Beyond Erasure and Profiling: Cultivating Strong and Vibrant Arab American Communities in Chicagoland

In this report, we examine the state of racial justice for Arab Americans who live in the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area, which we refer to colloquially as Chicagoland. Despite their myriad differences, some of which we will attend to in the report, there are important continuities in the conditions and experiences of Arab Americans in Chicago. Arab Americans come to the United States from the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa, countries that are themselves comprised of many racial and ethnic communities that have distinct histories and cultures. While not everyone in the Arab region identifies as “Arab,” we use the term Arab American as a shorthand to refer to the diverse immigrants, refugees, and their descendants who have come to the United States from Arab countries since the turn of the 20th century.