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The Treatment of Arab Americans

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A stressful month of work has finally come to an end and a long waited vacation with the family is just around the corner. The next morning you finally get everyone’s bags packed and jump in a shuttle to head to the airport. When you arrive at the airport the heavy door to the shuttle opens as you gather your bags and head through the big glass doors to check in. The nice blonde at counter smiles at you and your family and tells you to have a nice trip. Making your way to security you are relieved that you no longer have to drag your heavy luggage around. When you hand your family’s passports to the TSA officer waiting half way through the line he takes a quick glance at them and hands them back so you can be on your way. As you are …show more content…

Yet, does this profiling spread beyond the airport check points? Are people of Middle Eastern decent truly discriminated against throughout the United States? If so, is this discrimination an immediate result of 9/11 or has it been progressively increasing for many years now? According to Steven Salaita, the author of Anit-Arab Racism in the USA, “Anti-Arab racism has existed in the United States since the arrival of the first Arab in North America, but since 9/11 anti-Arab racism is, to use a cliché, America’s elephant in the living room—an enormous elephant, at that” (Salaita 7). Therefore, it is more accurate to think of 9/11 not so much as the beginning of anti-Arab racism, but rather the turning point of Arab and Muslim American engagements with race and racialization. With this said, we will focus briefly on outlining the events the led to and anti-Arab American perception before 9/11 and primarily on the American perception of people from Middle Eastern decent after 9/11.
During the first half of the twentieth century the United States saw steady immigration from the Middle East. However, at no point was this immigration overwhelming. The majority of early Arab immigrants in the United States were Christians. During this period, most attempted to assimilate, but were only somewhat successful. Most Arabs chose to assimilate because they examined the circumstances in which they lived and realized that they could be more successful in the U.S.

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