Will Someone Speak Engleezee Please!!!

If only we can make a thousand replicas of Edward Said and Jim Abourizk and many more qualified spokespersons of Arab America and spread them all over the US. Maybe then we could be in a better shape to capitalize on such rare and precious media opportunities where we have a chance to reach millions with our just cause in the quest to fight for civil rights at home and human rights abroad. But enough day dreaming.

How important are language skills? Very important. How important is good pronunciation and delivery? As important as the message itself as we discovered the hard way. Here in the US, the package is as essential as the content. The delivery medium can be as crucial as the message delivered. The pro-Israeli camp has for decades capitalized successfully on the power of packaging to deliver messages condoning occupation and human-rights violations but delivered by individuals and means the average American can identify with.  In contrast to their approach, our issues have been often delivered by lackluster spokespersons often the object of derision by us and the American public. Yet in spite of our objections, the stage comedy continues.

In a country where a layman’s depth of geographical knowledge often stops at the Canadian and Mexican borders, what is considered more familiar is perversely transformed into what is “more” truthful.  Here in the US, the world is split between those who are like us and those who are not.  This seems to be a cultural phenomena and not necessarily a racial one. Overall, an all-American speaker carries with him or her more credibility than one who is not. This may explain the appeal of Edward Said and Jim Zogby to the American audience. Group identification and conformity have been the hallmark of American society. Even in the case of non-conformist behavior, tight patterns of non-conformity quickly evolve to clearly delineate conformists from non-conformists. A code of conduct exists for conformists and other ones exists for non-conformists. The dress code, music, nomenclature, art, socialization, and other factors all follow narrow paths for most Americans.

On close investigation, even the highly touted American individualism merely describes economically motivated entrepreneurial behavior but it fails the test at the social or political level. Politically, this is one of the few democracies where political alignment falls primarily within two parties whose political views are oftentimes hard to distinguish to an outsider and constantly shifting left and right but within a very narrow band. And many cities and towns around the US are littered with the familiar ranging from the same chain restaurants to similar department stores, common TV programming, and  other facets of daily life that makes America so familiar wherever you go.

In contrast to this uniformity, Europe and the rest of the world for that matter offer a stark divergence from this conformity possibly resulting in different outlooks on life in general. Can this explain why only the US is the black sheep of the world community when it comes to its treatment of Arabs and Muslims such as its support of Israeli occupation and its constant violence against Palestinians and Lebanese civilians as well as its adversarial relationship with many Muslim and Arab countries. Well, it may offer a partial explanation.

Could it be that this desire for conformity which prompts most Americans to accept at face value and little questioning any information which has the hallmark and trappings of group-approval and leaves them with a comfortable sense of group identification. Simply put, Americans have been easy prey to a pro-Israeli US media which capitalizes on this American herd-mentality to steer public opinion away or towards a given political position to provide cover or publicity for pro-Israeli issues.  The media is after all endowed by most American with a moral authority which can be summarized by a common statement: “It is true because I saw it on TV,” or “I read it in the papers. It can't be a lie.”

The credibility associated with the media by the layman, irrational as it may be, and the abuse of that credibility by the media elite have contributed to the evolution of a warped American consensus favoring internationally condemned Israeli behavior while blaming the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian victims. To the average American viewer, whenever the media proclaims that  9 out of 10 self-proclaimed and media picked experts say Arabs and Muslims are bad, than truth is in the numbers. So when 9 out of 10 movies involving Arabs and Muslims (including Disney’s) depicting us in a negative light, again, truth is in numbers. When 9 out of 10 reports are one-sided in favor of Israel, guess which side benefits? Not yours. If the media can create the illusion of an anti-Arab consensus, the need to conform leads many Americans to instinctively follow the perceived consensus.

