Social Problems, 2015, 62, 219-240

doi: 10.1093/socpro/spv004
OXFORD
Article

Arab American Protest in the Terror

Decade: Macro- and Micro-Level Response
to Post-9/11 Repression
Wayne A. Santoro and Marian Azab
University of New Mexico

ABSTRACT
Arab Americans have borne the greatest brunt of government and non-state repression
in the aftermath of the terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001. In this study, we docu­
ment how post-9/11 repression affects Arab American protest at the macro and micro level.
Coding articles from the Detroit Free Press (1999-2010), we find at the macro level that
Arab American protest in the Detroit area spiked in the aftermath of 9/11 and that there is
a strong temporal relationship between anti-Arab/Muslim hate crime and protest. At the
micro level, results from the Detroit Arab American Study (2003) show that personally
experiencing repression enhances protest participation most strongly for those whose Arab
identity is not especially salient. We interpret this finding to mean that such individuals ex­
perience repression as a moral shock and/or quotidian disruption and hence such encoun­
ters especially motivate them to protest. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate that
repression can be especially mobilizing for those who under other circumstances would be
least likely to protest. Our study pushes theorizing about repression by highlighting that the
state is not the only actor who represses; that repression need not target protestors to affect
the possibilities of protest; and that state and non-state repression is often tightly coupled
for racial and ethnic minority populations.

K EYW ORDS: Arab American; repression; ethnic identity; protest; moral shock.

In the United States, Arab and Arab Muslims have borne the greatest brunt of government and non­
state repression in the aftermath of the terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred
to as 9/11). Two months after 9/11 authorities requested 5,000 men from Middle Eastern countries
to submit to FBI questioning for no other reason than their country of origin (Cainkar 2009). In
areas of Arab American concentration the FBI wiretapped phones, monitored Internet activity, placed
informants inside mosques, and used agent provocateurs—a domestic surveillance mission that resur­
rected aspects of the infamous COINTELPRO program (ADC 2003; Howell 2011). There were at
least 700 incidents of violence against Arab Americans within nine weeks of 9/11, and anti-Muslim
hate crime increased 1,600 percent compared to the previous year (ADC 2003; Disha, Cavendish,

The authors wish to thank Maria B. Velez and Christopher Lyons for critical feedback on earlier drafts, Social Problems s reviewers for
helpful suggestions, the collectors of the Detroit Arab American Study (Wayne Baker, Ronald Stockton, Sally Howell, Amaney Jamal,
Ann Chih Lin, Andrew Shryock, Mark Tessler), and Arlene Santoro for continued support. Direct correspondence to: Wayne
Santoro, Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, MSC05 3080, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-
0001. E-mail: wsantoro(S)unm.edu.

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study o f Social Problems.
For permissions, please e-mail: joumals.permissions(3)oup.com

. 219
220 • Santoro/Azab

and King 2011). Within one month of 9/11, 45 percent of Arab Americans reported that someone
they knew of Arab ethnicity had experienced discrimination (Zogby 2001). These state actions and
everyday harassment created for Arab Americans a climate of fear, anxiety, and isolation; a belief of
being watched and a dread that at any moment one could be detained without due process protec­
tions (Cainkar 2008, 2009; Howell and Shryock 2003; Naber 2006).
While scholarship has documented this repression, little attention has been paid to Arab American
resistance to it. Our research examines the connection between repression and Arab American pro­
test. At the macro level we use newspaper archives to assess if protest ebbed or flowed in the after­
math of 9/11. At the micro level we use a probability survey to investigate whether experiencing
post-9/11 backlash motivates people to join movement causes. Our data come from metropolitan
Detroit. The Arab population in this area is unique in that it is large, roughly 220,000 in 2010, and
geographically concentrated especially in Dearborn where Arabs comprise one-third of the city’s pop­
ulation (Schopmeyer 2011). These demographic factors make “Arab Detroit” highly visible and thus
render it a strategic site to examine.
Our investigation aims to make two contributions. First, few repression studies have been at the mi­
cro level and most of these focus on activists (Earl 2011). Typical of this approach, Lesley Wood
(2007) examined protest against the World Trade Organization and documented how activists’ experi­
ences with police repression dampened protest diffusion. But our micro-level data set is not an activist
specific survey as it represents a cross-section of the Arab community in metro Detroit. This allows us
to assess the broader question of differential recruitment, meaning who joins a protest event, rather
than asking how repression affects only those already committed to the cause. Moreover, we can inves­
tigate how repression impacts people with varying levels of ethnic identity, in our case referring to peo­
ple who do or do not have a strong sense of “Arabness.” Previous scholarship argues that when
activists experience repression it can further politicize them because they already have a strong sense
of collective identity and thus “righteousness joins grievance to create a potent psychological basis for
mobilization” (Bob and Nepstad 2007:1375). This implies that repression would have little effect on
activism for people with a weak ethnic identity. Yet we draw on research on moral shocks (Jasper and
Poulsen 1995) and quotidian disruption (Snow et al. 1998) to speculate that repression will especially
politically motivate people who are weakly identified. We thus envision repression to be particularly
mobilizing for those who under other circumstances would be least likely to protest.
Second, while movement scholars in the United States have taken notice of the recent protests in
the Arab World, they have paid scant attention to protest among Arab Americans. This has left rela­
tively barren our knowledge of the contours of the Arab American movement.1 Our macro-level data
allow us to chart for the first time temporal variation in protest. Our micro-level level data allow us to
assess the impact of factors used to understand protest for other populations, like resources and orga­
nizational connections, as well as factors specific to ethnic populations such as ethnic identity and
generation. To the extent that we uncover similarities would, we think, help demystify Arab
Americans who by popular culture are seen as inherently aberrant. This “otherness” is expressed in
popular beliefs that Arab Americans are non-civilized and non-modern because they are exploitive of
women, religiously intolerant, undemocratic, and filled with rage.

ARAB AMERICANS AND P O ST - 9 / 1 1 REPRESSION

Repression raises the costs of mobilization (Tilly 1978). We focus on coercive actions by state and
non-state actors that target Arab Americans in the post-9/11 environment. We thus see repression

1 Exceptions include research on Arab Muslims examining indexes of political participation (Read 2007) or willingness to assert
civil rights (Jamal 2005) as well as ethnographic work on Arab American mobilization in San Francisco prior to 9/11 (Naber
2012). Using the same survey data we use, Howell and Jamal (2009b) analyzed separately the predictors of Arab Christian and
Muslim protest participation. They did not, however, assess repression effects and in general their models excluded predictors
commonly employed in the social movement literature (e.g., ethnic identity, organizational membership, biographical availability,
age, political orientation).
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 221

