights issues such as racial profiling. With a number of illustrating examples under the context of a reactionary American society following 9/11, I chose this source as it excellently explores many of the difficulties one encounters as an Arab in current day America. Lastly, I chose to incorporate a tweet I myself scrolled across a couple of weeks ago. The post quote-tweets a video glorifying early 2000s high school in America with a screenshot saying that being an Arab American student during this time period was filled with a discriminatory atmosphere commonly accepted by both teachers and students. The tweet went viral on Twitter, and I incorporated because it represents how even in the current day, countless people from all over relate to having understood this occurring in post 9/11 America, and the natural, genuine nature of this evidence through Twitter helps supplement the peer-reviewed journal articles I incorporated prior.

For this subtopic, one class concept that informed and related to it was the idea of a societal atmosphere artificially fueling a discriminatory status for a minority through avenues of power, such as science, government, or politics. This was a common theme found in several class materials, initially introduced in readings from How Race is Real (Mukhopadhyay et al., 2007), and From Savage to Negro (Baker, 1998), where it was described how racially motivated scholars and scientists cultivated divisions between "races" through proposed scientific discovery that wouldn't be refuted, even though it was not founded upon by credible science. This allowed those in power with discriminatory ideologies to find a reason to put down non-majority races, a sentiment that was echoed by people within the society who were then validated for their racist views. This closely mirrors what several of these items have discussed regarding how Arab American discrimination has worsened due to the modern political landscape within America, where those with power and influence, such as Donald Trump, encourage anti-Arab government policies and spread propaganda regarding Arabs that validate racist ideologies of civilians. 

The third page of my exhibit focuses on the second of my three central subtopics, being the different ways Arab American discrimination has directly impacted members of this population. Through three different items, I focus on impacts through the domains of mental health, abuse, and employment limitations. The first item is a research study, The Association of Perceived Abuse and Discrimination After September 11, 2001, With Psychological Distress, Level of Happiness, and Health Status Among Arab Americans, that utilizes a face-to-face survey sampling Arab Americans regarding their experiences with discrimination and mental health measures. The results concluded that experiences with discrimination following 9/11 have had an impact on mental health through reports of increased psychological distress and reduced levels of happiness, and I included this item as it provides clear empirical evidence for how discrimination has had a negative impact in this area. The next item I include focuses on how Arab Americans are subjected to abuse and harassment far too often: a Chicago news story covering how a Palestinian American teenager was brutally beaten by local police officers using excessive force. The local Arab community responded with both a lawsuit and a sentiment of outcry regarding this specific instance and local law enforcement tendencies of harassment and profiling against Arabs, and this instance serves to be just one example of the countless similar occurrences of such violence against Arab Americans. Lastly, I include a research paper, It's All in the Name: Employment Discrimination Against Arab Americans, that attempts to investigate if the well-documented reality of Arab American discrimination in a post 9/11 American has had an impact in employment discrimination. They conduct a study where they send out equally qualified resumes to over 250 job applications with both white and Arab names attached, in order to see if there is any difference in application success with only this variable varying. They find that the white-named applications are twice as successful as the Arab-named applications, leading them to conclude that discriminatory hiring practices are incredibly real within our nation against Arabs, and providing empirical support for yet another detrimental impact of Arab discrimination within America.  

In regard to the direct impact a discriminatory culture can have on a minority group, one major class parallel I made is between the aforementioned impacts on Arab Americans, and what we learned about Asian American discrimination in Anti-Asian Racism and COVID-19 (Ho, 2020). In this article, several impacts of discrimination and harassment are mentioned. One example is the murder of Vincent Chen, a racially motivated assault that came to mind after reading the story of how an Arab American teen was excessively beaten by police officers. Another is the discussed racially fueled yellow peril sentiments that fueled an anti-Asian societal landscape, which resembles how Islamophobia was utilized for political gain at the expense of Arab Americans. One last parallel to be found here is how both Arab and Asian American discrimination rose following a major event perceived to be relevant to that ethnic group at large, being the 9/11 attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Both the article and several of my items discuss how countless Arabs and Asians can personally say they fear for themselves or have experienced harassment due to the rampant discrimination present in the country against their minority groups, and both minority groups must be met with positive outreach in order to improve these circumstances. 

The final two pages of my exhibit tackle how both Arab Americans and our society as a whole have and can respond towards Arab American discrimination, with the fourth page specifically highlighting the ways Arab populations practice resilience against discrimination, and the fifth page focusing on what we as a society have done and can do to advocate for Arab Americans. I first include a video published by NowThis News that spreads awareness regarding Arab American heritage month, something that has only been nationally recognized since 2017. Many speakers within the interview advocate for the importance of Americans better understanding the incredibly sizable Arab population within America. The video sheds light on so many facets of Arab American culture within just a few minutes, describing the different food and items Arabs have passed on into American culture, well known Arab American celebrities, the religious diversity present in Arab American communities, and ignorance regarding this population must be extinguished in order to do away with Arab discrimination. I included this source not only for how successfully it spreads awareness about commonly held misconceptions regarding Arab Americans, but for how it advocates for the rights of this population through the voices of Arab Americans themself, particularly through the avenue of combating ignorance. The second item I included is the research article, Arab American Adolescents’ Responses to Perceived Discrimination: A Phenomenological Study, that investigates how Arab American Muslim teenagers respond against discrimination, utilizing data from 10 teenagers who have reported ethnic discrimination against them. The researchers concluded that they found 3 positive ways and 3 negative ways in which these Arab American teens responded to discrimination, which both sheds light on what might potentially be more useful to implement when coping against discrimination and what might be less useful. I included this source as it sheds light on very specific mechanisms of resilience that Arab Americans practice against discrimination, and for how it spreads awareness on how to recognize beneficial and harmful coping strategies for mental health professionals, teachers, parents, and anyone else who might read the findings. For my next item, I incorporate a photo of an Arab American protest in the Chicago area, capturing one example of Arab American community members coming together to advocate for the recognition they deserve. This specific protest is outside of a Trump hotel pushing against Trump's discriminatory propaganda against Muslims, and is paired with an article advocating for Middle Easterners to have a more applicable census option than "White". I included this photo for its visual representation of Arab American resilience through the coming together of Arabs to protest for their rights within this country, a powerful and commonplace occurrence for this marginalized group. 

