In the late 1970s, when the federal government created our modern racial classification scheme, Arab Americans were placed in the white classification, along with Iranians, Afghans, Berbers, Jews ...

You can still see traces of the Berber Jews in the geometric, humanoid carvings on the gravestones in the old Jewish cemetery of Essaouira.

The interior of the El Ghriba synagogue -- the oldest synagogue in North Africa -- on the Tunisian island of Djerba in 2009. My North African Jewish Berber grandparents came from Djerba, Tunisia ...