S1 E14 | Arab/Other: How our perception of identity and privilege changes over time

In this episode, we explore the topic of decolonizing our Arab identities and owning our narrative. We take a deeper look into identity, who we are to ourselves and others, but also how the identity of women in the region has been amplified and even weaponized and what we can do to help this.

For exclusive “Sage Takes Thyme” content and early release episodes subscribe to Womena on Apple Podcasts.

Hosts: Elissa Freiha (@freiha), Amira Salah-Ahmed (@amiralx)

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Creators and Guests

Host

Amira Salah-Ahmed

Womena co-founder + Director / Producer / Writer of things...

Host

Elissa Freiha

Womena co-founder + Third Culture Kid + Advocate for intersectional feminism & equality

What is Sage Takes Thyme?

This is not a cooking show, but it will nourish your soul (maybe). Womena’s founders open a new dialogue with their community and give their perspectives on relevant, topical issues that affect women in and from the Arab world. This podcast will serve as a space for genuine exploration of the authentic experience of two women in search of belonging and balance, using storytelling to reclaim and redefine the distorted narratives that surround them.

People will have you believe that once

you reach a certain age, you're done.

Like you figured it out or you should have it

figured out and then that's just how you are and

who you are for the rest of your life.

That's definitely not true.

The fact that your identity develops and

evolves over time doesn't ever really stop.

And so at this age, I still feel like I

have a lot of room to become different things, to

explore different sides of myself and to evolve.

Although the younger me, 25 year old me, was

like, oh, I know exactly who I am. I'm done.

I know my values, I know what I want.

And that quickly gets upended.

Welcome to another episode of Sage Takes Thyme.

What are we talking about today?

Ourselves.

I'm Elissa.

I'm Amira. And. And that's the episode.

That's who we are.

That's who we are.

Thanks for tuning in.

Tune in next week when we ask

each other how old we are.

Very short episodes.

That's it for the attention span of Gen Z.

This episode is about identity, which

is like a multi, layered, complex,

vague, sometimes multicultural, multidimensional notion.

Is it like identity?

It's intangible.

What is it? Yeah.

So in that context, who are you?

Who am I?

You know what, who I am is constantly evolving.

I'm learning.

I'm also learning that I thought I know who

I was and I'm totally still like learning who

I am actually with every layer and every, like,

therapy session and every book I read.

And every day I'm figuring out more and more who I am.

The top line bullet points are I'm a

Emirati of Lebanese and American descent who was

born and raised in Paris, France, and educated

in the French, British and American systems.

Wow, you took all the. All the things, yeah.

I'm also a multilingual founder of a feminist media platform

and I have lived in many, many places also.

So I'm someone who constantly seeks more and

is curious about the world and how it

can relate to me and my curiosity.

Who are you?

Well, yours is so interesting.

I feel like, who am I?

I agree that it's like a constant dynamic process and

I feel like the people will have you believe that

once you reach a certain age, you're done.

Like you figured it out or you should have it

figured out and then that's just how you are and

who you are for the rest of your life.

That's definitely not true.

I'll start with my age because I'm very proud of it.

So I'm 41. Yeah.

And I'll be closer to 42 when this actually

gets online, which is, I think is really beautiful.

And I'm learning to embrace it more and more.

And yeah, that's to my point of like,

the fact that your identity develops and evolves

over time, doesn't ever really stop.

And so at this age, I still feel like I

have a lot of room to become different things, to

explore different sides of myself and to evolve.

Although the younger me would have thought like

25 year old me was like, oh, I

know exactly who I am, I'm done.

I know my values, I know what I want, I know who I.

And that quickly gets upended.

But my bullet points are that I'm Egyptian,

I'm Arab, I guess a third culture kid.

I was born and lived for 8 years

in Alexandria, Egypt, and then I moved to

the US and lived there for 10 years.

So I was raised in America, but with

very Egyptian parents that really cared about making

sure we're connected to our roots.

And so I always had both sides.

I never assimilated overly to

the American society and culture.

