SGER: How Support Organizations Respond to Crises: Middle Eastern and South Asian American Organizations in the Aftermath of September 11.

Cuny Graduate School University Center, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0140271 PI: Mehdi Bozorgmehr CUNY Graduate School The research focuses on the backlash that targets Middle Eastern and South Asian (MESA) Americans in the aftermath of the September 11, 20001 terrorist attacks on America. It is a well known sociological finding that external hostility leads to internal group solidarity to advance its goals and objectives. Past sociological models of conflict and solidarity based on studies of Jews, Asians and Cubans are based on assumptions of different forms of economic or political competition between groups. The investigator acknowledges that these structural models are useful, but notes that inter-ethnic relations are often more dynamic and may be dictated by global forces between the sending and host societies. Thus, the PI proposes to develop an alternative model of inter-ethnic relations, arguing that the main source of host hostility of Middle Easterners, unlike the groups listed above, is the anti-American policies of the Middle Eastern and South Asian regimes (or terrorists) rather than the action of the exiles and immigrants themselves. Also, MESA Americans are panethnic and have not created group solidarity, but are instead represented by various national religious and ethnic organizations. The investigator will study the current backlash by examining the role of religious and ethnic MESA organizations in averting, coping and responding to the backlash against MESA in response to the events of September 11th. The investigator will interview leaders of approximately 50 of these national ethnic and religious organizations; presently the only existing organs that can act on behalf of their respective communities in response to the current crisis. The project is significant on three levels: (1) historically because data will be collected on the crisis, as it unfolds; (2) substantively because our knowledge of a understudied minority groups in American will be enhanced; and (3) theoretically because the research will contribute our general understanding of inter-ethnic group conflict.