According To The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Arab Americans Became Disadvantaged Overnight

Alexander Kazam writes that after a glowing report published in 2005 pointing out how successful and well integrated Arab Americans are--now the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee wants Arab Americans to classified as a group to be disadvantaged:

In 2005, four years after the 9/11 attacks, The Michigan Daily published an article with the headline “Arab Americans Better Educated Than Most in U.S.” It is a classic American success story: Arabs had come from countries all over the Middle East and North Africa, flourished, and integrated.
They tended to be “better educated and wealthier than most Americans” — nearly twice as likely as the typical U.S. resident to possess a college degree, according to Census data, with above-average household incomes. Fully 42 percent could be found working in management jobs, compared to 34 percent of Americans at large. The executive director of the Arab American Institute even praised the Census report for showing “how integrated Arabs are in American life.”

So it is astounding, seven years later, that the Commerce Department is considering a petition to classify Arab-Americans as a “socially and economically disadvantaged group” entitled to special business assistance from the Minority Business Development Agency. 

The petition in question comes from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee--those are the fine people who have pushed for the Palestinian "Right of Return", boycotting of Lowe’s because it removed its ad from the TV series All-American Muslim, and divesting from Israel.

Now the ADC wants a special designation for Arab Americans allowing them to bypass the rules of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). Having that special designation would "create a presumption of eligibility" for Arab-Americans, "thereby eliminating the need for amassing and producing evidence of social and economic disadvantage."

As Kazam puts it

The petition blatantly requests that the MBDA dispense with the need to provide facts and evidence

What could go wrong?

Technorati Tag: Arab Americans.