The final page of the exhibit continues to focus on how to respond towards the issue of Arab American discrimination, with these items focusing on how our American society can better support Arab Americans through fostering a culture where members of this population are better understood and respected. The first item is a United States Department of Justice notice that describes how their Civil Rights Division has pushed back against the acknowledged issue of Arab American discrimination since 9/11. This includes hundreds of conducted investigations regarding Arab hate crimes, discrimination in housing, education, employment, public accommodation and religious land use, along with extensive Arab American outreach programs that have been implemented. Even if the effectiveness of these federal interventions can potentially be argued, the language used and information provided on this page are beneficial in establishing an American culture that disowns Arab American discrimination, and I included it for how its content represents this concept. The next item I include is a research paper titled, School-Based Considerations for Supporting Arab American Youths’ Mental Health, which advocates for the importance of recognizing Arab Americans and their needs. After establishing that mental health is a major issue for Arab American youth, due in no small part to discrimination, the paper extensively provides fully fleshed out recommendations regarding how mental health and school-based professionals can better support this population navigate culturally unique difficulties. They advocate for the importance of cultural sensitivity and competence, and go on to say that curriculum-based widespread Middle Eastern education would go a long way in tearing down the current school climate where cultural ignorance leads to children harassing other children. I included this research paper for its extensive information pertaining to Arab Americans as a population, as well as how to better support younger generations of this population. Any reader who has any influence or interaction with American youth such as school employees, parents, or mental health professionals can learn a great deal from the information provided in this paper. For the final item of this section, I included a school district webpage providing notice of how schools within that district will celebrate Arab American heritage month in April. Federal Ways Public Schools in Washington bring attention to the prominence of Arab Americans within their community and the country at large, go on to introduce plans to hold several activities recognizing Arab Americans for students of all ages to take part in, including showcasing Arab American literature and art, activities writing out the Arabic alphabet, and displaying quotes celebrating Arab culture. The webpage states that these activities are taking place district wide across elementary, middle, and high schools, reaching youth audiences of all ages. I included this item as it represents a real-life example of how we as a society can better support Arab Americans through educating and involving the youth, and it serves to be something every school district can learn and implement from. 

One last class concept that has helped inform my understanding of these last few items is the concept of how different minority groups advocate for themselves and practice resilience against marginalization and discrimination, as well as how we individually and as a society can support minority groups in such hostile climates. While relevant ideas to this concept were constant in our materials, one that specifically came to mind was what I learned about Native American communities in Native American DNA (Tallbear, 2013), and the All My Relations podcast episode (Wilbur et al., 2019).  Engaging with these materials showed me how Native American communities combat the abuse of their genetic rights together, such as through the Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism, the International Indigenous Forum on Biocolonialism, and many other examples. These empowerment groups are a way in which Native people practice resilience against abuse, just as Arabs do the same through their own empowerment groups and other aforementioned means. Additionally, when understanding how anyone can help support Arab Americans, I related what I was learning to the "how to be an anti-racist ally" section from Anti-Asian Racism and COVID-19 (Ho, 2020). This section at the end of the article discusses how being an ally involves educating oneself about the culture at hand and its history with racism in America, correct people on their ignorance and call out insensitive comments, and learning how to act against racism, all concepts that align with and can be applied to what I learned about supporting Arab Americans from the final couple items.

The process of forming the template for my topic, researching these topics, and writing about them in a way I find personally interesting was something I found to be incredibly engaging and particularly important for an academic project. As an Arab American myself with countless family members both born here and back in Palestine, I found almost every article, video, picture, research paper, and item I came across to be personally relatable to some extent. I learned academically that while there is some exceedingly interesting research out there regarding my own culture and place within America, there is a consistent theme within the literature that there is a gap in knowledge regarding Arab Americans in comparison to other minority groups, and that there is room for so much more work to be done. As someone preparing to start a clinical psychology PhD in the Fall, this project has provided me with some personal inspiration on where I could potentially take my own research over the next few years. Personally, this work instilled in me an even greater pride in my own heritage, and it taught me even more about the specific hardships my community has faced that I wasn't aware of before. We covered a great deal in class regarding the implications of a discriminatory society on a variety of minority groups, and this served to be an incredibly fulfilling learning experience about a similar circumstance affecting Arab Americans.