How Do Arab Americans Counteract These Unfair Stereotypes?
As a result of the unfair stereotyping observed in the contemporary stereotypes page, Arab Americans needed a way to counteract this treatment. They needed to prove to Americans that these beliefs were entirely inaccurate. Specifically, Arab Americans began using their religious spaces as a form of positive advertising. Arab Americans use their religious spaces as food festivals to allow Americans to feel comfortable in a setting they’ve heard such negative things about.
Food festivals are highly useful in Arab American lives to portray their culture to Americans in the best possible way. One example is the food festival at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo. Arab Americans produce these happy flyers to allow Americans to feel comfortable and welcomed in a community they potentially know little about. Arab Americans produce ethnic food for Americans to enjoy while also trying to make a profit. These ethnic food festivals are an example of the staging of ethnicity for American consumption. Arab Americans will use words such as delight, different, or exotic as a form of self-orientalism to describe their food in hopes that it avoids the obvious American belief that these people are potentially dangerous. At these festivals, Arab Americans are given the chance to speak out against the dominant representations of America by emphasizing an exotic factor to their culture. Arab Americans are trying to reform people’s opinions in order to feel safer in a community that views them as violent terrorists.
Overall, food festivals are a great place for Arab Americans to demonstrate the culture they want Americans to remember. Arab Americans today feel scared to even reference their ethnicity in fear of Americans immediately stereotyping them as being a terrorist. The ways Arab Americans elevate their culture are a positive step in allowing them to feel safe in a world that unfairly dominates them for having the same skin tone as the men who bombed the Twin Towers.
Truths and Impact of Arab American Stereotyping 