Critical Analysis on "How Does It Feel To Be A Problem" by Moustafa Bayoumi

In the book How Does It Feel To Be A Problem by Moustafa Bayoumi,  Bayoumi tells different stories about experiences people have had due to being Arab in America.  He wants readers to know that racism doesn’t only happen between black people and white people, racism is a worldwide issue that every single human deals with on a daily basis.  He tells the reader this by teaching us that before 9/11, many Americans didn’t even acknowledge Muslim and Arab existence, but after the attack, our authorities started attacking them and arresting them, because they seemed “suspicious.  An example of this is when one of the characters, Rasha, is kicked out of her home with her family because of their race and religion.  They were put in jail for months and Rasha wasn’t even permitted to contact her friends or school to tell them where she was.  This proves that since 9/11, Arabs and Muslims have been treated like garbage and many Americans aren’t aware of this.

Bayoumi wants to teach readers about how unfairly all people can get treated because of their race or religion, and his goal is to get the reader to feel outraged at the authority system in America and how they are treating people because of their ethnic background and history.  One way that he proves how unfairly Arabs and Muslims get treated is by stating the most horrific facts about how these people got treated.  Bayoumi doesn’t waste his time talking about how Arabs get treated worse in restaurants, he talks about how many muslims got laid off from their jobs after 9/11 because of their race.  Another way that he makes the reader feel infuriated at the way Muslims and Arabs are treated is that he talks about what a big part of the population they are.  Bayoumi says that 20% of Americans are between the ages of 18 and 30, but 30% of ALL americans are Muslim.  By stating this fact, the reader feels like almost they have done something wrong.  There are more Muslims and Arabs in America than Young Adults and it just shows how many people have been affected by discrimination against race and religion.

Bayoumi did a really good job at getting the reader to feel strongly about the topic.  I came away from this book feeling like I needed to do something to make Arabs and Muslims get treated better.  I used to think that white privilege in America was white people getting treated better than black people but I was wrong.  I now know that racism and discrimination against people because of their race happens with every single race, including white.