James Zogby's campaign against anti Arab prejudice in the United States
S. Sandberg | 04.01.2006 17:56
James Zogby personifies being an American. He is friendly,casual, and easy to talk to. Listening to him there would be no doubt about his American credentials. His accent is pure. His name Christian. Yet, his ancestral homeland is in the Arab world, a land subject to the intense interest of the world’s sole remaining superpower, the United States.
Being an Arab American is no doubt a challenging ethnicity, epecially, when America is at war or in conflict with several Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq. Like many immigrant and first generation Americans, Mr. Zogby is comfortable in his Americanness but wishes that Americans would respect his ethnic origin and other Americans of Arab descent. Although on a personal level, tolerance is usually the norm in the United States, there is no doubt that behind the scene lingers ethnic stereotypes that are unsophisticated as they are negative.
As Mr. Zogby would explain, many of these stereotypes originate in the American media including advertising, cartoons, newspaper and television. This is so because Americans lack direct experience of the Arab world. Only a small percentange of Americans even have passports and relatively few travel to the Middle East .
Over the years, as President of the Arab American Institute, located in the American capital, Washington, D.C., he has attempted to combat the negative stereotyping of Arabs and Arab Americans. He has campaigned to normalize the view of Americans have of Arabs. He has brought to the attention of networks, the misleading stereotypes of Arab portrayed in television as rich Arab sheikhs, terrorists, haters of America and sexually repressed individuals. Mr. Zogby argues that at least in the recent past, television networks potrayed Arabs and Arab Americans in a completely negative way, with no nuance or balance. In contrast, the images of other ethnic groups like Italian Americans who had both postive and negative aspects assocatied with them on television.
It may very well be that the negative potrayal of Arabs on television are just the result of what sells to the American market. Yet it is interesting that while Arabs are the most negatively portrayed ethnicity in the entertainment industry, Jews and Israelis are usually portrayed in a postive light even when such treatment is misplaced.
Mr. Zogby presents three instances when Jews were portrayed in a positive light at the expense of the Arabs. The first intance is the defining moment, according to Mr. Zogby in the potrayal of Arab and Jew in the entertainment industry. This is in the film Exodus which has as its subject the settlement of European Jews in Palestine. In this film, the Jews are portrayed as pioneers and heroes wanting to be free and live in peace but stopped by the savage Arabs. Another instance is on the television show Hill Street Blues where a Jewish grocer is the target of a robbery in San Francisco. According to Mr. Zogby, at the time the show was produced, the Jewish grocer had in real life already disappeared in low income neigbhorhoods and had been replaced by Palestinian and later Yemini grocers. Another instance is in a news story about an Israeli baby who was killed by Palestinians. This story received coverage for weeks while the killing of a Palestinian baby by Israelis barely received notice.
Since September 11,2001, Americans know more than ever about the Arab world, yet Mr. Zogby posits that they are getting the wrong information. Books are being wriiten about Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries by Israeli scholars and experts on Kurdistan who have never visited the Arab countries which are the subjects of their books These books are becoming the basis of Americans’ new knowledge of the Middle East. The Secretary of State has spoken of the region as the “ malignancy of the Middle East.
According to Mr. Zogby, there is no denying that the media in the Arab countries presents negative misleading and negative portrayals of Americans, and he says he has spoken in Arab countries about the incitement in the Arab media against America. But he argues that the media bias in the Arab media against America is less important because the Arabs are weak while America is strong.
Being an Arab American is no doubt a challenging ethnicity, epecially, when America is at war or in conflict with several Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq. Like many immigrant and first generation Americans, Mr. Zogby is comfortable in his Americanness but wishes that Americans would respect his ethnic origin and other Americans of Arab descent. Although on a personal level, tolerance is usually the norm in the United States, there is no doubt that behind the scene lingers ethnic stereotypes that are unsophisticated as they are negative.
As Mr. Zogby would explain, many of these stereotypes originate in the American media including advertising, cartoons, newspaper and television. This is so because Americans lack direct experience of the Arab world. Only a small percentange of Americans even have passports and relatively few travel to the Middle East .
Over the years, as President of the Arab American Institute, located in the American capital, Washington, D.C., he has attempted to combat the negative stereotyping of Arabs and Arab Americans. He has campaigned to normalize the view of Americans have of Arabs. He has brought to the attention of networks, the misleading stereotypes of Arab portrayed in television as rich Arab sheikhs, terrorists, haters of America and sexually repressed individuals. Mr. Zogby argues that at least in the recent past, television networks potrayed Arabs and Arab Americans in a completely negative way, with no nuance or balance. In contrast, the images of other ethnic groups like Italian Americans who had both postive and negative aspects assocatied with them on television.
It may very well be that the negative potrayal of Arabs on television are just the result of what sells to the American market. Yet it is interesting that while Arabs are the most negatively portrayed ethnicity in the entertainment industry, Jews and Israelis are usually portrayed in a postive light even when such treatment is misplaced.
Mr. Zogby presents three instances when Jews were portrayed in a positive light at the expense of the Arabs. The first intance is the defining moment, according to Mr. Zogby in the potrayal of Arab and Jew in the entertainment industry. This is in the film Exodus which has as its subject the settlement of European Jews in Palestine. In this film, the Jews are portrayed as pioneers and heroes wanting to be free and live in peace but stopped by the savage Arabs. Another instance is on the television show Hill Street Blues where a Jewish grocer is the target of a robbery in San Francisco. According to Mr. Zogby, at the time the show was produced, the Jewish grocer had in real life already disappeared in low income neigbhorhoods and had been replaced by Palestinian and later Yemini grocers. Another instance is in a news story about an Israeli baby who was killed by Palestinians. This story received coverage for weeks while the killing of a Palestinian baby by Israelis barely received notice.
Since September 11,2001, Americans know more than ever about the Arab world, yet Mr. Zogby posits that they are getting the wrong information. Books are being wriiten about Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries by Israeli scholars and experts on Kurdistan who have never visited the Arab countries which are the subjects of their books These books are becoming the basis of Americans’ new knowledge of the Middle East. The Secretary of State has spoken of the region as the “ malignancy of the Middle East.
According to Mr. Zogby, there is no denying that the media in the Arab countries presents negative misleading and negative portrayals of Americans, and he says he has spoken in Arab countries about the incitement in the Arab media against America. But he argues that the media bias in the Arab media against America is less important because the Arabs are weak while America is strong.
S. Sandberg
e-mail:
sandberg1306@yahoo.com