This is on behalf of every Middle Eastern and Arab who is tired of hearing other people telling us what we’re “supposed to” look like. Every single person above is from a Middle Eastern country, or a country considered part of the Arab World. All the women above are Arabs, except the two outer ones in the last row, the left is a Persian and the one on the right is Turkish. Not every Arab is a Middle Eastern, and not every Middle Eastern is an Arab. “Middle Eastern” isn’t even a race. The Middle East is a vague political region, NOT an ethnicity. There are Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Turks, and a multitude of other groups. This photo set does not even show 1/10 of the diversity within the region. The first two women in the black veils are from the same country, and yet had they been living in the U.S., they would be considered part of two different ethnicities.
No one is waiting for Americans to tell them what they’re supposed to look like. The U.S. has been too lazy to accurately represent race and ethnicity in its census, and that’s because if the government tried, they would end up with a headache. Now, for all the Arabs and Middle Easterners who are told to check off “white” - YOU ARE NOT WHITE. I don’t care if you have pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, you are not white. If the U.S.or another Western country is funding or even remotely involved in a war in your native country, you are not white. White people will hate each other, but they will not kill each other - they’ll kill you instead.