when residents harass or assault Arab Americans in public places and when the state targets Arab
Americans for greater surveillance and harsher treatment. Our approach is broader than the bulk of re­
search on repression that focuses on coercive state actions that target protestors, such as how the policing
of protest affects subsequent activism (della Porta 1995) or how governments try to demobilize their
opposition (Rasler 1996). We do not question the usefulness of this more tapered approach, but we
agree with Myra Marx Ferree (2004) that non-state agents can repress (see also Bromley and Shupe
1983; Davenport 2005; Earl 2003). Likewise, we concur with Pamela Oliver (2008) that repression
need not target activists to shape the possibilities of protest (see also Earl 2004; McAdam 1982).
Anti-Arab hostility predates 9/11 but it significantly escalated afterwards in what Andrew Shryock,
Abraham Nabeel, and Sally Howell (2011) labeled the "terror decade” (p. 2). We begin with a review
of state actions. Within two years of 9/11 there were 25 security initiatives, typically emanating from
the executive branch of the federal government, which singled out Arabs in the United States
(Cainkar 2009). One of the first was a November 2001 requirement that roughly 5,000 Middle
Eastern men who had recently arrived in the United States on non-immigrant visas submit to FBI in­
terviews (ADC 2003). The interviews were “voluntary” but law enforcement went to the residences
of those who did not volunteer. In the Detroit area, about 566 people were interviewed with 200
alone in Dearborn (Schaefer 2001). These interviews were feared in part because anyone who had a
visa violation was deported, even if such a violation was minor and in the past would have been han­
dled leniently. Returning to practices of the COINTELPRO program used against New Left move­
ments, the FBI in May of 2002 began a surveillance program of Arab Americans (ADC 2003).
Believing that the Detroit area contained Al Qeda operatives, the FBI used undercover agents to infil-
tiate the community, conducted surveillance of meeting places including mosques, wiretapped
phones, monitored Internet activity, and had the IRS scrutinize Muslim charities (Audi 2002). The
FBI also used agent provocateurs, evident when newcomers to Detroit area mosques encouraged
congregants to engage in violence (Howell 2011). While unaware of the magnitude of these opera­
tions, the local Arab community was well aware of the extensive use of community informants, which
created an overall sense of paranoia. One resident stated: 'Being in Dearborn now is like being in a
dark lake. You don’t see the gators, but they’re down there” (Audi 2002:Al).
In August of 2002, the Justice Department developed a program of mandatory registration. About
83.000 male visitors living in the United States from mainly Arab and Muslim-majority countries
were required to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), be fingerprinted,
photographed, and questioned (Cainkar 2009). Registers had to report in person annually and inform
INS officials of changes of residence. About 13,500 of these individuals were ordered to be deported
despite being cleared of terrorism charges. In total, law enforcement interviewed perhaps as many as
200.000 Arab Americans in their homes or workplaces after coworkers, neighbors, or strangers re­
ported that they acted suspiciously (Tirman 2005), and suspicious activity might include making
phone calls at work to Arab countries, opening and closing their car trunk, praying in public, or taking
flying lessons (ADC 2003; Cainkar 2009). Practices like these resulted in the detainment of more
than 5,000 mainly Arab Americans by May of 2003, 155 from the Detroit area (Howell and Jamal
2009a). The Office of the Inspector General documented a "pattern of physical and verbal abuse” in
their treatment and the routine denial of their due process rights (Ahmad 2004:1269).
Profiling by airport personnel was well publicized and included 80 incidents within a year of 9/11
where passengers presumed to be Arab or Muslim were removed from airplanes because crew mem­
bers or passengers felt uncomfortable with them on board (ADC 2003). This fear of "flying while
Arab made many more reluctant to schedule airplane trips, especially international flights because
federal authorities at times denied people reentry into the United States (Cainkar 2009). Local police
profiled. In Michigan, police pulled over a car with Arab American boy scouts and threatened to de­
tain the scoutmaster as a terrorist suspect (ADC 2003); a Lebanese American and a former star run-
ning back at a Dearborn high school was charged with money laundering in support of terrorism
after police found cell phones in his car (Warikoo 2006); and three men of Palestinian heritage were
222 . Santoro/Azab

Figure 1. Number of Incidents of Anti-Muslim Hate Crime in the United States, 1995-2010

Data source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports

jailed on charges of terrorism surveillance after photographing the scenic Mackinac bridge (Swickard,
Warikoo, and Christoff 2006). All terrorism charges in these cases were later dropped. Detainment
followed by dropping of terrorism charges was the norm, but rather than reassure the Arab popula­
tion it produced greater anxiety because it signaled how ill founded the arrests were in the first place
(Cainkar 2009).
Along with state actions, the public monitored and harassed those perceived to be Arab or
Muslim. In fact, Louise Cainkar’s (2008, 2009) interviews in Chicago and John Zogby’s (2001, 2002)
survey research revealed that the most common type of harassment that Arab Americans experienced
came from non-state actors. Within seven days of 9/11 the FBI received 96,000 tips of Arab
Americans engaging in “suspicious” behavior (Cainkar 2009). One way to quantify non-state repres­
sion over time is to look at hate crime known to police that targeted Muslims or people presumed
to be Muslim. (The FBI will collect data on hate crime targeting Arabs starting in 2015
[Kaleem 2013].) While the reported numbers undercount such incidents (HRW 2002), it is useful to
indicate over time patterns. Figure 1 traces hate crime from 1995 to 2010 and shows the spike in
repression in the aftermath of 9/11: in 2000 there were 28 anti-Muslim hate crimes but 481 in 2001.2
Others documented more than 700 violent incidents targeting Arab Americans within nine weeks of
9/11 (ADC 2003). Examples include Arab children being attacked in school, Arab Muslim women
having their hijabs (Muslim headscarf) pulled off or being spat upon, vandalism against homes, mob
attacks and bombings of mosques, death threats, harassment at work, and being denied employment
and business services (ADC 2003; HRW 2002). Encountering “hate stares” in public was a near ubiq­
uitous experience (Cainkar 2009). Incidents like these occurred in the Detroit area, including a busi­
ness being destroyed by arson and another having its windows shot out, verbal harassment on the
street, drivers being attacked while waiting at traffic lights, threatening phone calls to community or­
ganizations, employees being fired, suspended, or harassed, and attacks against students, including a

2 Disha and colleagues (2011) argued that most hate crime that the FBI listed under the “other ethnicity” category were inci­
dents targeting Arab Americans, in part because hate crime directed at non-Arabs were captured in other mutually exclusive cate­
gories (e.g., whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Jews). If Disha and colleagues (2011) are correct, anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim hate crime have the same temporal pattern. Anti-Arab hate crime spiked in 2001, with a 324 percent increase com­
pared to 2000, and declined thereafter but with levels post-2001 remaining 30 percent higher than pre-2001. The similarity in
trends is further evident in that the bivariate correlation between anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crime is .914 from 1995 to
2010.
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 223

Dearborn high school having to be evacuated after a bomb threat (ADC 2003). Muneer Ahmad
(2004) wrote that 19 people were killed due to 9/11 backlash. One of these deaths was in the
Detroit-area where the killer told his victim that he was going to kill him for what happened in New
York City and Washington, DC. (ADC 2003:69). This hostile climate was so pervasive that in the
months following 9/11 the earnings of Arab American men fell, especially in areas with many hate
crimes, and the health outcomes of Arab American women precipitously declined, as indicated by
spikes in preterm births and low birth weights (Kaushal, Kaestner, and Reimers 2007; Lauderdale
2006). Over the remaining years of the terror decade anti-Arab harassment fell but remained substan­
tially higher than prior to 9/11.
Repression produced a culture of fear, an “internment of the psyche” (Naber 2012), that made
many Arab Americans feel they were being monitored and at any moment could be incarcerated
(Cainkar 2009; Howell and Shryock 2003). Some even feared the creation of internment camps like
those experienced by Japanese Americans during World War II; unbeknownst to the community, the
INS had in fact 15 years earlier developed contingency plans to detain en masse non-citizen Arab
Americans (Akram and Johnson 2004). While far from complete, the historical record documents
well post-9/11 repression. It also makes a case for conceptualizing repression as more than just state
actions that target protestors, as that approach would exclude every example detailed above. What is
less obvious is how people responded to it. We turn now to a review of research on the repression-
mobilization nexus and the different ways we investigate this issue.

