{"id":225,"date":"2026-05-16T10:03:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=225"},"modified":"2026-05-16T10:03:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T10:03:01","slug":"essay-an-accent-in-the-national-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"Essay: An accent in the national anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My dad stands when the national anthem plays at baseball games.<\/p>\n

He removes his faded baseball cap. He faces the flag. He doesn\u2019t sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stand,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m proud of it.\u201d But he worries that if he sings too loudly, someone might think he\u2019s performing patriotism. If he stands too still, someone might question it. He wonders whether the people around him see sincerity or spectacle \u2014 whether they assume he\u2019s \u201cfaking it\u201d because he\u2019s an immigrant. In a sea of jerseys and ball caps, his dark hair and tan complexion can set him apart \u2014 an immigrant from a part of the world the U.S. has long cast as its adversary.<\/p>\n

Read more Watch: Colorado meteorologists discuss weather prediction challenges at Colorado SunFest 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

My father came to the United States from Syria decades ago. He left behind an authoritarian government and mandatory military service. He arrived still learning to speak English and with a conviction that if he worked hard enough, he could build a life untouched by the fear he grew up with.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica was just perfect for me,\u201d he said. Education, a stable job, a family, a house. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I\u2019m having.\u201d<\/p>\n

He reveres the metaphor of the melting pot. \u201cI love the idea. It\u2019s wonderful.\u201d Even as newer metaphors for immigration \u2014 mosaics, tapestries \u2014 have replaced it in much of the national conversation, he still believes in disappearing into something larger. When I asked if he wanted to melt in, he didn\u2019t hesitate: \u201cYes, 100%.\u201d Assimilation, he told me, \u201cwas an achievement.\u201d A necessity.<\/p>\n

But you can call somewhere home and still be reminded you arrived there.<\/p>\n

Officially \u201cOther\u201d<\/h2>\n

For most of his adult life, my father checked \u201cOther\u201d on government forms. Under , people with origins in the Middle East and North Africa are classified as white. Legally, he is white.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never considered myself white,\u201d he said. \u201cI always felt I\u2019m more brown or Middle Eastern in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

That classification has long been contested. Arab immigrants once fought for nominal whiteness to secure citizenship; today, it often obscures more than it protects. Research shows it masks disparities, from higher poverty rates to workplace discrimination. If Arab Americans are white on paper, they\u2019re not treated that way in practice.<\/p>\n

At times, the designation has offered partial access to belonging, smoothing assimilation in ways other groups have not experienced. But that belonging is conditional. When conflict resurfaces in the Middle East, it quickly erodes.<\/p>\n

Amid the Iran war, that fragility is exposed. Since late February, Islamophobic rhetoric online has surged, with tens of thousands of posts targeting Muslims and those perceived to be Middle Eastern, amplified widely through social media. On campuses and in communities, fear has intensified \u2014 for family abroad and for safety at home.<\/p>\n

My dad knows that tension well. \u201cI\u2019ve never been treated as white,\u201d he said. About 30 years ago, not long after he came to Colorado, he was pulled over by the Glendale police. The officer asked where he was from. After he answered Syria, the officer joked about searching his car for bombs. He insists those incidents were rare \u2014 \u201cReally, 99.9% of people were wonderful\u201d \u2014 but he remembers how it felt. \u201cYes, I felt less of an American.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard this story many times since the age of 11. Back then, I didn\u2019t have the language for it \u2014 I just remember feeling confused, betrayed that the world could see my dad as something suspect when, to me, he was just my dad. I hear the story differently now. I\u2019ve learned how quickly belonging can be stripped down to a question, how a single interaction can redraw the boundaries of who gets to feel at home.<\/p>\n

And yet, he resists being labeled a minority. He does not want special consideration. \u201cIt\u2019s good to be categorized with white because I like to compete on equal footing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His desire to blend in, he told me, was \u201cpurely self-motivated \u2014 to live a better life.\u201d He shortened his first name to make it easier for people to pronounce. He worked diligently to adjust his accent. \u201cTo have a better life, you have to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contradiction lives comfortably inside him. \u201cI\u2019m proud to be Syrian. I\u2019m proud to be Arab,\u201d he said. \u201cI will never let go of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he wants the stability historically attached to whiteness in America. He wants to be American without qualification \u2014 without suspicion.<\/p>\n