So how do we counter such tactics? First let’s try not to fail Public Relations 101 over and over again. Then we can concentrate on the rest. The road ahead of us is long. The desire by some first-generation Arab American activists to be media heroes within their local communities without some basic effort expended to familiarize themselves with the elements of verbal (let alone written) communications have caused us more harm than good. Unfortunately, some first generation Arab Americans cannot see the difference between a qualified spokesperson and one who is not.  Often times, they measure the effectiveness of the speaker by how closely does his or her revolutionary or religious rhetoric mirrors that of their beloved leaders of their home countries.

While this style of communication pleases some of us, it sure works to our detriment and results in a media scorecard favoring the pro-Israelis. To the average American, the accent,  intensity of the speaker, and the facial as well as hand movements can be inversely proportional to the level of acceptance and type of speaker they are willing to identify closely with. The poorer the English, the heavier the accent, the more rapid hand movements and facial gestures, the less familiar and more distant  the speaker becomes. And the message no matter how credible and just, becomes lost in other distractions due to poor delivery and obvious cultural differences.

The good news is that most of us can be effective communicators, but no one is born an effective speaker. Charles de Gaulle, the legendary French leader, used to practice for hours in front of the mirror looking and sounding silly to some of those present around him. But when he delivered his speeches, history was standing by recording attentively. If some think Edward Said or Hanan Ashrawi, for example, were born communicators, I am one to strongly disagree. It took both by their own accounts years of education, experience and practice to become effective communicators.

But the first step is to learn from the repository of knowledge on effective communications compiled over the years and can be purchased for few dollars at the local bookstore. The second, third, and forth steps are to imitate, imitate, and imitate. It is amazing how much one can learn while observing and taking mental notes while listening to the likes of Jim Zogby and Albert Mokhiber. Their secret is their ability to eliminate the distractions and deliver the message. Agree with them or not, their delivery methods are to be learned from even if some disagree with their messages. Also, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton offer great models of what Americans may like in a speaker in terms of style.

But let us not be too critical to the extent of being impractical. We cannot issue citations and threaten with lawsuits those whose communication skills we dislike. For often times, many of them are our cherished activists, community leaders, and good friends.  They simply need our honest advice and support.

Also beware the tendency on part of some of us to be instinctively critical and constantly negative which could make the world of community activism an inhospitable place for our small pool of activists.  The challenge is to encourage those who may need some improvement to approach public speaking in a methodical and objective manner. It is after all an acquired skill. And skills take practice. Representing Arab Americans to the world is a grave matter and a serious responsibility which must be taken seriously. If it requires time and effort to learn decent communication skills, than be it.

Remedial courses are abound in community colleges and evening schools and most are inexpensive.  No one expects immediate results, but some of our less-than-impressive speakers should consider starting the process of self-improvement.  In the quest for improvement, there is no substitute for professional feedback delivered by a speech specialist or consultant.  And who knows, from every 100 Arab American speakers, an Edward Said may emerge and continue to articulate our views and concerns as an insider not an outsider. For the most part, good communication skills is a choice to be made, a goal to be reached, and a responsibility to be taken very seriously.

As Arab Americans, we should continue to demand reasonable media skills from Arab American organizations receiving our money and support especially as their leadership demographics shift from the American born to the Arab born. After all, many claim to fight stereotypes and negative images so it is only fair we ask of them to stop reinforcing some of those pesky Hollywood-perpetuated stereotypes pertaining to comical English spoken by some backward Arab. The issue here is not about accent, it is about poor English skills.

Then, we should ask that they invest in training media staffers in need of communications skills. Ideally, they should promote native English speakers to positions requiring public appearances and media relations if such a resource is available and insist all verbal communication is channeled through them while discouraging poor communicators from approaching the microphone until the proper training has been completed and an acceptable level of competence demonstrated. I am not sure if some of the egos we are familiar with can withstand such recommendations. But anything less is an exercise in mediocrity.

In closing, “zis is brobably big a brablem for I. But many also sink it is big a brablem for we. I fix it to us?”