REPRESSION AND MOBILIZATION

A central theme to research on the repression-mobilization nexus is the divergence of findings.
Repression can be unrelated to activism. Amnette Linden and Bert Klandermans (2006), for instance,
interviewed extreme-right activists in the Netherlands and concluded that because activists had antici­
pated that their activity would expose them to repression their subsequent experience of it did not in­
fluence whether they continued with the cause. Most research, however, finds that repression matters
but is divided over the nature of that effect. Some work uncovers that repression demobilizes because
it raises the cost of activism, creates adverse publicity, disrupts movement organizational processes,
and/or eliminates activists through their jailing or death (Bromley and Shupe 1983; Carley 1997;
Jones 1988; Williams 2005; Wood 2007). For instance, police repression against the Los Angeles
chapter of the Brown Berets, such as harassing members on the street, breaking into the organiza­
tion s headquarters, and using agent provocateurs created intra-organizational tension that helped
lead to the organization’s decline (Marin 1991). In contrast, other studies demonstrate that repres­
sion can facilitate mobilization because it undermines the legitimacy of the regime, heightens activist
commitment, exacerbates discontent, brings in third-party support, and/or radicalizes protestors
(O ’Hearn 2009; Olivier 1990; Ondetti 2006; Rasler 1996). At the micro level, for example, Robert
White (1989) interviewed members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and argued that state repres­
sion encouraged armed resistance. Craig Jenkins and Kurt Schock (2004) found at the macro level
that state repression spurred on protest across 103 countries in the 1970s. Our macro-level data can
assess whether repression mobilizes, demobilizes, or has null effects on Arab Americans by tracing
whether their protest ebbed or flowed in the aftermath of 9/11.
Rather than thinking about repression as having either positive or negative effects, a more com­
mon and perhaps useful approach seeks to uncover the conditions under which these effects are appar­
ent. Indeed, most studies that find that repression mobilizes view such effects as occurring only
under some circumstances. A particularly well-known conditional argument is that repression, or the
political opportunity structure more broadly, has an inverted-U effect on mobilization (Eisinger
1973; Hegre et al. 2001; Muller and Weede 1990; Opp 1994). Receptive contexts (low repression)
and hostile contexts (high repression) demobilize whereas protest is greatest in regimes with a mix­
ture of receptivity and repression. Such mixed regimes provide the incentive to protest, unlike largely
receptive contexts, but in contrast to highly repressive regimes they do not make protest exceedingly
224 • Santoro/Azab

costly. Other conditional approaches include work that uncovered that repression mobilized anti­
nuclear activists only if the potential activist thought that the repression was illegitimate (Opp and
Roehl 1990); that repression had short-term negative but long-term positive effects on insurgency
during the Iranian revolution (Rasler 1996); that legally sanctioned repression like court decrees
dampened protest but situational-based police repression escalated collective action for extreme right
movements in Germany (Koopmans 1997), and that Israeli arrests only diminished Palestinian pro­
test if they were at high levels (Khawaja 1993) (see also Bob and Nepstad 2007; Hess and Martin
2006; Koopmans 1993; Moore 1998; Olivier 1990).
Using our micro-level level data, we follow this line of research by assessing the conditional rela­
tionship between repression and ethnic identity. We previously noted that repression can mobilize ac­
tivists, because experiencing it in conjunction with a strong collective identity acts as a motivator for
continued activism. For anti-apartheid protestors at Columbia University, Eric Hirsch (1990) found
that through face-to-face interaction participants had built a strong sense of group solidarity. When
activists subsequently experienced harassment, such as being threatened with expulsion, they became
further unified and more willing to use direct action. Hirsch believed that people who were commit­
ted to the movement’s goals and each other found repression to be a polarizing experience that invig­
orated their dedication to the cause. Clifford Bob and Sharon Nepstad (2007) noted that when the
state assassinates movement leaders it can create a moral outrage among adherents that empowers
them to continue with the protest cause. Jo Ann Robinson (1987) documented that when segrega­
tionists in Montgomery, Alabama tried to dismantle the 1955-56 bus boycott by bombing Dr. King’s
home, ticketing boycotters, and arresting organizers it further unified people who already were pro­
testing. White (1989) argued that repression mobilized IRA activists because of their strong national
Irish identity, their loyalty to their social networks, and because they saw violence as effective.
These studies leave unclear, however, how repression affects those with a weak identity because
accounts of activists only contain people committed to the cause. We can address this shortcoming
because we do not have an activist-specific sample. Any representative sample of an ethnic population
includes people who vary in the extent that they are ethnically identified. This means we can compare
how repression affects those with strong ethnic identities to those whose “Arabness” has little sa­
lience, the latter indicated in our analysis by people who see little reason to maintain the Arabic lan­
guage, marry within the community, participate in Arab cultural events, and the like. Drawing on
research on moral shocks and quotidian disruption, we speculate that repression will especially mobi­
lize those with a weak Arab identity. The crux of our argument is that people with a weak ethnic iden­
tity most likely find personal experiences with repression to be a moral shock; likewise, such
experiences should be particularly disruptive to their taken-for-granted assumptions and habituated
patterns of everyday life. James Jasper and Jane Poulsen (1995) and David Snow and colleagues
(1998) theorized that these conditions, respectively, were especially conducive to protest mobiliza­
tion. We elaborate on this thesis below.
Social movement theory suggests that Arab Americans who feel little common fate with other
coethnics are likely isolated from activist networks, unaware or unconcerned about ethnic-based
grievances, and unlikely to join ethnic protests. Amaney Jamal (2005) found this to be the case for
Arab Muslims. She reported that Arab Muslims with low group consciousness tended to be uncon­
nected to Arab social circles, to see America as fair and a land of opportunity, and to have never expe­
rienced discrimination. But if such individuals encounter repression for no other reason than their
Arab heritage, we think they experience it as a moral shock: “an event or situation (which) raises
such a sense of outrage in people that they become inclined toward political action, even in the ab­
sence of a network of contacts” (Jasper and Poulsen 1995:498). For those who cling to the ideal of
America as a land of upward mobility and a protector of civil liberties, experiencing repression is
likely so incongruent with their orientation that it acts as a moral shock that motivates protest partici­
pation. Jasper and Poulsen (1995) contended that this process characterized recruitment for many
animal rights activists. They argued that many were isolated originally from protest networks and
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 225

