Anti-black sentiment regularly goes unchecked in cities around Detroit, but that’s changing in the era of Trump

Leah Vernon, who runs a popular Instagram account that celebrates being “fat, black and Muslim”, never formally studied Arabic but, growing up in Detroit, she learned the word abeed: the Arabic plural for slave, a derogatory term used to describe African Americans. Sometimes she heard the word while she and her mother were in attendance at predominantly Arab mosques in Detroit’s neighboring city of Dearborn. Other times, she heard it at “party stores”, small corner shops that dot Detroit and are almost always staffed by Arab cashiers, who often sit behind inches of bulletproof glass.

“Honestly, I heard it my whole life,” Vernon said. “I was called abeed so many times I never thought anything of it until a Somali friend, who speaks Arabic, explained to me, ‘No, they are calling us slaves.’ I have even heard it from 11-year-old kids.”