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King Legacy Drives Scholarship, Program Funds Arab Americans' Educations, Unites Groups
“I write to you out of despair. Nothing and no one has been able to silence your just cries for a humane society, not even the bullet with which you were murdered …”
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— A 2008 letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from then 16-year-old Abbas Alawieh of Dearborn
The way Abbas Alawieh sees it, his world today in many ways is the same world as on April 4, 1968 — the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out onto a balcony of a Memphis hotel.
The key to real change, said the Dearborn teen, is not just the tolerance of diversity, but a celebration of it.
Alawieh won first-place last year in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s (ADC) Michigan Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Program. The scholarship committee is accepting applications again.
Though the program has meant more than $100,000 in helping local Arab Americans with the costs of college — with individual awards usually ranging from $500 to $3,000 — its larger purpose is in helping to unite Arab Americans and African Americans.
They are two communities that have faced prejudice and mistrust but can find strength through each other, said Imad Hamad, executive director of the Dearborn-based American-Arab Center for Civil and Human Rights and a senior national adviser to ADC.
The essays that hundreds of Michigan high school students have written over the decade show that the area’s youngest people have great hopes and abilities to overcome suspicion and hate, Hamad said.
Read the essays, he said, “and you will feel the energy and optimism from youth in action.”
Just ask Alawieh, now a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. A world of peace is still possible, he said.
But “getting to that point will not be simply accepting the presence of a lot of people who are different, but embracing those differences and celebrating them,” he said.
Laura Neme agreed. The 19-year-old Dearborn teen who attends U-M’s Dearborn campus received a $2,500 scholarship for her essay last year. She said she has felt the stares from older people, especially when she is with friends wearing hijabs, the traditional Muslim headscarf. But her own age group simply melts together without suspicion of each other, she said.
That, and King’s work, she said, is where she draws her strength in those awkward moments in airports, for example.
“Our generation is much more open and ready for that change,” she said.
About the program:
Eligibility: High school seniors in Michigan of Arab or Chaldean background.
The sponsors: The Dearborn-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan, or ADC Michigan, and the Detroit branch of the NAACP.
The scholarship: Depending on the amount raised from the community, students can apply the award of $500 or more toward tuition.
Application: An essay of 750 to 1,000 words explaining what Martin Luther King Jr.’s message means to the applicant. Must be “written exclusively from an Arab- or Chaldean-American perspective.”
Deadline: Jan. 15
For information: Speak with a high school counselor about the scholarship, go to www.adcmichigan.org or call ADC Michigan at 313-581-1201, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
The banquet: Winners will be honored at 5 p.m. Jan. 30 at Greenfield Manor, 4770 Greenfield Road. Seats are on a first-come, first-served basis and will be arranged only through RSVP by contacting Mariam Habhab, ADC’s projects coordinator, at mhabhab@adc.org.
Robin Erb
Detroit Free Press