may have even held derogatory views of animal rights activists. After seeing or reading about scien­
tists experimenting on animals, however, they were shocked cognitively and emotionally to such an
extent that they became motivated to seek out activist organizations and join protest campaigns.
Snow and associates (1998) theorizing about the link between quotidian disruption and mobiliza­
tion lead to a similar expectation. They noted that when individuals experienced a disruption to their
everyday routine, and the taken-for-granted assumptions that underlied such accustomed daily prac­
tices, it served as a powerful motivator for protest. For instance, they argued that the partial nuclear
meltdown on Three Mile Island radically altered daily routines, evidenced when some had to evacu­
ate their homes, as well as unquestioned beliefs like faith in government officials. These quotidian dis­
ruptions, in turn, channeled many into anti-nuclear activism. This perspective is especially relevant to
Arab Americans because Snow and associates (1998) focused on disruptions to a person’s normal
routine and this is precisely where Arab Americans are most likely to experience repression. Recall
that most repression Arab Americans face occurs in such routine activities as walking on the street, in
employment contexts, and when purchasing goods. Moreover, Snow and associates (1998:9) high-
lighted disruptions where a person was violated and victimized by strangers, and repression cer­
tainly classifies as such an affront. In sum, Arab Americans with low ethnic identity should find
repression to be quite disruptive to their cognitive and behavioral routine and hence it should espe­
cially motivate them to protest.
Repression may mobilize those with a strong Arab identity as well. But given that such individuals
are likely already cognizant of anti-Arab bias, as Jamal’s (2005) study suggests, repression should be
less morally shocking and/or disruptive to their daily routine. As an example, we think experiencing
anti-Arab/Muslim harassment is less morally shocking and/or disruptive for those convinced that the
United States is leading an assault on the Arab World or the Muslim religion—beliefs that Nadine
Naber (2012) found commonplace among those with a strong Arab/Muslim collective identity. As
such, while repression may motivate them to protest, the magnitude of the effect should be less
pronounced.

DATA AND METHODS

Our data are from the Detroit metropolitan area, a location with a long standing, large, and geograph­
ically concentrated Arab community. Other factors make Arab Detroit distinct from Arab America as
a whole (Howell and Jamal 2009a), and thus caution is warranted in generalizing our findings. Yet
given how little research there is on Arab American protest, it strikes us as appropriate to focus on
the most visible Arab community in the United States. Certainly, federal authorities did this when by
early 2002 they doubled the FBI office in Detroit and located the first local office of Homeland
Security in Dearborn (Audi 2002).

Macro-Level Data
To document macro-level protest we search the archives of the Detroit Free Press. This paper covers
metro Detroit, is Michigan’s largest newspaper, and has online archives available during the period in
question. While not without their limitations, newspapers are widely used to track protest and large
newspapers do so relatively accurately (Earl et al. 2004). We begin the analysis in 1999, nearly three
years prior to 9/11 and the earliest year online archives are available. We end in 2010.3 We code two
types of protest events. First, we code public demonstrations by Detroit-area Arab Americans such as
marches, boycotts, pickets, and vigils that articulated an ethnic-based grievance.4 We code events that
may have spanned more than one day only once because the duration was inconsistently reported.

3 During our searches we discovered that the database was missing coverage for half of 2004 and thus we do not report data for
that year. A lesser problem occurred in 2008 where the archives were incomplete for one month.
4 Thus we exclude demonstrations whose purpose is to condemn terrorism, show support for President George W. Bush, and
other events that lack a clear ethnic-based demand.
226 . Santoro/Azab

Second, we code meetings between Detroit-area Arab Americans and authorities (e.g., police, FBI,
federal officials) where Arab Americans voiced ethnic-based grievances. These face-to-face meetings
provide a mechanism to directly communicate grievances to elites, and as such they serve as a form
of local Arab American activism (Howell and Jamal 2009a). To be coded the meeting had to be con­
tentious, meaning community members expressed to authorities their displeasure at elite actions. Our
measure of protest sums events across these two types.
We employ 27 search terms to identify relevant articles using the newspaper’s online search en­
gine. We began with "Arab American” and “Muslim” separately in combination with six descriptors
of mobilization (e.g., protest, rally, meeting, crowd). We select actions by Muslims if they were of
Arab descent. In the course of these searches we identified 10 community advocacy organizations
and 5 activists and we used the names of these 15 organizations/activists as a second set of search
terms. We read the abstracts of all articles that these searches produced and then downloaded (pur­
chased) the full text of those that were potentially relevant. We erred on the side of caution, down­
loading a total of 775 articles or eight for every one article that proved relevant. The multiple
searches and liberal downloading gave us confidence that few protests covered by the Free Press es­
caped our attention.

Micro-Level Data
We use the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) (Baker et al. 2003), a representative sample of
self-identified people of Arab or Chaldean (Christian Iraqis) descent living in the Detroit three-
county metropolitan area in 2003. All respondents were adults (18+) and were interviewed face-to-
face. Most interviewers were of Arab background and about 40 percent of the interviews were
conducted in Arabic. Two different sampling frames were used. First, a three-stage sample design se­
lected respondents from 60 census tracks that had a population of 10 percent or more Arab. These
tracks included 49 percent of all Arabs in the three-county area. Second, to locate people in tracts
with low Arab concentration, the researchers used the membership lists of 13 religious, business, edu­
cational, and social organizations that serve Detroit-area Arab Americans. This produced a list of over
30,000 people but the sampling frame was reduced to 10,645 individuals with deliverable addresses
who lived in census tracks not already surveyed. A systematic random sample of these individuals was
conducted. Altogether, 1,389 eligible households were identified using both sampling frames and
1,016 were interviewed. The response rate was a healthy 74 percent. All data we present are weighted
to correct for unequal probability of household selection.
Advantages of the survey are numerous. The data collectors went to great lengths to solicit com­
munity input. More than 20 organizations that serve the local Arab population were consulted, and
their input was used in constructing culturally sensitive questions and translating questions into
Arabic. Such organizations also publicized the survey instrument to the community, making people
feel safe in participating, a particularly important issue for a population that fears being monitored.
Moreover, the survey had as its intention to capture 9/11 impacts, and thus questions asked about
protest that took place after 9/11 or harassment stemming from 9/11 backlash.

Dependent Variable
We measure protest based on whether the respondent in the past 12 months took part in a pro­
test, march, or demonstration about any social or political issue” (l = yes, 0 = otherwise). While it
might seem to some like a low bar for activism, remember that we examine protest in the immedi­
ate post-9/11 climate where people knew that law enforcement could investigate them without
probable cause, misconstrue their innocuous actions as support for terrorism, and detain them with­
out any assurance of their release (Cainkar 2009). Eleven percent protested. To gauge whether this
represents a high or low level of protest involvement, Figure 2 compares this finding to a 2002 na­
tional sample from the General Social Survey (GSS) and the 2003 Detroit Area Survey (DAS),
which sampled the same area as the DAAS survey. Figure 2 shows that Arab Americans protested
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 227

110°o

4.0°o

Arab
American
(n = 1,016)
White
(n = 1,032)
I1
Black
(n = 202)
Latino
(m =115)
White
(n - 343)
Black
(n = 113)

DAAS (2003) GSS (2002) DAS (2003)

F ig u re 2. R ace/E thnicity and P ro test Participation

Notes: Data on Arab Americans are from the DAAS (Baker et al. 2003) with remaining Detroit area data from the Detroit
Area Study (DAS) (Baker 2003). We exclude Latinos from the DAS sample, because only 12 were surveyed. National data
come from the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) (Smith, Marsden, and Flout 1972—2010). Protestors participated in a
“protest, march, or demonstration” in the last 12 months for the DAAS (Baker et al. 2003) and DAS (Baker 2003) surveys
or joined a “protest rally or march” over the past five years for the GSS.

substantially more than whites, blacks, and Latinos nationally as well as compared to blacks and
whites in the Detroit area. We do not think that Arab Americans always protest at higher levels
than these other populations, but in certain historical moments they can. The data suggest that
post-9/11 was such a moment.