They wouldn't have allowed that.

And I actually appreciate, appreciate them for that.

I didn't at the time, but now I think it was great.

Okay, interesting take. Yeah.

And then moved back to Egypt when I

was entering university and I just stayed and

have worked here for a long time.

And so I've been in media for a long time.

I've done journalism.

Now I do storytelling, directing, producing.

So I obviously really love stories. I always have.

I just have always found a lot of

passion behind talking to people, learning who they

are, and then somehow like telling their stories

to the world in different forms.

So I'm also like a sister, a wife,

a cat, mom, a daughter, a friend.

Yeah, yeah.

You and I are both also advocates and activists

in our own way, and that's where we click.

But what I think is really funny is how

similar are backgrounds are without actually being copy pasted.

Similarly, I'm also Arab American, but

I'm Lebanese with an American mom.

You're like Arab American because you're Egyptian. Yeah.

Who grew up after eight years old in the United States.

Yeah.

And we both returned to the Middle east in our 20s.

Well, no, you returned in your teens. I was 18. Yeah.

We both sought a reconnection and a belonging with

the Arab side of our identity after our adoptive

homes didn't allow us to fully assimilate and integrate.

Like, France did not want me at the

time growing up, like, I was very Much.

You felt that way? Yeah, totally.

And I felt like I'm Parisian, I'm

not French because I grew up. What's the difference?

Well, the French people will tell you

the Parisians are like city people. They're.

For me, my world of France was Paris was

all the neighborhoods of Paris, all the little corners

in the pockets that I got to discover.

Like every different Arrondissement neighborhood

has memories for me.

And I know the city like the back of my hand.

It helped forge my identity and each place

at a different stage in my life.

But I couldn't tell you what was on French

TV at the time that I was growing up.

I couldn't tell you who the popular French singers were

for the those 23 years that I lived in France.

Is that because you didn't, did you not have access

to that or were you just not interested or because

you were from like a half Arab household?

It was dominated. Like, what's the reason?

It was that it was the fact

that I was in an Arab household.

Even though my mom's American and there was a lot of

American culture kind of sprinkled in there and we'd go to

the States once a year and things like that.

It was still a very predominantly

Arabic household, Lebanese household, surrounded by

Lebanese people and Lebanese community.

And if there was content or TV shows or

music that was being played, it was all Western

and it was all British or American or some

vague Lebanese LBC or like ancestral type music.

Like, I also am not Lebanese enough to be able

to tell you like, who the most popular actors were

or what were the big TV shows at the time.

So in that way I wasn't

integrated into France or into Lebanon.

But I, I think it's definitely.

There's a lot of similarities in our experiences, but I

think it's more difficult or more challenging, I guess, to

figure out who you are and what your identity is.

If you're like, your parents are of

different nationalities and you're a mixed race.

Yeah, like, and you come

from all these different places.

While I think it's a little bit easier

maybe to like, yeah, my parents are Egyptian,

I'm from Egypt, my family is here.

Like, this is what I know and everything.

I lived in the States for a while, so I Arab American,

but then I don't really call myself that, to be honest.

And I don't identify that way.

I do maybe when I'm there, but once I'm

outside of America, I feel like it's so irrelevant.

I'm Egyptian, you know, So I

feel like maybe I don't know. Like, that's.

It's still difficult also to, like.

I also don't have that sense of belonging because a lot

of places are home, and then so nowhere is home.

And at different times that,

like, changes and fluctuates.

Do you feel like it was.

It's a lot harder when you're.

Even your family is very mixed, or was it, like, was

it more enriching or did it make it more challenging?

Well, it's not that it's harder.

It's just that each one of my parents battled

for us to recognize their cultural effect on us.

So my mom will always

say, don't forget you're American.

You're an American kid. You're from America.

America is your country.

And my dad will also, like,

very clearly be like, so instilling.

Like, my dad made sure I had Arabic lessons, and

then my English was really busted when I was a

kid, so my mom put me in a British school

to learn English because she wanted to make sure that

I was going to connect with it.

