Unfortunately, this immigrant 

mentality that hard work equates to 
success is wildly inapplicable to real 
life. Not everyone who puts their all 
into succeeding is actually afforded 
the opportunity to make it — it is the 
explicit responsibility of all Ameri-
cans, but particularly immigrants 
and people of color, to dedicate them-
selves to uplifting those who, for 
whatever reason, couldn’t even grab 
a chair, let alone join you at the table. 
Voting is the first step to exercising 
that responsibility.

From casual conversations with 

community members both in Michi-
gan and in Florida, we have gleaned 
that Arabs who support Trump tend 
to do so for two main reasons — they 
don’t want to pay more taxes, or 
they agree with his more conserva-
tive social views. These Arabs also 
might distrust both candidates and 
the political process, or just believe 
Trump’s 
discriminatory 
policies 

won’t impact them in any way. How-
ever, no matter what your religion 
or how white-passing you are, being 
Middle 
Eastern/Arab 
inherently 

paints a target on your back. If you 
are lucky enough to vote based on 
taxes or socially conservative values, 
we would like to remind you that 
your success, while definitely hard 
earned, comes with an element of 
privilege. For these issues to be your 
deal breaker, you are neglecting all 
of the harmful effects of another 
Trump presidency on those less 
lucky than you. 

With the election nearing, we 

Arabs must recognize what is at stake 
for our communities. As people who 
are historically neglected and left out 
of census data, showing up to vote — 
and voting in our best interest — is 
crucial. Many Arab Americans voted 
for Trump in 2016, and it appears 
many could be voting for him in the 

upcoming election as well. To better 
understand why this is occurring, we 
have compiled a list of the most com-
mon reasons we’ve heard as reasons 
why Arabs are supporting Trump or 
not voting at all, along with rebuttals 
we can use to encourage our fellow 
Arabs to vote for Joe Biden.

Debunking Reason 1. I support 

him fiscally, at least he’s not rais-
ing my taxes!

Arabs are very entrepreneurial 

people. We’ve all heard the narrative 
of “coming to America with nothing 
but $5 and the clothes on our backs,” 
building ourselves from the ground 
up. Donald Trump is a businessman 
who promotes the individualism 
and independence championed by so 
many Arab Americans. So it comes 
as no surprise that wealthy Arabs 
support his narrative, not wanting to 
fork over their hard-earned cash. 

What they don’t seem to realize 

is that under Biden’s plan, only the 
wealthiest of Americans, those mak-
ing more than $400,000 annually, 
will experience hikes in their taxes — 
and analyses of Biden’s tax plan find 
that the percentage of earners who 
would experience these tax increas-
es is less than 2%. Even then, those 
between the 95th and 99th percen-
tile in the income bracket will only 
experience a tax increase of about 
1%, which is too insignificant a dif-
ference to influence your vote. 

The truth is, if your taxes increase 

marginally, you’ll survive. Not only 
that, but coming from a culture that 
highly prioritizes charity and giving 
back, you can rest assured that any 
extra taxes you may pay will be going 
towards noble causes, like public 
infrastructure, child care, education, 
housing and healthcare accessibil-
ity. While you will survive either 
way, the same can’t be said for our 
Arab and POC brothers and sisters 
who are more directly targeted by 
Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhet-
oric and legislation. The detriment to 
your bank account should not influ-
ence your vote more than the lives 

of those most vulnerable to Trump’s 
ideologies. 

 Debunking Reason 2. But I 

agree with his social policies and 
his values.

Another major reason Arabs sup-

port Trump is for his more conser-
vative social views, particularly the 
way he adamantly opposes LGBTQ+ 
rights and abortion. Regardless of 
our own views on these issues (which 
are not the purpose of this piece), to 
champion Donald Trump as a savior 
of good values is, in our opinion, a 
very illegitimate rationality. 