Independent Variables
Prior research has differentiated repression based on its severity (Earl 2003) and thus we use an index
to measure the severity of non-state repression. Respondents were first asked if they had experienced
in the past two years (post-9/11) verbal insults due to their race, ethnicity, or religion. People who
had but did not report more severe repression are coded 1. Respondents then were asked if they had
experienced in the past two years threatening words or gestures due to their race, ethnicity, or religion.
People who had been threatened are coded 2 so long as they also had not been physically attacked.
Last, respondents were asked if they had experienced in the past two years a physical attack due to
their race, ethnicity, or religion. People who had been attacked are coded 3. High scores thus indicate
greater severity of repression experiences, from insults to threats to physical attacks. Overall, 75 per­
cent did not directly experience repression (coded 0), 11 percent were verbally insulted, 12 percent
were threatened, and 2 percent (18 people) were physically attacked.
We assume that non-state actors are carrying out most of this repression, a claim we can indirectly
assess. Respondents were asked if they had a “bad experience since 9/11” and those who had were asked
to “explain.” We code these open-ended responses based on whether the hostile encounter involved a
state actor, a non-state actor, or airport personnel. We separated airport personnel, because although
they are non-state actors they use airport security to enforce their treatment of passengers. Figure 3
shows these results. A handful of people, about 4 percent, report being harassed by state actors, espe­
cially police officers but others mentioned federal marshalls, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
agency, and immigration officials. But an overwhelming majority, roughly 87 percent, mentions encoun­
ters with non-state actors. Common examples include harassment at work from employers, employees,
and customers; unpleasant experiences from people they encounter on the street while walking or driv­
ing; as well as negative encounters when purchasing goods such as at gasoline stations and grocery
228 . Santoro/Azab

86.7%

4.1% 4.8%

State Actors Private Airport Unclear

Citizen Personnel

Figure 3. W ho Represses Arab Americans in M etro Detroit?

Data Source: D etroit Arab American Study (Baker et al. 2003)

stores. These post-9/11 non-state sanctions are precisely the type of repression that Christian
Davenport (2005) encouraged scholars to examine because the existent repression literature does not.
There are seemingly as many approaches to measuring “Arab identity” as there are scholars who
study it. Our Arab identity measure, influenced by Jamal’s (2005) notion of Arab American “group
consciousness,” seeks to capture respondents’ degree of ethnic attachment and presumably the soli­
darity and pride that ethnic attachment entails. Respondents were asked how important it meant to
them to: (l) speak Arabic; (2) marry someone of an Arab background; (3) participate in Arab art
and cultural events; (4) support Palestine; and (5) frequently visit their family’s country of ancestry
in the Arab world. Each response ranged from 0, indicating that it was “not relevant” to 4, indicating
that it meant “a lot.” The indicators form a reliable index (a = .73) and are summed. The measure’s
criterion validity is evident in that, as we demonstrate shortly, Arab identity promotes protest as
social movement theory predicts.5

Control Variables
We incorporate 16 controls. Organizational involvement promotes protest and thus we measure it
based on whether the respondent is an active member of an ethnic or religious-based organization
(1 = yes, 0 = no). We measure socioeconomic status because it heightens political participation.
Education is a four-category variable where 1 is less than a high school degree and 4 is a master’s, pro­
fessional, or doctorate degree. Family income is a ten-category variable where 1 is less than $10,000
and 10 is $200,000 or more. In general, these data have few missing values; however, the income field
is less complete than others so we use conditional mean imputation by replacing missing values with
predicted values from a regression analysis of the complete data. To capture biographical constraint
we code people who are married and have children as a 1, 0 otherwise. We reverse code age so that
high values indicate younger age: we score people 50 or older 1, those in their forties 2, thirties 3,
and younger than thirty 4. We measure liberal orientation with 1 being “very conservative” and

5 Scholars of Arab Americans may want to know if the Arab identity measure applies to the large share of Chaldeans in our sample
(22 percent). Chaldeans are mainly Iraqi Catholics whose ancestral language is Aramaic rather than Arabic; moreover, Chaldeans
do not always identify as Arab despite sharing similar cultural traits. However, Chaldeans (mean = 9.56) do not differ from non-
Chaldeans (mean = 9.65) on the Arab identity index (t = .27, p = .786).
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 229

5 meaning “very liberal.” Younger adults and liberals are more likely to protest than older adults or
conservatives. We control for sex and race, separately, with women and self-identified whites coded
1 and men and other racial identifications coded 0.
Generation is a crucial aspect of the ethnic experience (Telles and Ortiz 2008). People of Arab de­
scent have been immigrating to the United States for more than a century and have generational
depth. Syrians and Lebanese were part of the large wave of South-Central-Eastern Europeans who
came to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The early settlement of some of these
immigrants in the Detroit area, in part to seek jobs in the automobile industry, helps explain contin­
ued Arab immigration to the area (Schopmeyer 2011). We measure generation by coding immigrants
1, those in the first U.S.-born generation 2, respondents whose parents were both U.S. born, but not
their grandparents 3, and all others 4. Wayne Santoro and Gary Segura (2011) found that among
Mexican Americans, ethnic political activity increased from the first to the second generation but
then subsequently decreased for third and fourth-plus generations. We include a generation-squared
term to assess this non-linear pattern.
Arab Muslims are especially politically active because they experience hostility directed at their re­
ligion (Read 2007), have heightened group consciousness emanating from mosque involvement
(Jamal 2005), and because of politicizing events in the Arab World (Naber 2012). We code religion
into three dummy variables based on whether the respondent is Muslim, Christian, or some other re­
ligion/ not religious. Christians are the reference category. We use four dummy variables to capture
country of origin. Our reference category combines Syrians and Lebanese (see Ajrouch and Jamal
2007). These populations tend to be assimilated, as indicated by high rates of marrying non-Arabs
and self-identifying as white (Ajrouch and Jamal 2007; Kulczycki and Lobo 2002), and thus we ex­
pect them to be unlikely to protest. We code respondents 1 if they were born in either country or, if
U.S. born, both of their parents were born in Syria/Lebanon. Following this coding technique, we
compare them separately to Iraqis and Palestinians. International developments at the time of the
DAAS survey, namely the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the second Palestinian intifada, may have politi­
cized these populations. Arabs of other nationalities comprise the final dummy variable. The first col­
umn in Appendix Table A1 shows means for all variables for the entire sample and the remaining
columns do so separately for protestors and non-protestors.

Method
We look for change in protest before and after 9/11 to uncover macro-level repression effects. We
also examine statistically the bivariate relationship between anti-Muslim (and anti-Arab) hate crime
and protest. Both the small sample size (n — 11) and lack of data on Arab Americans across the
years/location of our sample preclude a multivariate analysis of the macro-level data; we can nonethe­
less establish the basic relationship between repression and protest. We use logistic regression for the
micro-level level data because the dependent variable is dichotomous. We report metric coefficients,
which indicate that for a unit change in the predictor variable, the log-odds of protest changes by its
respective parameter estimate holding constant all other variables. Bivariate correlations suggest that
multicolinearity is not a concern. Models are estimated in Stata 12.

