Arab and Muslim: Dirty Words?

In February, I spent a day calling undecided Wisconsin voters, urging them to vote, making sure they were registered, helping them find their polling precincts, etc.

Before I went down to Obama headquarters, Tegan and I had a long conversation about the types of rebuttals I may run into from wary voters. The one that made me the most nervous? "I can't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim."

My gut reaction was, "No, no, he's not." I mean, how hard can it be just to tell people he's Christian?

Then I realized that simply saying "no" seems to condone that being Muslim or Arab is wrong. And it shouldn't matter one way or the other. But crafting and navigating a sensitive response was a difficult task—one that I obsessed over all the way to Michigan Avenue. (Luckily, every single person I called planned to vote for Obama and no one mentioned race or religion at all.)


In this clip, Campbell Brown articulately and wonderfully reminds us that when people accuse Obama of being Muslim or Arab, not only are they dead wrong, they're disrespecting the 5-7 million Muslim-Americans living in our country.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008