I’m pretty critical of the tendency to fixate on the “West vs. the Rest” which is common today across the ideological and cultural spectrum. Frankly, I think Zach does it a little too much for my taste, but that’s a separate issue. Rather, I want to highlight this bizarre tendency to fixate on the West when any objective analysis would force you to take a broader perspective. The costs of Arab economic security:
This is the guy who’s making it his sworn duty to get fellow Emiratis to take the plunge and invent new businesses of their own. Khalid al Ameri has the charisma and the good looks of, say, a star ball player. He writes a column that often touches on entrepreneurship in the daily newspaper here, “The National.” First of all, he disputes a stereotype that Emiratis are like trust funders from Connecticut.
AL AMARI: Look, I think it’s a statement and it’s a view that a lot of the West have of the Gulf countries. That, you know, if I go in my backyard a dig a hole, oil will pump out. The reality of the matter is, we live a country that’s quite competitive. Slackers aren’t welcomed here.
This is wrong-headed. Yes, Westerners do have stereotypes about people in the Gulf, but they’re vague and inchoate unless the individuals spent some time in the region. The people who really have stereotypes about Gulf Arabs are Arabs from states without oil (as well as stateless Palestinians) and South Asians. These are the people who really resent and dislike Gulf Arabs. Westerners who live in the petro-states are accorded a minimal level of dignity and respect because they often come as skilled workers. In contrast other Middle Easterners and South Asians are usually more likely to be the muscle, and viewed with unalloyed racism by the locals. And that racism is reflected back, as the non-Western labor in the Gulf laughs and makes fun of the slothful, obese, and self-entitled indigenous population.
I’d be curious of Al Amari is not unaware of this. I know that there have been grumblings in places like Qatar and the UAE that when native Arabs enter the private sector they’re patronizingly treated as slow and coddled infants by the expat labor, often South Asian.