Doc Ali’s interview

America is a multicultural melting pot with a fuzzy concept of identity. It celebrates immigrants, indigenous communities, and diverse backgrounds. American identity is defined by welcoming multiple perspectives and embracing political discourse. Feeling most American when traveling and cheering for the US in sports. Feeling least American when facing discrimination against immigrants and Muslims. Learning profound lessons from US history, like the violation of Henrietta Lacks' privacy, or the use of bodily remains without consent. In world history, learning to view events from different perspectives. Intersectionality of being Muslim-American and growing up in a diverse community shaped a celebration of diversity and a bond with others, despite negative projections from others. What does America mean to you? America means many, many different things. I think because it's like inherent melting pot, like multicultural identity, you can't really define it that easily. And I think you have so many people who have different views of it. Like it's so different than a lot of European nation states or like other places where it's like relatively homogenous or at least like the start of those countries. Or as they could say, we're one nation, one people, blah, blah, blah. That's how they were founded on that idea. And America, to me, it's just so different from that because it has to celebrate the immigrant identity from so many different places. It has to celebrate the indigenous community. It has to celebrate everyone who is a part of this place and people forced to come here, like slaves and other ways of labor too. I think it just has to be like this very kind of fuzzy concept sort of, and it has to be something that depends on like more like the ideals versus like a very clear identity, but these very like lofty ideals. Great. The next question is how would you define American identity? I would say like for me to define it, I would say like the multicultural stuff is good. I think it has to be defined as a place that welcomes and includes multiple perspectives. I think like especially given like, again, idealistically, like democratically, this is a place where you can have dissent and protest and like political discourse in a way that wasn't common in other parts of the world, especially at its founding. And even today, I think it has its own kind of flavor to that and like things have shifted, obviously, kind of like the pendulum swings in different ways. But I would say like it's a place that like welcomes like a lot of difference and discourse and doesn't shy away from like the conflict that sometimes comes and goes all the time. Okay. Next is when do you feel most American and when do you feel least American? I feel most American when I travel. I lived briefly in the Middle East and I've traveled a lot in the Middle East and South Asia and I would say I feel extremely American when I'm there because even when I like look like the people there or I even speak the language however poorly, I like the way I think is so different than people. And today, I've been called out by plenty of people in that way. So sometimes it's like calling me out for being like, oh, like your typical American kind of arrogant way of understanding things and saying you understand the world or our region, something like that. So I feel like that's like probably the most American I really feel. And this is like a random thing, but I also like I feel super American when I'm like cheering for like the U.S. during the Olympics like this past summer. Like I love the Olympics or like the World Cup and stuff like that. I'm a huge like fan of like those sports, so I like love that. Like so that really makes me feel like unified. And it's probably also because there's so many different types of people in those settings, right? The U.S. like teams always look like really diverse. Traditionally, I've always looked really diverse and have like all these different like characters and like people from different backgrounds. So that's when I feel the most American. And then you also ask like when I feel the least American. I would say when I feel least American is when parts of my identity sometimes politically get called out. Like most Americans, especially post-9-11 are immigrants, right? Like my family is all immigrants. My parents immigrated here in like the early 70s. Like the way that like when there's discourses like against immigrants or against Muslims, that makes me feel less and less. And I would say specifically like post-9-11, like that was a real turning point. I was 12 years old when it happened. And like the way people talked about me, my community, and attacked our community, sometimes literally attacked, that like really made me feel less and less American. And I think like what is a shame is that in both of my answers, I'm depending on other people's idea of me, which sucks. But I think it's also kind of the truth. It's that like what other people project on you, oftentimes that influences the way that you're going to think about yourself. So for me, it's like when others are questioning my American identity or challenging it in some ways or saying I'm super American, right, that inherently makes me feel either more or less American. Okay. And then what are some of your favorite or most important stories or lessons you would like to share about U.S. and world history? Okay. U.S. history. I'm going to try to say something different than I said the last question. U.S. history, I would say like whenever I learned something, even like today, right, like as I'm like 35 years old and like I have graduate degrees I've been teaching, whenever I learn something new about U.S. history, like as an adult, I feel like that's really profound for me. I would say like this isn't like super recent, but like learning about like Henrietta Lacks and kind of like how her privacy was kind of like violated. Like it's a really interesting story. If I go into it, I'll probably miss a lot of important details. But essentially it's related to somebody who was like, you know, like her cells and her DNA was like used for like experimentation and for science without her consent. Oh, actually, no, I have a perfect example. I have a really good one. I have a really good one. All right, so before I worked here, I worked at a university and it was Penn in Philly and there's like a really good archeological museum and department there. And at Penn, Philly has like this really intense history of like activism and there was this like activist group called MOVE, I think. Yeah, it was the MOVE house. And the city of Philadelphia bombed the house, literally had helicopters come and drop bombs, which killed tens of people, including some teenagers. And we learned during my time in Philly like in 20, what was it, 2022 or something like that, that Penn was still using some of the bodily remains, like the bones and stuff of one of the victims, without the consent of the family. So like that's history and it's like the learning that came from that was like shocking. Like people obviously got pretty upset by this. Like a professor was like utilizing this stuff in a class without the consent of the family or any of like the descendants. So that's like a moment I think that like, and I think that is very American in a way, right, because we're constantly like learning and relearning stuff about our past and sometimes it's really charged and contentious, so that feels extremely American to me. In terms of world history, I would say like I really, same thing when I traveled, like I would always view everything from the American perspective. And when people challenged me, then I had to kind of relearn that event through their perspective, right? Whether it's like stuff in like Latin America and politics and stuff and different militaries like coming in and taking over and coups and stuff, like I would always view it from this kind of distant American foreign policy, like what does it mean for us? Why is it important to us? And then when you travel, when you talk to people, and then you have to like relearn it and be like, oh, it's not about us at all, right? That's so self-centered. And you have to like kind of flip the way you view those things. So I think that's like really impactful. Yeah. Okay, the last question I have for you is, how has the intersectionality of your American identity and your other identities formed who you are today? I would say that it's like, so growing up like Muslim-American was really important in that because the Muslim-American community is not like a racial community. It's like a religious community. And so it's a very diverse community. So I grew up with like a lot of people from different backgrounds, like in Philly, it's a big West African community. There's like a Indonesian population. There's like a Palestinian population. There's a South Asian population. There's Albanian. And so inherently my community had so much diversity. So I think that helped me kind of celebrate that more and not think that like my group was just one group like this. And so that I think helped my view of my Americanness be expansive too. Like to recent immigrants and to like people whose ancestors immigrated or people who are indigenous or to people who are like whatever. I think that's like all those things came together to me in that way. So I think I like and I crave that kind of like diverse experience because that's like what I grew up with. And I appreciate that and I can still feel like the commonality and bond between people. And sometimes it's hard, like I said, like post-9-11. It was rough to like really kind of come to terms with those identities. And there's so many other parts of my identity too, but those are like the two main ones that kind of come to mind, like the immigrant and Muslim part with the American part. And being able to celebrate all of that even when like the outside noise or people are projecting negative ideas on you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Cool.