“Arab”: A Negative Connotation

The word “Arab”, especially since the atrocity of September 11, has rapidly become a negative connotation, with much assistance from President Bush and his administration.    It’s always interesting reading about what people from different cultures and regions of the world have to say about those cultures in comparison to what westerners have to say about them.  As someone of Moroccan and Iranian descent, Sahar still took the time to look up the Wikipedia definition of “Arab” and “Arabic”, because apparently even people from the region do not know what it means or what it infers. 

To me, ever since President Bush started focusing on “Islamic extremists” as “the terrorists”, the term “Arab” has been a word inspiring fear and hatred for people hailing from the Middle East. As someone with no Arab descent whatsoever, I still find it horrific that a label so evil could be applied to such a large group of people. Through the propaganda of the Bush administration and various media outlets, Arabs have been portrayed as a collective group of people waging a “holy war” on the United States and its supporters. While I do not agree with the United States’ imperialistic policies, most notably President Bush’s, I also do not agree with the negative connotation we place upon Arabs these days. 

Even before September 11, the term “Arab” tended to group people of Middle Eastern descent altogether, even though Sahar refuted that notion in her paper.  While it was not as serious a problem as the negative coining the term has today, it was still a problem as it singled out those nations that did not consider themselves Arab but were still located in the Middle East.  A complete and thorough education on other nations is truly needed to understand the complexity and plight of the Arab people.  I know not all Arabs are terrorists, but does the average uneducated American know that? Probably not.  The media and propaganda skews our country’s view of the rest of the world so much and in order to truly grasp other cultures, we must take a step outside of the box and do some research on our own, either by traveling, reading, or whatever your own personal research agenda may be. But it’s time we looked at the way things work in the world today from an outside perspective, much as we do in our fishbowls in class. Otherwise, we’ll get so caught up in it all, we’ll never be able to tell what’s real and what’s propaganda.