FINDINGS
Figure 4 shows how protest at the macro level varied from 1999 to 2010. Protest in 2001 is shown
separately for pre- and post-9/11 events. An initial observation is that despite the attention paid to
the impact of 9/11 on the Arab community, they were protesting prior to 9/11. This is because anti-
Arab hostility predates 9/11, with scholars often linking its genesis to the backlash following the
1967 Arab-Israeli war. Examples of pre-9/11 protest include a 1999 meeting in Dearborn with the
U.S. Attorney General to criticize the use of "secret” evidence to detain non-citizen Arab Americans;
a 2000 picket of a convenience store whose manager made anti-Arab remarks; and a January 2001
230 • Santoro/Azab

20 1

1999 2000 2001 2001 2002 2003 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
(pre-9/11) (post-9/11)

Figure 4. Arab American Protest in Metro Detroit, 1999-2010

Note: Data come from the online archives of the Detroit Free Press. The archives for 2004 are incomplete and thus excluded.
Data for 2008 are incomplete for one month and thus may underestimate protest levels.

encounter where people packed a Dearborn city-council meeting where officials decided whether to
appoint a person who had authored anti-Arab statements in political campaign literature.
But Figure 4 makes clear that protest spiked after 9/11. Compared to the first nine months of
2001, protest more than tripled in the last three months of the year. Protest peaked in 2002 and was
433 percent higher than the previous year (pre-9/11). Rather than withdrawing from public space,
Arab Americans protested during a climate of repression. One of the first events we uncovered was a
November 2001 march in Dearborn protesting law enforcement targeting recent Arab immigrants for
police interviews. Other issues post-9/11 and throughout 2002 include protests over the arrest and
deportation of a Muslim activist of Lebanese heritage on charges that his charity funded terrorism,
the deportation of immigrant men of Middle Eastern background for visa violations, the freezing of
assets of Muslim charities, harassment of Arab students, and airport and police profiling. Post-9/11
protest ebbed and flowed, but levels were almost always higher than those predating 9/11. This con­
clusion is in line with work that has argued that 9/11 helped solidify and at times politically mobilized
the Arab and Muslim American community (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009; Cho, Gimpel, and Wu
2006).
Not all protest targeted state or private repression. Similar to other ethnic populations (Lieberson
1980), for instance, most Arab Americans have an interest in political developments in their country
of origin (Zogby 2001, 2002). In 2002, for example, 44 percent of Arab American demonstrations in
Detroit were directed at the large-scale Israeli military invasion of Palestinian cities. To account for
this, Figure 5 shows only protest that targeted repressive state or private action. These data exclude
protest directed at international concerns, such as the Iraqi war, as well as domestic issues unrelated
to state surveillance/harassment or private citizen assaults. An example of the latter, which Figure 5
excludes, is a boycott in 2000 over a store selling clothing with verses from the Qur’an. Figure 5
reveals that while the volume of protest declines by half, the general pattern remains: low levels of
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade • 231

20

15 -

10 -

(pre-9/11) (post-9/11)

Figure 5. Arab American Protest Targeting Repression in Metro Detroit, 1999-2010

Note: Data come from the online archives of the Detroit Free Press. The archives for 2004 are incomplete and thus excluded.
Data for 2008 are incomplete for one month and thus may underestimate protest levels.

pre-9/11 protest, a noticeable upswing in protest at the end of 2001 and throughout 2002, and then
a decline over time with levels remaining generally higher than pre-9/11 protest. Figure 5 further
makes clear the mobilizing effect of repression. Moreover, the bivariate relationship between anti-
Muslim hate crime (Figure l) and Arab American protest (Figure 5) is .635 (p < .05), a remarkably
robust relationship. If FBI reports of hate crime listed as targeting “other ethnicity” represent hate
crime against Arab Americans (see footnote two), the relationship between anti-Arab hate crime and
protest remains equally robust ( r = .638, p < .05).
Why does repression mobilize? Although beyond our quantitative data to demonstrate, we draw
on the historical record to speculate that factors both external and internal to the Arab community
are relevant. Externally, we find useful the “inverted-U” perspective. Recall that this approach argues
that regimes with a mixture of receptive and repressive elements are especially conducive to mobiliza­
tion. We think it accurate to describe the political environment facing Arab Americans as mixed: egre­
gious enough to mobilize but not so severe to make protest unthinkable or life threatening. We
already have detailed its repressive nature, but it had receptive elements as well. To illustrate,
President George W. Bush repeatedly made public statements opposed to anti-Arab/Muslim back­
lash, such as during a September 17 mosque visit (ADC 2003), and 90 percent of Arab Americans
one month after 9/11 found his comments reassuring (Zogby 2001). Around the country, mayors
and governors publically condemned hate crime (HRW 2002). Many high-level federal officials trav­
eled to the Detroit area to meet with Arab community leaders, including the Secretary of State, the
Treasury Secretary, and representatives from the FBI. Likewise, local police generally took hate crime
seriously. In fact, the Human Rights Watch (2002) concluded that the Dearborn police were “exem­
plary” in their post-9/11 response, such as patrolling Arab neighborhoods and mosques by the early
afternoon of September 11, and that such actions made the community feel safer in Dearborn than
outside it. On a more personal level, despite the overall climate of hostility many Arab Americans
232 . Santoro/Azab

Table 1. Weighted Logistic Regression of Arab American Protest Participation on

Repression Experiences, Arab Identity, and Controls
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
b b b

Repression severity index - .288 1.095*

Arab identity .137** .135** .193**
Repression * Arab identity - - -.076*
General controls
Active organizational member .767** .748* .720*
Education .339* .308* .299*
Income .005 .007 -.001
Female -.130 -.136 -.151
Young age .191 .161 .168
White -.168 -.141 -.144
Biographical constraint -.646* -.595* -.613*
Liberal .330* .357* .332*
Arab/ethnic group controls
Iraqi3 .292 .291 .248
Palestinian3 .750 .770 .788
Other Arab3 .356 .372 .404
Muslim*’ 1.358** 1.327** 1.319**
Other religion*’ 1.603* 1.665* 1.670*
Generation 1.739* 1.674* 1.711*
Generation squared -.407* -.399* -.409*

Constant -8.061** -8.075** -8.590**

F-statistic 4.800** 4.720** 4.490**

N = 1,016
a reference category Syrian/Lebanese
b reference category Christian
* p < .05 ** p < .01 (two-tailed tests)

report that since 9/11 someone from outside their community reached out to them with a gesture of
kindness (Howell and Jamal 2009a).6 Actions like these lead us to agree with researchers (Howell
and Shryock 2003), human rights organizations (HRW 2002), and Arab American advocacy organi­
zations (ADC 2003) that the political context sent the Arab community mixed messages.
More internally, Arab Detroit has a wealth of mobilization structures predating 9/11. In the late
1990s, for instance, it had 43 mosques, IS Middle Eastern churches, and 65 Arab and Chaldean orga­
nizations (David 1999; Howell 2011). Indigenous organizations are the backbone of mobilization.
The most prominent civil rights organization is the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) with a local office in Dearborn. At the local and national level, the ADC protested issues of
concern to Arab Americans before and after 9/11. For instance, it formed in 1980 to protest negative
media portrayals of Arabs and shortly after 9/11 it sponsored a meeting with Dearborn educators
to voice concern over the harassment of Arab students. In sum, we suggest that the mix of