Growing up, I learned to read that contradiction not as hypocrisy, but as strategy \u2014 a way to navigate a country that offers belonging unevenly. I\u2019ve always understood his pride. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever fully understood the trade-offs.<\/p>\n

The melting pot has expanded<\/h2>\n

Hilary Falb Kalisman, an associate professor at CU Boulder and historian of the modern Middle East, told me that racial categories have always been unstable, even when they appear fixed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that those categories are kind of flawed and don\u2019t really work doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re not significant in understanding people\u2019s perceptions of themselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Read more Weld County GOP chair arrested on suspicion of soliciting a child prostitute<\/a><\/p>\n

Even so, those categories continue to shape who is seen as belonging and who is not. The melting pot has expanded over time to include once-excluded Europeans \u2014 Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans \u2014 folding them into American whiteness. But others remain in a liminal space, close enough to be counted as white, far enough to be questioned.<\/p>\n

In moments of geopolitical tension, that ambiguity sharpens. The result is a peculiar form of American Otherness: legally included, socially conditional.<\/p>\n

Moving through the world as white<\/h2>\n

That in-between space is where meaning is made, said Samira Rajabi, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado who studies media and identity.<\/p>\n

Rajabi, who uses the phrase \u201chybrid Iranian American\u201d to describe herself, grew up in Colorado in a household where Farsi was spoken and Iranian television flickered through a satellite dish. It was a bridging of two worlds \u2014 one inherited and one inhabited.<\/p>\n

When people feel \u201cin between,\u201d she explained, they search for others who share their testimony. Meaning is produced collectively\u2014through shared grief, shared memory, shared recognition. But recognition is uneven.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt honestly feels really, really dehumanizing to be Iranian at this moment,\u201d she said, pointing to the war. The Middle East is frequently treated as a monolith, flattened through an Orientalist lens that erases cultural and political distinctions and reduces millions of people to a geopolitical problem.<\/p>\n

Recognition, she says, requires more than visibility. \u201cTo be legible among people that might understand your grief is different than being visible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listening to her, I turned inward. I don\u2019t appear typically Middle Eastern \u2014 I move through the world as white. People don\u2019t see the proximity I feel to the conflict, nor do they register the weight it carries in my family or the way it reshapes conversations at home. The kind of recognition Rajabi describes becomes complicated when your identity isn\u2019t visible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When anti-immigrant sentiment dominated presidential election headlines in 2023, my dad put an American flag outside our house in Parker for the first time. Part of it, he admitted, was strategic\u2014protection, a signal of belonging. But when a contractor stopped by and noticed the flag, the conversation shifted. They talked about the country, about pride. The man listened to my dad\u2019s accent and didn\u2019t flinch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was proud that I was proud of America, too,\u201d my dad said.<\/p>\n

In that exchange, the flag became less of a shield and more of a bridge. For a moment, belonging felt reciprocal.<\/p>\n

At baseball games, he still stands for the anthem. He still doesn\u2019t sing. But when he votes, he told me, he feels \u201cfully American.\u201d He cherishes the Stars and Stripes. He is proud of the life he built.<\/p>\n

But he also knows what it means to be asked, \u201cWhere are you really from?\u201d To feel eyes linger a second too long \u2014 to be legally white and socially Other.<\/p>\n

The melting pot promises transformation, that difference will dissolve into unity. My father built his life on that promise.<\/p>\n

Yet even as he melts in, something visible, accented and slightly out of place remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As his daughter, I\u2019ve inherited both sides of that reality \u2014 the belonging he built and the distance he learned to ignore.<\/p>\n

And so at baseball games, when the anthem plays and the stadium stands as one, my dad stands too \u2014 steady, silent and still negotiating what it means to belong.<\/p>\n

Read more Colorado governor cuts Tina Peters\u2019 prison sentence in half, will release her on parole June 1<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Syrian-born father built a life, a family and a home in America. 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