Arab-Americans: Current Experiences

The terrorist attack which took place in the United States on September 11, 2001 was responsible for the development of new and negative attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims in the United States. However, Susan M. Akram (2002) stated that the "demonizing of Arabs and Muslims in America began well before the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001." This was due in part to what Akram (2002) called deliberate myth-making in films and the media, a foreign policy that has long favored Israel over Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East, and the stereotyping of all Arab-Americans or Arab students in the United States as potential threats or "foreigners."

There have been Arabs and Muslims in the United States for many, many years. Majaj (2002) said that it was not until the 1870s that large numbers of Arabs began to migrate to the United States. By World War II there were at least 350,000 people of Arab descent in the United States. The Arab-American community was established in this early wave of immigration. It was expanded by a second wave of immigration beginning after World War II and continuing to the present time.

Arabs are people who come from the Arabic-speaking countries of North Africa and the Middle East. This includes Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, pre-1948 Palestine and the Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Suda

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ocess. Some 85.5 percent of Jewish-Americans participating in this study seemed to support a Palestinian state. Some 95.4 percent of Arab-Americans agreed with the statement that the state of Israel is legitimate. However, both communities had misconceptions about the level of support that exists on the other side for a secure, independent Palestinian state (Hanley, 2003). What this suggests is that both the Jewish-American and Arab-American communities are concerned about the problems that trouble the Middle East and are hopeful that the Bush administration will be able to find a solution to those problems. However, in the wake of September 11th, many Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. have become very concerned about the way that the American government has reacted (After 9/11à, 2003). Before 9/11, the U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, promised that the practice of racial profiling would be ended. Racial profiling is a practice of targeting and arresting specific groups or individuals on the basis of their race or ethnicity only. After September 11, 2001 the American government approved homeland security measures that singled out Arab immigrants in the U.S. This includes fingerprinting and pursuing deportation orde
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Approximate Word count = 4897
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)