Let us be clear — Donald J. Trump 

is a sexist, bigoted, racist, Islamopho-
bic, xenophobic and genuinely awful 
human being. Must we remind you 
of his various sexual assault charges 
and derogatory comments towards 
women? How about his mocking 
of disabled folks? Even if you don’t 
believe the women who alleged sex-
ual assault against him, there is video 
evidence that he’s encouraged sexual 
assault, saying “grab them by the 
p****.” Though you may share some 
similarities with Trump’s baseline 
conservative views, we hope your 
values don’t align with his, because 
he represents the complete oppo-
site of good Christian (or Muslim or 
ANY) values. No religion or belief 
system has the foundation of hate 
that Trump has spread throughout 
the nation and the world. 

Debunking Reason 3. Okay, but 

this just doesn’t affect me.

The next point we will address 

is the misconception that Trump’s 
hateful rhetoric just doesn’t apply to 
these voters. Put simply, it does. No 
matter how well off or white-passing 
you are, the wellbeing of your com-
munity, your people, is at stake. A 
misconception we have seen from 
Arab and Middle Eastern Christians 
is that Trump is their savior, target-
ing the same Muslims who may have 
targeted them back in their home 
countries. Without needing to get 
into Middle Eastern politics, all we 
ask is that you recognize that, as 

minorities, none of us are safe. And 
if that doesn’t work, here are ways 
Trump’s policies actually do affect 
you. 

First, while commonly known as 

the Muslim ban, Executive Order 
13769 targeted all migrants com-
ing from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, 
Yemen, Sudan and Somalia regard-
less of religious background. Also, 
white nationalist hate groups have 
increased by 55% since Trump took 
office. These terrorists will not ask 
about your beliefs before perpetuat-
ing hate crimes — they will see your 
skin color or hear your accent and 
that will be enough. Another Trump 
term also brings about a question of 
safety, for yourself and also for your 
children. Trump has consistently 
sided with the NRA and gun lobby-
ists despite his term seeing the dead-
liest mass shooting in U.S. history 
and 263 shootings at schools. To fur-
ther elucidate the dangerous impact 
of Trump’s ideologies, the murderer 
in the Christchurch Mosque shoot-
ing in New Zealand quoted Trump 
as justification for his violence, cast-
ing him as “a symbol of renewed 
white identity and common pur-
pose.” This is not the only example. 
Trump serves as a beacon of hope 
and empowerment for violent white 
supremacists everywhere. 

In addition, the Trump admin-

istration’s current response (or lack 
thereof) to COVID-19 affects us all. 
Trump knowingly downplayed the 
seriousness of the virus instead of 
acting in the early stages, admitting 
to slowing down testing to reduce 
COVID numbers. He rushed to 
reopen the economy without ensur-
ing safety measures or a solid plan to 
control the disease. He eliminated a 
White House office set up by the pre-
vious administration to combat pan-
demics and made cuts across other 
areas of the federal government. As a 
result, the U.S. has about seven times 
more COVID deaths than any other 
developed country, and hundreds of 
thousands of lives have been need-

lessly lost. Voting for Trump means 
no end in sight for the pandemic, no 
return to our normal lives any time 
soon, and continued suffering and 
death of Americans. Don’t let the 
(singular) stimulus check fool you. 
As long as there is no COVID plan, 
the economy remains in a state of 
disarray.

Debunking 
Reason 
4: 
The 

Obama 
Administration 
had 

record deportation numbers and 
was notorious for war crimes — 
we don’t want another Democrat 
in office.

In reality, the president has very 

little influence on domestic policy. 
Where he does have a tremendous 
amount of influence, however, is 
foreign policy. And Trump’s foreign 
policy thus far has been disastrous. 
Let’s take the “Middle East peace 
plan” for example — led by Trump’s 
son-in-law, a fervent Israel supporter, 
this plan has an explicit goal of fur-
ther meddling in our countries and 
depleting the Palestinian state even 
more than it already is. Or the fact 
that he encourages American com-
panies to sell bombs to Saudi Arabia 
so they can further destroy Yemen. 
Trump has also passively accom-
modated Turkey’s extension of 
influence into Syria, Iraq, Qatar and 
Libya. He callously strengthened an 
embargo against Iran, so that Per-
sians — regardless of religion — could 
not access medicine for COVID-19 
patients, even threatening to go to 
war with Iran when his poll numbers 
were low. The list goes on and on. 