She made sure that I had

Halloween when France didn't celebrate Halloween.

So she would, like, figure it out and make

a fake Halloween trick or treat thing around Paris

with the American community there to make sure that

I could have some semblance of bits of culture.

But I also am very fluid with how I

define my identity, depending on who I'm talking to.

Yeah, you know, like.

Yeah, that's a big part of it.

When I'm in the Arab world, I'm Lebanese,

you know, that's how I'm going to define

myself, and that's how people expect to define

me, because how do I relate to them?

And in the Arab world, I

am Arab, therefore I'm Lebanese. Primarily.

The fact that I was born in France, only in

Lebanon makes it like Frenchie type, you know, thing.

And the fact that I'm American is kind of

more like a cultural, like, sprinkling, you know.

But when I'm in France, I'm the American one.

Oh, wow.

I thought you were gonna say that.

Then you're French or.

No, because you were raised there.

Because if I'm raised in France, I present more

American to them what they expect an American to

look like, act like, speak like, than I do

a Lebanese person or a French person. Okay.

You know, and in America.

In America, I'm like, exotic.

You're like, what are you? Why are you here?

They look at me and they're

like, your accent sounds weird.

Like, what are you, like, from the Midwest?

Where are you really from. Yeah.

And then I'll say something like, I'm

Lebanese, but I grew up in France. Wow.

France, Lebanon.

Like, oh, my God.

Like, she's so exotic.

It's like this, this thing.

So it completely.

Each one will adopt a different thing.

Yeah, I feel like language.

You mentioned language and being

multilingual and learning different languages.

I think that's a really big

part of what our identities become.

Also because that was something my parents were

careful about because I did speak Arabic because

I lived in Egypt for eight years.

So that had like a really good foundation.

So I spoke Egyptian Arabic.

I didn't really learn the Arabic language as

far as, like, written Arabic and classic Arabic.

I knew Arabic and I spoke Arabic

well enough and I had that foundation.

That was my first.

My mother tongue, I guess, my first language.

But I didn't.

Wasn't in school in Egypt until.

Only until first grade.

So I didn't write Arabic well.

I couldn't like, communicate in Arabic written and I couldn't

read Arabic as well as I could speak it.

So I had a lot of challenges there.

And then when we went to the us we obviously

had to learn English like, or become fluent in English.

There was always a struggle between, like, speak English

all the time so you can become fluent and

you sound normal in your school and whatever.

But also they didn't want us to forget

Arabic because they saw other, like, Egyptian families.

Their kids were born there and didn't speak

any Arabic and they were very, like, Americanized.

So they were very afraid of that on a

language level, but also on what that meant.

Like, maybe culturally and socially, you know,

like, if you're so American that you

don't even speak Arabic, then you're gonna

do things that, like, are unacceptable in.

Like, you're going to start dating early or

you're going to be like, you're going to

rebel against the culture more because you're not

going to identify with it as much.

So language was very important for

them on all those levels.

But then coming back to Egypt, I would

trip up on the language elements because if

I'm in America, I'm speaking English fluently and

I sound like an American, whatever.

But then when I get to Egypt,

I have to start speaking Arabic.

And when I was growing up, I would come visit

in the summers and at first I would trip up

on my Arabic and by like the third month I

would be like, I don't know their English word.

Like, I speak very fluently.

What's that?

It's like very Egyptian Very Alexandrian way

of speaking, you know, so there was

always this, like, language battle.

But now, as storytellers, when we communicate in

English to an Arabic speaking audience or in

the Arab world, we get judged for it.

We're like, who are you talking to?

And it's like, this is just how we speak.

Because this is just how we speak.

People got upset when I was telling them, I'm

gonna do a podcast and it's gonna be in

English because Arabic, Arabic's the way to go.

And you'll get the audience in Arabic,

and that's where the money is publicly.

And I'm not funny in Arabic.

Like, I don't know if you get that,

but there's different sides of your personality that

come out in different languages for sure.

