VOA标准英语10月-Arab American Voters' Concerns Same as All Americ

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James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (file)

The head of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, Jim Zogby, said Arab Americans are concerned about the same issues that all Americans are worried about.

He said, "Our concerns are like the rest of the country's concerns. We just finished a poll of Arab Americans and 80 percent said the economy is their number one concern."

That poll also found the war in Iraq, health care, gas prices, national security, education and taxes to be important issues to Arab American voters.

At the election event in Brooklyn, members of the large local Arab American community echoed those concerns.

One of them said, "My concern is when are we going to have universal health insurance for our community and every community in the United States? My concern is about education - I have three kids in college and one in the public schools. What is going to happen to our children in the future? I have a son who is a veteran - he just came back from Iraq. No one came out and said thank you to him. No one offered him any benefits, no one offered him any job."

Nearly half of Arab American voters are registered Democrats³, and in a Zogby International poll conducted last month, Senator Barack Obama led Senator John McCain by 14 percent among Arab Americans. That support was strongly reflected among the about 200 people - Republicans and Democrats alike - who turned out in Brooklyn to hear their local candidates and representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns.

One of them said, "I'm a registered Republican, but I'm voting for Barack Obama this year. I just feel his positions on many, many things - whether its domestic policy or foreign policy - are sort of more in tune⁴ with what I would like to see.

Obama also has support among newly naturalized Arab Americans, including one who said, "I'm so glad this year I can vote, because I like Obama and I like his ideas too."

But one thing that does trouble Arab Americans is the way the words "Arab" and "Muslim" have been used so negatively in the presidential campaign.

False rumors⁵ that Senator Obama is a Muslim or has ties to terrorists have been making the rounds for months on the Internet, news channels and elsewhere.

At a recent McCain rally, one woman told the candidate she had heard that Senator Obama is an Arab. Mr. McCain replied, "No ma'am, he's a decent family man and citizen" - leaving many Arab Americans to wonder if that meant they are not.
　

Colin Powell, 10 Oct 2008

Only recently did a prominent political figure - former secretary of state Colin Powell - say out loud what many Arab Americans have been thinking - what would be wrong if Senator Obama was a Muslim? And why shouldn't a Muslim American child believe that they could be president one day?

An Arab American commented on that. He said, "The fact that Colin Powell actually came out and said this was, I think, amazing, especially being a Republican, coming out and saying what he said, really impressed us. He is actually the first politician to come out and say something within this nature. Otherwise, unfortunately, it has been politically okay to say, for Muslims to be discriminated⁶ against in this country - and it's not okay."

They said that just because they are Muslim or Arab does not make them any less American or less worried about the direction this country is going. Many acknowledge that their vote is the best way to let their voices be heard.