While Joe Biden’s work and atti-

tude towards the Middle East are 
nothing to applaud, especially dur-
ing the Obama administration which 
saw disastrous effects on Iraq and 
Afghanistan, at this point, there 
is no good option for Arab foreign 
policy. We must assess both of our 
(albeit threatening) options and 
choose the lesser of two evils. Biden 
has called for an end to U.S. support 
for Saudi war in Yemen. While his 
policy towards Israel still errs on the 

side of Zionism, he has been vocal 
in his opposition to annexation of 
the West Bank and his support for a 
two-state solution. The Democratic 
caucus has also discussed condition-
ing the billions of dollars in aid to 
Israel depending on their actions and 
human rights violations. At the end 
of the day, Biden is not particularly a 
friend to Arabs either. But his policies 
leave way more room for growth and 
political pressure, meaning we could 
get more out of his presidency than 
we ever could with Trump. 

Our countries should not be a 

game for American politicians to toy 
with. We deserve agency — the abil-
ity to make our own decisions free 
of foreign interference that does not 
have our best interests at heart. Out 
of both options, Trump certainly 
does not have our best interests at 
heart. 

In conclusion… 
No one’s asking you to pull up a 

seat for everyone yourself. All we’re 
asking is that you scoot over and 
make some space for others. A vote 
for Trump not only prevents your 
POC brothers and sisters from join-
ing you at the table, but it also makes 
your privileged seat all the more pre-
carious. 

Voting is not the answer to all our 

nation’s problems. But it is a place 
to start. We have the power to put 
someone in office who will at least 
try to make things better for us and 
give real activists a foot in the door to 
affect real change. Right now, when 
millions of lives are at stake; when 
the pandemic is still ripping at full 
speed through our nation with no 
sign of relief from the current admin-
istration; when millions of Ameri-
cans are still unemployed or barely 
making it; when our brothers and sis-
ters are being separated, incarcer-
ated and killed; it is not the time to 
be apathetic. Our vote does count, so 
we hope that you show up to the polls 
and vote for Biden.

Zoned out in my 10 a.m. 

ethics class, I was doodling 
with my pen until the profes-
sor said a phrase heard all too 
often: “This is your truth, and 
this is my truth.” As I recali-
brated into the classroom dis-
cussion, I assumed this was 
mainly about being empathet-
ic to different perspectives 
we may confront and gener-
ally thought it made sense. He 
repeated again, “The phrase 
this is your truth and this is 
my truth drives me absolutely 
bonkers.” 

Now I was confused — what’s 

wrong with this seemingly 
harmless idea of holding dif-
ferent viewpoints? He contin-
ued, “There is only one truth 
— one set of facts about every 
situation, crisis and historical 
event. The idea that multiple 
opposing truths can simul-
taneously exist brings about 
the degradation of our sense 
of reality in politics, media 
and everyday life.” Whether 
or not he had put too much 
weight onto a simple phrase, 
the notion stuck with me. No 
one’s ever taken a minute to 
step back and inquire- what 
does that phrase even mean? 
Doesn’t the idea of truth vary-
ing from person to person 
contradict its very essence? 
In today’s day and age, that 
very lack of accountable ques-
tioning may be a contributor 
to what’s made our political 
system what it is now, and 
the implementation of which 
may be a partial solution to 
bringing back a semblance of 
honesty. Amidst the current 
swarm of political rhetoric 