6 In the DAAS sample, 33 percent of Arab Americans reported that in the weeks after 9/11 someone who was not of Middle
Eastern background showed them support or solidarity. We were curious if such acts of kindness affected protest participation,
but when we included this variable in Models 1 through 3 (Table l ) it never approached statistical significance. This suggests
that negative encounters mobilize more than positive ones, perhaps because people often protest what they dislike.
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 233

Figure 6. Predicted Effect of Repression on Likelihood of Arab American Protest Participation by Levels of
Arab Identity

Note-. All other predictors mean centered; NS = non-significant slope.

receptivity/hostility characterizing the political context and strong preexisting organizations help ex­
plain why repression prompted protest.
We turn now to our micro-level data. Table 1 predicts who joined a protest event after 9/11.
Model 1 is a baseline model and Model 2 adds the index of the severity of repression experiences.
Model 2 shows that repression has no effect on protest participation, although the positive coefficient
just misses being significant at conventional levels ( t = 1.89, p — .060). But our focus is on uncover­
ing if the effect of repression is moderated by Arab identity, and Model 3 tests this by adding the
product term repression * Arab identity. The product term is significant and Figure 6 presents this in­
teraction graphically. Three slopes are shown corresponding to the effect of repression on protest for
those with high levels of Arab identity (scores one standard deviation above the mean on identity),
average levels of identity, and low identity (one standard deviation below the mean).
Repression heightens protest and its effect is especially strong for those with low Arab identity.
We think these people are unlikely to protest absent repression experiences. Models 1 and 2 suggest
this by showing that low Arab identity corresponds to less protest. Moreover, we find that those with
a weak Arab identity are unlikely to be an active member of an ethnic or religious-based organization:
28 percent of respondents with low identity are organizationally connected compared to 43 percent
of those with high identity. Jamal (2005) found that Arab Muslims who lacked organizational ties
had less ethnic solidarity and because of this were unlikely to interpret police mistreatment of coeth­
nics as a form of injustice. Altogether, these observations paint a picture of low-identity Arab
Americans as isolated from activist networks, unaware or unconcerned about anti-Arab hostility, and
hence unlikely candidates to join ethnic-based protests. But when they personally encounter repres­
sion we suspect that it is experienced as a moral shock and/or a quotidian disruption. In line with
234 . Santoro/Azab

-1.5

-2

-2.5

-3

-3.5

-A

Figure 7. Predicted Effect of Generation on Likelihood of Arab American Protest Participation

Note: All other predictors mean centered.

Jasper and Poulsen (1995) and Snow and associates (1998), we find this condition to be conducive
to joining protest events.
For these low-identity individuals, ethnographic work would be most informative to unpack the
sequence of events that link repression to protest via processes of quotidian disruption and moral
shocks. From the quotidian disruption perspective, we would expect that repression had altered nor­
mal routines. Interviews with Arab Americans uncovered that some in the post-9/11 environment
changed daily practices like where they went shopping, willingness to travel and make donations to
Muslim charities, and interactions among friends and strangers (Beitin and Allen 2005; Cainkar
2009). We also would expect disruptions in cognitive routines. This might register, for instance, with
repression causing these individuals to become apprehensive when encountering non-Arabs in public
or fear being in large crowds. From the moral shock perspective, for repression to mobilize low-
identity Arabs we would expect them to hold some of the sentiments Jamal (2005) identified among
low-identity Arab Muslims: the belief that America is a protector of civil liberties, that only those
who misbehave encounter hostility, and that complaining about mistreatment only worsens stereo­
types. With beliefs like these as background, their subsequent repression experience for no other rea­
son than their ethnic heritage or creed should have been quite shocking. More than merely a
cognitive reaction, it should have been felt at the “gut level” (Jasper 1997:154), a visceral reaction,
and we would look for ethnographers to uncover their frustration, anger, fear, and other like-minded
intense emotions.
Repression also mobilizes those with average levels of identity. The size of the effect is lessened
compared to low-identity coethnics, but across most values of repression the probability of protesting
is nonetheless higher for those with average levels of identity. The slope of repression remains posi­
tive for people with high levels of identity, but its effect reduces in magnitude to the point of losing
statistical significance. One explanation for these findings is that average and high Arab-identity indi­
viduals simply do not experience repression to be as morally shocking or as disruptive to their daily
routines as is the case for their low identity coethnics. Among those highly ethnically identified, two
other possibilities exist. First, these people are likely already motivated to join protest causes and they
therefore do not need the added incentive of repression to be willing to protest. Second, perhaps re­
pression does not affect their probability of protesting but it might affect the intensity of their
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade . 235

activism, such as what Eric Hirsch (1990) uncovered. While repression does not enhance mobiliza­
tion across the entire sample, it is noteworthy that more than two-thirds (68 percent) of respondents
have either low or average levels of Arab identity meaning that the mobilization effect of repression is
more the norm than the exception.
In terms of controls, the correlates of protest participation established for other constituencies
work as expected. Protestors tend to be liberal, organizationally connected, have resources (educa­
tion), and be biographically available. While not technically a control, we also find that ethnic identity
mobilizes respondents independent of repression experiences (Model 2) and even for those who
have not experienced repression personally (Model 3). This finding is in line with traditional move­
ment theory that sees in-group solidarity as inspiring protest participation and shaping everyday be­
havior. Given that dominant-group hostility can act as a catalyst for ethnic identity (Santoro, Velez,
and Keogh 2012), Arab identity likely was heightened by the post-9/11 national climate and personal
repression experiences. If true, then our models would underestimate the indirect effect that repres­
sion can have on protest participation. Gender is unrelated to the likelihood of protesting, a finding
consistent with studies on non-Arab populations (Schussman and Soule 2005). Perhaps the only real
surprise is that age has no effect. Yet even here young age is related to protest at the bivariate level
(see Appendix Table A l), suggesting that the age effect is simply mediated by other variables. In fact,
in supplemental analysis younger Arab Americans are better educated, more ethnically identified, and
experience more repression—factors that promote protest. Muslims protest more than Christians,
not surprisingly given their greater awareness of anti-Muslim bias and involvement in mosques that
builds a sense of linked fate.
Lastly, generation has a concave curvilinear effect on protest. Figure 7 presents a graphic depiction
of this relationship. If we take the first derivative of the quadratic curve as estimated, we find the peak
(where the slope of the first derivative AY/AX = 0) at 2.09, meaning that once we move past the sec­
ond generation the effect of increasing generations is to decrease protest participation. This relation­
ship mirrors what Santoro and Segura (2011) found for Mexican Americans. They noted that
second-generation Mexican Americans protest more than the first because they had greater organiza­
tional involvement, more resources, and more awareness of anti-Mexican prejudice. We find evidence
of similar processes. Compared to Arab immigrants, the second generation are more involved in reli­
gious/ethnic-based organizations (56 vs. 32 percent), more likely to have a bachelor’s degree (27 vs.
20 percent), and more likely to experience repression (41 vs. 20 percent). Santoro and Segura
(2011) explained the drop-off in protest among generationally distant Mexican Americans by noting
that such individuals had a weak ethnic identity and little exposure to targeted mobilization efforts.
Again, similar processes operate for Arab Americans: compared to the second generation, the third-
plus generation has less Arab identity (5.4 vs. 8.8 on the identity scale), perhaps because they encoun­
ter less repression (27 vs. 41 percent), and they are less likely to be Muslim (11 vs. 26 percent),
which makes them less likely to be a part of a network that is exposed to targeted recruitment ap­
peals. In short, despite the important differences between Arab and Mexican Americans, generation
operates in a substantively similar way.