And I mean, maybe you guys think I'm

not funny in English, but I'm not.

We think you're like, I think I'm funny in English.

And like, being funny in French only came later

when I surrounded myself with more French speakers and

became more confident in making my little mess ups.

But I'm not funny in half the languages that I speak.

So it's a different side of me.

I'm more serious in Arabic.

I'm calmer, quieter.

So you look white.

I do, Yeah.

I was gonna try to say it, like, in a different way.

You look white.

I have my mama's genes. Yeah.

I definitely got the more American, Scandinavian,

Irish genetics from my mom's side.

And so I'm what people would call white appearing. Yeah.

Because I don't necessarily identify as,

like, white as the label.

I identify as Lebanese and American and French and

Emirati, and I identify as this mix proudly. Yeah.

But I look white af.

And that means that very often people assume I

don't speak Arabic, so they'll talk shit about me

or they'll talk about me in spaces.

But it also means that I benefit from

a lot of the privileges of white, you

know, your white passing identity, your white passing.

But white passing tends to be, I think

the technical, like, definition of white passing are

people who choose themselves to pass as white

because it works in their benefit.

Because of the privileges of looking white and

being white, you being racialized as white, you

benefit from all of these things.

And so they're choosing to pass as white.

But white appearing means that

I appear white to others.

They might racialize me as white even if

I at no point identify myself that way.

Oh, I didn't actually realize that that was the nuance.

Yeah, yeah. It's something. It took me A while.

Because I used to say that until I

learned more about it and until actually I

spent, you know, in America, it's so reductive.

So in the summers when I'd go back home, it's

like, you're either white, you're black, or you're Mexican.

Brown was not even that popular at the time in America.

It literally wasn't a thing yet. It wasn't a thing.

Like the color brown wasn't a

color that was actively like discussed.

It was literally white or black or Mexican.

Like they reduced everyone else to Mexico. Yeah.

So I actually in on my side,

I got, I guess, Mexican appearing.

I don't know, like people thought when in the

States, because I grew up there in the 90s. Yeah.

And so there was an influx of immigrants of all types.

Especially where I was like in different areas of

New York, there was an influx of Mexican immigrants

or Dominican, Latin, Puerto Rican, like, things like that.

Right.

And so because of the way my hair and

my color or whatever, they're like, oh, you're not

white, you're not black, you must be Mexican. Right.

And it's like, what?

And so I was so confused.

I remember being in, I think, fourth grade. Yeah.

So that it was like my second year in America.

Did people just speak Spanish to you? No, that.

That happened all the time.

My dad loved it, by the way.

He looks very Latino, especially when he likes, when he

was younger and had like jet black hair, slicked it

back and he wanted to be like Ricky Ricardo.

So he go around like speaking the two

sentences of Spanish that knew like, com. Whatever.

Like after the third sentence he's

like, yeah, no, I'm not Mexican. But I.

It was weird because I didn't.

Obviously I had friends and stuff, but I

wasn't any surrounded by Mexican culture because I

felt like I didn't have any other choices.

And Arab wasn't a thing.

We had Arab American friends and Egyptian families

around us, but not in the same town.

So I wasn't in school with people that were like me

or had spoken Arabic at all or even with any Muslim

kids in school in the different schools I went to.

I feel like I'm afraid to say this.

I'm just going to say it. Say it.

It was easier for me to like,

appreciate and kind of link myself more

to like, black culture with like, appropriation.

But I was.

No, it's not necessarily to cope, to defend.

And I also think, like, what's funny is

that there's a difference in America between the

term black and the term African American. Yes.

And you are literally African and American

because you're Egyptian, but you're Arab.

But then there's this whole, like, regional

debate of, like, the Africa v. The Arab thing.

But, like, you literally come from a country that

is on the continent of Africa and have a

nationality that is in America, Mid Eastern or Arab,

which in the 90s wasn't a checkbox.

It wasn't a category in the census.