this election season, it seems 
like both parties are capital-
izing on similar grievances 
to attract voters, yet voters 
are more polarized than ever 
before. The same accolades 
are lauded from figures in 
both parties — somehow they 
all lowered the unemploy-
ment rate, they all brought 
jobs back to the United States 
and they all provided Ameri-
cans with the best healthcare, 
education and infrastructure. 
Donald Trump ironically still 
applauds the United States’ 
response to the pandemic, 
claiming we boast “numbers 
better than almost all coun-
tries” — which, when taking 
population sizes into account, 
is exceedingly far from the 
truth: following Chile, Amer-
ica has more cases than any 
other large country as of Aug. 
17. The tendency to spout false 
rhetoric is so normalized and 
undisputed in our politics that 
it often seems as though we’re 
living in a post-truth America. 
Alarmingly, this assumption 
is evidently becoming reality 
with current news headlining 
the idea that a peaceful suc-
cession of power may not hap-
pen following the election.

How did we get here as a 

nation? From the same Unit-
ed States in 2000 in which 
candidate Al Gore encour-
aged citizens to accept the 
highly-contested Bush v. Gore 
results, what brought us to 
the point of suspecting absen-
tee ballots — initially enacted 
through bipartisan efforts — 
of being fraudulent attacks on 
our democracy? The rabbit-
hole of social media seems to 
have contributed largely to 
our tendency to cherry-pick 
sources of information on 

both ends of the spectrum; we 
search for whichever outlet 
can most effectively satiate 
our confirmation bias. Real-
istically, this can’t solely be 
blamed on human psychology, 
but also the innate algorithm 
of many platforms that recali-
brates to present us with the 
most personalized content, 
mainly boiling down to topics, 
politics and groups we already 
know and love. As a society, 
we’ve discussed the caus-
al factors of the post-truth 
world that we live in, but fur-
ther tend to mull over ways 
in which we can combat the 
downward spiral of ‘alterna-
tive facts.’ In the end, it seems 
solely rhetoric will rise above 
the ashes of whatever’s left of 
political accountability in the 
21st century. 

Currently, there are impor-

tant initiatives in place to 
combat the blatant lying we 
see among politicians — live 
fact-checking by reporters, 
fact-check captions at the 
bottom of news broadcasts 
and 
fact-checking 
articles. 

You get the idea — we have 
fact-checking in the armory 
right now. An additional mea-
sure our media must take to 
prevent the degradation of 
truth focuses on the framing 
of questions to political fig-
ures. Journalists must inte-
grate unquestionable truths 
and 
established 
paradigms 

into their questions, leading 
already with an indisputable 
foundation that respondents 
can’t avoid. An example of the 
exact opposite of this recently 
took all news outlets by storm, 
with 
President 
Trump’s 

answer to whether or not he’ll 
commit to a peaceful trans-
fer of power being “There 

won’t be a transfer; frankly, 
there’ll be a continuation.” 
The effect of his response was 
widespread enough for mem-
bers of the Republican party 
(even Mitch McConnell) to 
step back and assure Ameri-
cans otherwise, but the ini-
tial aspect of this exchange is 
what I want to focus on. Why 
is he even being given the 
opportunity to amplify some-
thing so inherently uncon-
stitutional, 
so 
universally 

disavowed, in the first place? 
The conditional phrasing of 
the question gives rise to the 
following response — “will 
you commit” — opening the 
possibility for him not to com-
mit, as he clearly did so. Our 
political system has a lot of 
questionable facets, from the 
electoral college to the per-
missibility of gerrymander-
ing, but the few aspects that 
are unwavering in providing 
legitimacy to our government 
should not be suggested, but 
already implied.

As a child I was a notori-

ously picky eater, disliking 
random food with no rhyme 
or reason, from bell peppers 
to even lasagna (I now look 
back in shock with the lat-
ter). However, every so often 
when lasagna was on the din-
ner table, my mom wouldn’t 
kindly request me to bestow 
the honor of eating her lasa-
gna, but instead ask how I’d 
go about eating what was 
made for dinner — the already 
established 
bottom 
line. 

