It sounds like a study of nothing. It sounds like a question nobody cares about, but that could easily be misused in the service of racism. I take very strong exception to the idea that there’s nothing wrong with this kind of passive-aggressive hate speech, and that I only think there is something wrong with it because (you think) I grew up in America instead of that part of the world. I’ll give you a clue: in the USA, I’ve actually heard the phrase "I ain’t Iranian" from a redneck, who was trying in his inarticulate bigoted way to convey to me that he wasn’t going to cheat me. Reading this bug report was like having to listen to an embarrassing and pathetic fool of a racist relative going on and on. I would think this racist fool was pathetic and embarrassing for saying things like that no matter where I grew up.

There are lots of reasons why someone might call himself or herself a hyphenated American. I called myself an Arab-American to establish bona fides for my confident statement that Achmed is not a name, nothing more. You don’t actually know anything about me because I said I’m an Arab-American. That might mean I’m culturally American, culturally Arab, some mix of varying degrees of the two, or even fully both. I may simultaneously consider myself fully Arab and better at being American than most 10th-generation Americans. Who are you to say different?

What is the point, anyway? So what if my opinion of this speech is determined by where I grew up? The tasteless racist caricature I’m criticizing is what it is and would be that whether I even existed or not.