So I remember being in, like, fourth grade and everyone

had to fill out the census form and one of

the things was like, what race are you?

Which I think is very weird to do.

People that age anyway, like, ask their

parents or on the SATs or.

Yeah, but I mean, the SATs, you're y.

Like in a teenager at that point, I was 8 or 9. Yeah.

I saw, like, Caucasian, black, Asian, whatever.

Like, maybe I don't remember

what other things there were.

I didn't see Arab or Egyptian

or North African or Middle Eastern.

So I raised my hand to the teacher and I was

like, excuse me, I don't know, like, what to check off.

And she's like, oh, well, what are you?

You know, she knew I was Egyptian.

She's like, maybe write other. Yeah.

Literally, like, the idea of being othered.

And I didn't realize at the time what was happening to

me until I was much, much older and looked back at

things I had experienced as an immigrant child in America.

I also would switch.

I would switch with whatever box I had to tick.

But, like, I remember at one point I was like, well,

I guess Lebanon is technically in Asia, so I'll be Asian.

Yeah.

And then I'd write, okay, I'm going to other,

and I'm going to literally list out what I

am underneath, or today I'm going to be white.

Like, there was no space for it.

But I remember being othered very, very early.

Like, I had a very mixed multicultural

group of kids in my primary school.

But when I went to school, school, like,

I went to a British school, and it

was a very predominantly white British school.

And white, Anglo, British

Commonwealth country representation.

Like, it was like Irish people, Scottish people,

Welsh, British, Australian, you know, like that genre.

A couple Canadians and American.

But there was maybe in my class one

person who was from Africa and me.

Yeah, like, that was. That was it.

And already I went from this crazy multicultural

plate where we sang Happy Birthday in like

six languages because we would learn each other's

Japanese and Spanish and whatever. And then we.

I went to this school where it was just

me and I remember her name, Sarah And I

was like, so it's gonna be just us, girl.

I guess it's us against it. And my brother also.

My brother had that experience where he ended up

being into music and all his friends were any

other person of color, which was about four to

five other people in his grade at that time. And that.

That's just who we associated with, was the others.

Yeah.

So within.

But within this other.

Even though things are evolving and there's new

boxes that are being checked, I think now

Arab is a box that you can check.

But I wonder about the

label of, like, Middle Easterner.

The Middle east is a super problematic term. Why?

Because Arabs don't know what to

define as the Middle Eastern?

No, because it's like, what are you east of?

Like, middle of, where it's very.

Like, you're just.

It's very much from the perspective as

if, like, America, is this the.

Or Britain actually, or the uk. Yeah.

Like, there's a side of the world that

is the center of everything, and then everything

else is in reference to also. So you're here.

So you're like, not so east, but you're

like the Middle, and you're the Middle East.

We can also be the far left.

If Australia is the center of the world, or if Russia

was the center of those maps that we all had up

in schools, we would be east or north or separate, too.

Or if this sphere was tilted

slightly differently and opened up. I get your point.

Totally.

So what's a better term then if we're not Middle

east because we're east of something or west of whatever?

For me, like in the Womina context, for example, I prefer

to say the Arab world, Arab women, things like that.

Although a lot of people will have issues with, like,

what is Arab, where is Arab or Egyptians Arab?

It's also problematic, but for me, it's

a little bit better than Middle East.

I also would ideally prefer not to say anything

because Americans don't feel the need to do that. Right.

They don't say, like,

stories from American perspectives. From the Northwest.

Yeah.

From North America, like, South of Canada, north of.

I mean, they don't feel the

need to geographically associate themselves. Exactly.

While we feel the need to always, like, place

ourselves in the world to validate whatever it is,

like our voices, our perspectives, our stories, our very

existence, even as humans, you know, so that's.

That is very colonial in its perspective of the world.

When we can just say, like, for a media company like

Womina, we can just say we're a feminist media company.

Yeah.

I Get why?

Saying that we focus on Arab

women in and from the region.

I get why, but would we feel the need

to say that if we're British or American?

No, no.