Today’s political journalists 
may need to follow suit from 
my mom’s techniques, because 
at the end of the day, you could 
be damn sure I sat down with 
that lasagna in my plate, one 
way or the other.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan In Color
6 — Wednesday, October 28, 2020 

To all Arabs planning on voting for Trump — Don’t

A growing trend has caught the 

attention of U.S. politicians and no, 
it’s not Qanon. It’s the rise in the 
number of Latinx voters, which 
political pundits refer to as the 
Latino Vote. The Latino Vote is an 
elusive creature that many politi-
cians have tried and failed to catch, 
insisting on trapping it, but failing 
to realize that it’s less like a fish and 
more like the Loch Ness Monster: It 
isn’t real. The Latino Vote is a gross 
generalization of Central and South 
Americans that ignores the diver-
sity of thoughts and values within 
such a varied body of people; there 
is no one “Latino Vote.” The narra-
tive perpetuated by the media that 
all Latinx voters vote straight ticket 
blue is incorrect for several reasons 
and harmful to any campaign that 
believes in it. 

My mother and my uncle immi-

grated from Ecuador as children. 
When they moved, they both did not 
know English and went through the 
ESL program in their public school. 
They both attended the University 
of Michigan. Though they had the 
same upbringing and same immi-
grant experience, they could not be 
further apart in ideology. My moth-
er is a moderate, Elizabeth War-
ren type of Democrat. My uncle is a 
raging Independent that responds 
positively towards Trump-like poli-
ticians. After the comments Trump 
made about Mexico sending rapists 
and criminals, I assumed my uncle 
would be offended by the situation. 
He was not. This experience dis-
plays several issues with the myth 
of the Latino Vote. Though there are 
common experiences, such as immi-
gration, ESL and cuisine, Latinx vot-
ers do not always view themselves as 
a uniform group. Rather than iden-
tifying as Latinx, some will refer 
to themselves specifically as Chil-
ean or Puerto Rican. Within these 
identifications, there are values 

held that are not held by the rest of 
the community. For instance, fifty-
eight percent of Cubans identify as 
Republican in comparison to thirty-
eight percent of non-Cuban Hispan-
ics. This disparity can be attributed 
to the issues each group prioritizes; 
according to the Pew Research 
Center, Cuban voters consider for-
eign policy, health care and violent 
crimes more than non-Cuban His-
panics. Foriegn policy is a major 
issue for Cubans, because a hardline 
foreign policy against Cuba means 
that Cubans have a harder time vis-
iting family still on the island. This is 
not as much of a problem with non-
Cuban Latinx as U.S. foreign policy 
with Cuba changes more frequently 
in comparison to other Central and 
South American countries. 

Latinx voters also hold varying 

positions on social issues. Religion 
is an important factor that affects 
voting patterns for the Latino 
Vote. More Latinx Americans are 
actively religious (i.e. going to ser-
vice regularly) as compared to their 
non-Latinx counterparts. Typically 
identifying as Christian, many con-
sider criminalization of abortion to 
be a crucial aspect of the party they 
are voting for; older Latinxs hold 
anti-abortion views to a much larg-
er degree as compared to younger 
Latinxs. This creates a separation 
over this single issue alone. Across 
the board, Latinxs identify as liberal 
significantly more than other non-
Latin Americans and are considered 
equally as accepting of the LGBTQ+ 
community as non-Latin Ameri-
cans. Considering the variation in 
views of these different social issues, 
it is hard to determine what factors 
sway the Latino Vote right or left. 

As we move forward into the 

election cycle, it’s important that 
politicians consider all the over-
sights that come from categorizing 
the Latinx population into one vote. 
As diverse as the community is, the 
views within are even more diverse 
and have the power to greatly 
impact the outcome of the election. 

 KATHERINA ANDRADE 

OZAETTA

MiC Columnist

The myth of the Latino vote

ELIYA IMTIAZ

MiC Columnist

NADA ELDAWY &

 MAYA MOKH
MiC Staff Editors

An Ethics professor, a plate of lasagna 
and a president walk into a bar...

