The first question I always get from “Americans” is ‘Why do you keep calling yourself Arab American? You are American!'”

It represents the rock and the hard place Arab Americans have been pushed in to by a lack of education among most non-ethnic Americans.

It’s aggravated by what I call the U.S. government’s split personality when it comes to Arab Americans. On one hand, they want to know us. On the other, they don’t.

The government wants to know about Arab Americans when they are “profiling” us at airports and border security checkpoints to “protect” the country from “the terrorist threat.”

But when it comes to counting people in the U.S. census (so they can participate and share in government programs like grant funding awards, in defining the borders of election districts for Congressional seats or state legislatures or municipal councils) the U.S. government pretends Arab Americans don’t exist.

That is exactly what’s happening now in the massive 2010 U.S. census drive.

The government isn’t completely stupid, nor are they naïve. They are dishing out just enough money to Arab American organizations and PR agencies to do the outreach to the Arab American community.

The government could do it but they don’t have a “positive file” on who we are. The government only has the “negative file,” the one from Arab Americans having been historically followed, investigated and probed by FBI agents repeatedly over the past 75 years.

The FBI investigated me over a two year period beginning in August 1975, right after I completed my active duty military service for this country during the Vietnam War. They said I must be a terrorist, because I was Arab, but concluded the 45 page report by saying in small type, I’m just an American who is concerned about advancing his ethnic community.

During those two years, they talked to banks, employers, neighbors, friends and anyone who had anything to do with me. It was all in the report, most of it blacked out with marker. When I finally received a copy in 1979, it pretty much explained the dismissal from jobs, why some neighbors and some friends had stopped talking with me or associating with me, and why several prospective employers had refused to hire me.

Hey, when the U.S. government puts its attention on Arab Americans, it’s usually not for a good reason.

That’s why I am upset, no angry, that the government is pretending they care for us Arab Americans by reaching out and asking us to complete our federal census form for 2010.

There are these benefits that we will get from participating. Yeah? Like what benefits do we as Arab Americans actually get from supporting anything this government does?

When I go through an airport, I am immediately identified as an “Arab.” I’m pulled aside and my bags and possessions are thoroughly searched. The friends I am with who are not Arab are made to feel like they are traveling with Osama Bin Laden. And strangers who pass through normal levels of security look at me like I’m going to cut their throats or blow myself up when I get on the plane.

It’s humiliating. But no one really cares. Better to be safe than sorry. If we have to make Arabs go through embarrassing and humiliating procedures that single them out solely because of their “look” or their “profile,” so be it.

Meanwhile, Caucasian murderers and killers walk through security thankful that the government is doing at least part of its job by removing the Arab scourge. More than 95 percent of serial killers are Caucasian. Some of the biggest terrorists in the United States historically have been white supremacists, members of outlaw militias and neo-Nazi organizations based in the so-called “American heartland.”

But if you have olive skin and look Middle Eastern — a profile that fits more than 200 nationalities and ethnicities mainly from Middle East and Asian countries, you are the person they have to stop.

This is the negative notice we get from our government.

Then, this same government that spends a fortune screwing us as Arab Americans, spends a fortune trying to convince us that if we participate in the 2010 census this year, we’re going to benefit?

I ask again, what benefit? There is no benefit. And there is no benefit for a reason. Arabs are NOT included on the census forms.

The census form asks for your race, listing Hispanic, Latino or Spanish Origin. And they ask if you are Mexican, Mexican American (I didn’t know there were two categories of Mexicans), or Chicano? What kind of race is “Chicano?” What country do “Chicanos” come from? “Chicano-stan?”

And they ask the same question again on the long form: Are you White, Black, African American or Negro? Are you American Indian or Alaskan Native and they even give you a place to write in your tribe name.

And that’s not all. The form asks are you Asian Indian, Japanese, Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Korean, Guamanian or Chamorro, Filipino, Vietnamese, Samoan or Other Asian where they give you a space so you can print your “race” like Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian “and so on.”

Oh, they don’t stop there. They ask are you “Pacific Islander” and ask you to print your race like Fijian, Tongan “and so on.”

And way at the bottom, in case they missed someone, someone not so important, they have the throw-away line, to check here if you are “Some Other Race – Print Race.”

That is where I have to hand write that I am “Arab.” And proud of it too, by the way.

Now, the U.S. government argues “Arabs” are not a race. So they can’t be counted. They consider us “Caucasian,” although the last time I looked it was the Caucasian hate groups in this country like the former Bush administration which singles out Arabs for special mistreatment, harassment and discrimination.

Arabs are “not” a race, but we are a “people” who must be profiled at airports and security centers, thrown out of buildings in New York City, expelled from seats on airplanes, and denied jobs and government grants and rejected by voters on election day.

“Not a race,” the government insists? Really? Wow. Is that why they have taken the other “races” and broken them down into so many miscellaneous categories? It is not enough to know that someone is Asian. They want to know what kind of Asian? What kind of Native American? What kind of Mexican. Are “Latino” or “Hispanic” races?

But not “Arabs.”

We’re not a race.

We’re just a bunch of people that ignorant Americans can step all over and use us as punching bags when the times get rough or some nut job we’ve never heard of before decides to declare himself the spokesman for all Arabs and Muslims.

So here’s the bottom line, U.S. government. You don’t put “Arab” on the form, I don’t fill it out.

Either add the category “Arab” to the form or throw out all of the categories and stop lying to us Arab Americans about how much you care.

Ray Hanania is a Palestinian Arab American columnist, author and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.