And people don't, by the way, like in

general, they don't isolate the fact that they're

a media company aimed at Western women. Yeah.

Northwestern English speaking women, like they

don't have to specify that.

But especially with communities and cultures that are disenfranchised

and that are not the mainstream, I think it

is important to kind of highlight that you're bringing

a different perspective to the table and that that

perspective comes from a culture or a mix of

cultures or a type of experience that's collectively part

of a community that shares certain things.

Because it's important.

It's important, I guess, indicates that there's a gap.

And there's a gap because other

people are dominating the space.

Yeah, that's why it's cool.

Because like the dominant narrative or media or

mainstream is coming at us from elsewh. Yeah.

So we feel the need to like identify that way.

I think when we talk about our identities,

we also need to acknowledge our privileges that

we either realize or don't realize.

So for me, for example, I feel like a lot

of the things that I learned from the experience of

being an immigrant child of an immigrant family in the

90s in America, a lot of the challenges that that

came with and the struggles and the obstacles or whatever,

I look back at them now.

But I also cannot do that without recognizing all the advantages

it gave me, like just purely being back in Egypt and

having like being fluent in English at the time as a

writer gave me like a huge leg up and gave me

opportunities that I would not have had if my just purely

just language skills were not as good.

And I'm sure there are a million other ways

that that gave me privileges and still does to

this day and advantages that other people don't have.

So like, that's one thing.

My extended family and my family when

I was younger were okay financially.

But one of the things that one of the

reasons why we went to the US was because

my father was seeking financial security and needed to

leave the country to find better opportunities.

And so financial security for me has been an issue that

we struggled with as a family and as an individual.

But then over time, because they made that move and

sacrificed a lot to give us a better life, now

we're able to reap the benefits of that.

And so now I feel financially compared to a lot

of people, especially living in Egypt, especially these years.

I'm a lot more comfortable now.

I feel like I'm privileged in that way.

When I was younger, no, I

didn't come from like wealth privilege.

It wasn't a dialogue when we were younger.

Like the concept of privilege being addressed, identified, like

recognizing your privilege, that's only something that's really come

out in the last like five to 10 years,

maybe big max with Instagram's popularity and people calling

others out for the privileges that they hold and

acting in solidarity with those who do not carry

those same privileges.

If you have the privilege of a platform, speak up.

If you have the privilege of not being

excluded from spaces where others aren't allowed, advocate

for their inclusion in that space.

Make space for those other people.

I've benefited from so many privileges that I never

was necessarily aware of because I wasn't French.

I didn't have the privileges of being French.

I didn't get to benefit from the governmental

privileges that French citizens and residents get to

benefit from healthcare and things like that.

But I didn't understand until later in my

20s, the concept of like white appearing privilege

or pretty privilege, right, or wealth privilege.

That's very uncomfortable to bring up and to address.

But in my path of activism and change making,

I started recognizing more how my privilege could contribute

to the inclusion and the space making for those

who otherwise wouldn't have the chance.

You know, a lot of like, the privilege of

wealth has been used to finance a platform like

Womena, to create a space for alternative perspectives and

voices and people to be recognized, to contribute to

the historical archive of the world.

And for me, I rest easy knowing that my

pretty privilege means that I can take advantage of

the initial need of people to look and want

to be like, wow, you're so pretty.

For me to actually say something of value to them

that might hit at the heart of that issue.

The white appearing means that I very often won't be othered

first and foremost and I'll be included and in that, make

sure that the door has been opened for me.

I'm now keeping the door open for other people to

come in who don't necessarily have the same chances.

You know, it's great to recognize our privilege

and to acknowledge it and walk around understanding

that and the responsibility that comes with it.

On the flip side, I feel like sometimes

it's like people abuse it, as in

You can't feel this way about this

thing because you're privileged in this way.

And I feel like that's the drawback of it.

For example, for me, like I was saying, the idea of

being like an immigrant child, really, when I am trying now

as an adult to like, go through therapy and figure out

the source of a lot of issues that I want to

like, improve in or understand, I can draw a lot of

those things back to that experience. So.