DISCUSSION AND C ONCLUSION

Repression of Arab Americans reached its zenith after 9/11. Whether it was deportations, detentions,
forced registrations, FBI questioning, the reemergence of the COINTELPRO program, or citizen sur­
veillance and harassment, most Arab Americans experienced repression or lived in fear of it. But
rather than pushing people to retreat from the public sphere, such actions heightened protest. At the
macro level, protest spiked after 9/11 and levels over time were highly related to anti-Arab/Muslim
hate crime. Repression mobilized at the micro level as well. Personally experiencing repression
enhances protest participation, especially for those whose Arab identity is not especially salient. We
interpret this finding to mean that people unconnected socially or ideologically to a protest commu­
nity experience repression as a moral shock and/or a severe disruption to their everyday routine. As
236 . Santoro/Azab

such, it is particularly mobilizing. If we are correct, this is one of the first studies to demonstrate that
repression can be especially mobilizing for those who under other circumstances would be unlikely
to protest. The central caveat to our observations about Arab Americans is that they are based on
people living in metro Detroit. It is very possible that the processes we uncover would differ in other
areas, particularly locations that lack vibrant coethnic networks and strong Arab advocacy organiza­
tions. Finally, we are not in a position to test whether our claims regarding repression at the micro
level apply to non-Arabs. Certainly, if one lesson is to be gleaned from the repression literature it is
that no single causal relationship characterizes the link between repression and mobilization.
Nonetheless, our argument is inspired by Jasper and Poulsen (1995) and Snow and associates
(1998) who focused on constituencies that differ greatly from our sample, such as animal rights activ­
ists and the homeless, suggesting a degree of generalizability beyond the Arab community.
Our findings speak to theorizing about repression. Repression typically is seen as state actions tar­
geting protestors. Yet we agree with Pamela Oliver (2008) that repression need not target protestors
to alter the possibilities of protest. She wrote that the policing of blacks in the 1980s led to the mass
surveillance and incarceration of large segments of the population and thus eroded the demographic
base needed to generate protest. Likewise, we agree with Ferree (2004) that the state is not the only
actor who represses. She noted that the women’s movement typically has not targeted the state and
thus the repression that feminists experienced when challenging institutional practices or cultural un­
derstandings come from non-state actors. A focus on Arab Americans brings these often-neglected
types of repressive actions to the foreground. The twin cornerstones of repression facing Arab
Americans are state actions that do not target protestors and the repressive actions of the coworkers,
customers, neighbors, or strangers that Arab Americans encounter in their everyday lives. As we dem­
onstrate, these actions impact protest. Just as the movement literature over time has broadened the
conceptualization of movement activity, our study underscores the need for a broader conceptualiza­
tion of repression.
Our study pushes theorizing in another direction. While Jennifer Earl (2003) highlighted repres­
sion by private agents, she saw such actors by definition as being unconnected to the state. Actions of
parents opposed to their children’s involvement in the Sun Myung Moon religious movement, for in­
stance, occurred with the state being uninvolved in the conflict (Bromley and Shupe 1983). But for
Arab Americans, the policies and rhetoric of authorities shaped the repressive actions of non-state ac­
tors. President Bush, for instance, constructed in speeches an image of the new American enemy as
Muslim and Arab (Merskin 2004). Attorney General John Ashcroft warned that terrorists were hiding
in our communities and asked the public to help the federal government find them (Cainkar 2009).
The Justice Department and the FBI in Detroit actively encouraged the public to “voluntarily” offer
terrorism-related tips, among other ways by offering money for such information on a local Arabic-
language television channel (Audi 2002; Howell and Jamal 2009a). Repressive actions by private
agents did not merely parallel state actions; they were inspired by state actions. When law enforce­
ment target and politicians demonize Arab Americans this gives legitimacy for citizens to monitor
and harass them. Thus, in our case state and non-state actions were coupled. We think this is typically
the case for racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States. The U.S. state structures ra­
cial hierarchies and identities in innumerable ways (Omi and Winant 1994), and in doing so shapes
how non-state actors interact and at times repress minority populations. Future scholarship should be
sensitive to the linking of non-state and state actions. When so connected, non-state repression may
be particularly mobilizing or pernicious in its effect.
We think our results also challenge popular perceptions of Arab Americans. Beginning in the late
1960s and reinvigorated after 9/11, the public views Arab Americans as intrinsically aberrant. This
may be manifested in beliefs such as Arab culture is exploitative of women, that Islam is fundamen­
tally at odds with Christianity, or that Arab Americans are either terrorists or supporters of terrorism.
The core premise underlying such attitudes is that Arab Americans are simply the “other.” Our study
undermines this premise because the correlates of Arab American protest mirror those of other U.S.
 Arab American Protest in the Terror Decade • 237

populations. Like other constituencies, protestors tend to have more resources and organizational
connections, a liberal orientation, and are biographically available. Despite the view that Arab women
are relegated to the private sphere by a patriarchal culture, they protest at the same levels as men.
And perhaps most telling of the dynamics of the ethnic experience, generation operates in a near
identical way as it does for Mexican Americans. In short, the correlates of protest for Arab Americans
are decidedly common. For a population seen as deviating from normative practices, these findings
are distinctly counter-hegemonic.

APPENDIX

Table A l. Weighted Means for Total Sample, Protestors, and Non-Protestors

Total Sample Protestors Non-Protestors

Protestor (%) 11.05 — —

Arab American identity 9.63 11.38 9.42*

Speak Arabic 3.31 3.49 3.294-
Marry an Arab 3.20 3.21 3.20
Arab cultural events 2.53 3.05 2.46*
Support Palestine 2.71 3.37 2.63*
Visit Arab country 2.88 3.26 2.83*
Repression index .40 .72 .36*
Verbal insults (%) 23.59 45.00 20.93*
Threatened (%) 13.22 21.29 12.22+
Physical attack (%) 1.78 2.54 1.69
Organizational involvement (%) 37.61 53.88 35.59*
Education 2.33 2.72 2.28*
Income 5.34 5.94 5.27*
Female (%) 54.69 52.10 55.01
Young age 2.47 3.01 2.40*
White (%) 63.21 53.71 64.39+
Biographical constraint (%) 63.30 43.98 65.70*
Children (%) 72.54 54.28 74.80*
Married (%) 69.41 48.90 71.96*
Liberal 2.59 2.91 2.55*
Muslim (%) 41.37 60.89 38.95*
Christian (%) 57.43 33.90 60.35*
Other religion (%) 1.20 5.20 .70+
Syrian/Lebanese (%) 29.95 33.55 29.51
Iraqi (%) 33.52 20.30 35.16*
Palestinian (%) 6.23 7.29 6.09
Other Arab nationality (%) 30.30 38.86 29.24
Generation 1.31 1.43 1.30*
N 1,016 112 904

Significantly different than protestors: + p < .075 * p < .05 (two-tailed tests)
238 . Santoro/Azab

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