I’m Middle Eastern, When It Counts

Originally published with Psi Chi April, 2021. https://www.psichi.org/blogpost/987366/369445/I-m-Middle-Eastern-When-It-Counts

I am a first generation Lebanese American. My father immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970’s and my mother was born in America after both of her parents had immigrated to America at different points in their lives. I have spent my entire life living across the eastern United States and within those subcultures notice the various ways people respond to me and attempt to decipher my background prior to asking me. There are approximately 2 million Arab Americans (e.g., individuals of Arabic speaking descent), but studies suggest that is an underrepresentation of the real numbers because so many are told to claim, and some fought to claim, white on the U.S. Census (Arab American Institute Foundation, 2018). Within recent years, there has been a larger focus on including Arab or Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) as a demographic category under Race/Ethnicity in both research and census data collections.

My father doesn’t talk much about his emigration from Lebanon but growing up he focused on the importance of raising his children in a country like the United States. My sister and I were given very American names to help us assimilate, something that recent research suggests hasn’t changed in the last 50 years (Abramitzky et al., 2020). Psychological research on acculturative stress, or the stressors involved in culturally adapting to a new environment, suggests it is associated with experiences of discrimination and mental distress (Ahmed, Kia-Keating, & Tsai, 2011). Children of immigrants often discuss their experiences assisting parents with language translations and having to navigate certain cultural elements alone (Abuelezam et al., 2019). Although my parents had each taken a semester of college courses when they were younger, neither could assist me through the modern college application process (e.g.., FAFSA, in-state vs. out-of-state tuition, loans). It was uncomfortable to not have a place to indicate my ethnicity on college application forms when I felt so out of my cultural element.

Furthermore, given the lack of places to identify, I didn’t know where to find mentors who shared my identity or meet other individuals who were sharing my experiences. I didn’t even consider advocating for identifying categories to be included in demographics of the research labs I worked in because of that. I didn’t discover the AMENA-Psy, an organization for American Arabs/MENA in Psychology, until I was well into graduate school at a conference (that I attended thanks to Psi Chi)! These potential places of invisibility have even greater effects than isolation in college. The little psychological research that has been conducted on Arab Americans has demonstrated a series of disparities across health outcomes, including depression prevalence (Jaber et al., 2015), ovarian and breast cancer rates (Jaffee et al., 2020), and mental health help-seeking (Al-Krenawi et al., 2009), among many other areas of health across scholarly and non-scholarly works.

Thus, it is clear that it is important to include Arab American/MENA peoples in demographic collections to better assess for and address health disparities. As the outgoing Psi Chi Network for International Exchange (NICE) chair, I encouraged this year’s project to include MENA in the demographics section as an identifier, which was met with excitement and readily adapted. I have gratitude for Psi Chi as an organization that values diversity, inclusion, and cultural sensitivity in research. I call on more researchers to do the same. Inclusion improves our science and has potential benefits in real-world application of psychological phenomena. Finally, inclusion matters to the students who work in your research labs and whom will become next year’s scientists, they deserve to feel seen on their path.