But I've spent years being back here recognizing

the privileges that come with someone that has,

like, been raised abroad and has like a

foreign education and speaks English and has like

a passport and they can travel freely.

I spend so much time doing that, which is good.

I should still do it in many ways, but

I was not paying enough attention to the things

that that also caused as a consequence and that

I should also acknowledge and deal with.

And you can be privileged and you can struggle

in different ways and both need to be acknowledged.

But I feel sometimes the focus is so

much on recognizing your privilege that you're expected

to like, ignore or sideline anything that came

as a result of that that was negative.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.

What does that mean?

Well, let's say like just you have the

privilege of looking like the dominant white class.

Sure.

But that also means that you then lack belonging

with a part of your culture, let's say, and

you're kind of like tossed up or.

Which I think very often people forget about.

If you grow up in wealth, you have a very

specific set of really messed up things that can contribute

to mental health that, that contribute to a lot of,

like, issues between yourself, your identity, your culture.

Like, I can't empathize with poverty, but I can be

very compassionate and hate it and fight against it.

But there's within that there's like a conflict.

Do I have a right to even talk about

the subject if I'm not part of that group?

And if I do, am I doing enough?

Is it what is enough?

You're always going to be called out because in a

world of like, capitalism where money is king, people think

that if you have money, you have no problems.

But like as our boy Biggie

said, more money, more problems. And that's true.

And it's not just problems.

It's like a really intricate, twisted series

of things that hinder your freedom.

It can hinder your choices.

You think that finances make you freer

to make choices, but they can't just

take Arab society and marital expectations.

If you as a woman want to marry,

you cannot have the freedom of choice to

marry for multiple reasons, including financial.

And in places that still have some types

of, like, caste systems and socioeconomic levels, there

Are cultural expectations where they'll say, oh, this

person, you're in love with them.

They might be the best partner out there

for you, but you can't be with them

because they're not at that level.

Or your partner feels like they can't be with you

because they're not at the level that your family was.

And then you're kind of judged and you're stuck.

Or there's decisions that you have to make as to

like where you want to live or what you can

or can't do because what is tied to that wealth

and what are the restrictions that are then placed upon

you, family wise or cultural wise?

And also like on the dark side

of like pretty privilege, you know?

Yeah, you.

There's a lot of things

that happen subconsciously where.

I don't know, even entrepreneurs who pitch that

have like a great aura around them.

It's called the halo effect.

They're more likely to get funded

even if their business looks terrible. Right.

Or is actually terrible.

But they're judged on how they appear.

The dark side of that is that sometimes people don't pay

attention to what you say because of how you look.

Or they'll say, like, you look pretty, therefore

you must be dumb, or you look pretty.

And I didn't pay attention to what you said.

I just looked at your lips

moving and your eyebrows moving.

And that's entertaining enough for me.

That's your place in my world, you know? Yeah.

Same for like this idea of like leaving and

coming back and being like a global citizen versus

always having or not having had the privilege of

traveling or living abroad or going and coming freely.

The flip side of that is that there's a lot to

be said for like, rootedness and having like grown up with

the same people and having them as a support and network

for your entire life versus all of your friends being scattered

all over the world and the person that you went to

like third grade with is in like 5,000 miles away.

You know, it's.

There's a lot to be said for.

The flip side of being able to roam freely

is that you don't have a sense of belonging.

It's much, much more difficult.

And you don't have that rootedness and you have

to actively seek it out and build it yourself.

Whereas for other people it might come naturally. Yeah.

The idea of like nationalism, national identity,

that rootedness and belonging in your culture.

If I was 100% Lebanese, having grown up

in Lebanon, having consumed Lebanese content, right.

Having a Lebanese passport, I would, in theory, right.

Have A solidified form of identity much earlier. Yeah.

That's defined.

And I wouldn't have struggled the way I struggle until this

day to define my identity or to understand myself because the

things that define me are kind of like in the ether

and it's like a bit of this and a bit of

this and trying to explain it to people.

