How Does It Feel to Be A Problem: Being Young and Arab in America (2008)

How Does It Feel To Be A Problem centers the Arab-American store as a gathering place and can be an independent business such as a hookah bar, a cafe, or a grocery to more corporate stores (such as the Arab-American run Dunkin Donuts, where workers can recommend food for Muslim diets). These gathering spaces are where Arab-Americans (and other immigrant groups) can feel safe to express their ethnic identities without being scrutinized and profiled. The smaller family-owned establishments are also spaces where patrons are not made to conform to pre-established American culture. 

Bayoumi’s text also insinuates a kind of pressure to assimilate that presents itself through an increasing number of Arab-run corporate stores, spaces that contain fewer and fewer markers of distinctive Arab identity. As Akram remarks at the end of his section, “That’s the new Arab store […] Target” (148).

When examining the social phenomenon of the Arab-American store, Bayoumi references sociologist Edna Bonacich’s writing around “middlemen minority” groups, including—in addition to Arabs in Brooklyn—Jewish merchants in Europe, the Chinese in southeast Asia, the Syrians in West Africa, and the Parsis in India. 

The defining feature of middlemen minorities is that they act as bridges between the multi-ethnic inner city customer base they service and the corporate (in this case, usually white) community that wants to sell to these customers without dealing with them directly.