You have to have them understand all of these different

cultures and all of these different elements at play rather

than, yeah, this person, this, this is who I am.

This country, the rights of this country, the culture of

this country, the history of family in this country and

all of that being kind of like tied together. Yeah.

I always admired, like, not always admired, but I was

very envious of people who early on could be so

self assured in who they were and who carried around

their identity proudly because whenever I participated in like the

Lebanese, but even when I was 14 years old and

we were doing like protests in France against the Syrian

occupation, like I felt belonging for the first time because

we were all united, but I still was othered in

that space because there's like, why are you like, yeah,

why are you here?

Like who, who are you like.

But these, these issues don't directly affect you.

Why would you argue, why would you fight for us?

Why are you speaking this way?

You're not meant to be here.

This isn't even a space for you. Yeah.

To speak in.

I mean this all wouldn't be a problem

if the world was a better place. Yeah.

And I think it was like more equal.

If boundaries are man made, they're completely like

if, you know, the freedom of movement, freedom

to social mobility, all these things are part

of the patriarchal, capitalistic, misogynist system that we're

trying to fight against.

And so a lot of these issues that

we're talking about would not be so entrenched

in the way people's lives are affected.

If I was like, if it was a better place, if

it was a more equal place to live this world.

But it's intentionally not.

And I actually struggle a lot with these

labels and boundaries that have been created specifically

around race, the construction of race as a

concept and racializing others with their differences.

Like in this day and age

it's more irrelevant than ever.

Like people are more mixed than ever.

People are traveling and changing and immigrating more than ever

and racializing others to put them in a box that's

convenient for the system, the way it's run is so

archaic it shouldn't even exist in the first place.

But there's this aspect of wanting to

almost adopt the terms in order to.

I'm happy to say that I'm Arab.

I'm happy to say that I'm also American.

I don't need to fit into just the

American box because it's safer for me to

be racialized as white, European American.

And I'm almost like taking back those labels,

but I wish they didn't even exist.

But what you're describing is why there is

a rise in right wing political parties and

regimes and nationalist identities and things like that,

especially in the Middle west.

In, like in America, in Europe, I mean, that's exact.

Because of what you said.

Like the people are moving more, immigrating

more out of need and like dire

need or, or privileged because their choice.

But that's exactly why there's a huge

now swing back and backlash against that.

And there's, you know, Trump is coming back and

we're going to talk about that in another episode.

That's like a whole other conversation also.

I mean, there's this, what I find

very interesting, I wrote a paper on

this in college about the hyper cosmopolitanism.

You know, these people that immigrate, first of

all, they immigrate from rural areas to cities.

They become cosmopolitan.

And how cosmopolitan cities around the world

mirror each other more than they do

with the rest of their immediate surroundings.

So someone who lives in New York, can live in

London, can live in Tokyo, can live in Cairo, can

live in Dubai, and it's more or less the same

than if they go to like a rural.

Then if they went to Yonkers. Yeah. Or Buffalo.

You know what I mean?

Like, it might be a harder integration for them. Yeah.

But then the more that people move to the

city, the more they meet other people who move

to cities, the more they make babies that are

used to being in these cosmopolitan places.

And then for some reason, it's like generationally

now I know I'll get along with someone

who's like, I don't know, Swedish, Brazilian. Yeah.

Who grew up in Russia, even though I

am not part of any of those cultures.

But I know that we link on the multicultural lost

identity, mixed salad of an existence more than I connect

with someone who's 100% Lebanese born and raised in Lebanon,

or 100% American born and raised in America, or 100%

French born and raised in France.

And I think that's really fascinating because it leaves

room for a much wider form of connection.

So this conversation can go on forever. Yeah.

And we'll probably pick it up again in other

episodes in different ways because it's who we are.

And who we are changes.

And therefore what we have to say and what

we know will change as the world also changes.

We hope you enjoyed that episode.

Sage Takes Thyme.

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