Nicolle Carela – Conversation 5

Summary

1) What did you learn from the “Arab and Other Middle Eastern Americans” article? Be specific and provide examples from the reading.

I learned how the US society has prejudices against Middle Eastern Americans when it comes to what is categorized as terrorist attacks. According to the article “Arab and Other Middle Eastern Americans” where it states that “Since the late 1970s, Arab Americans and Arab Canadians were periodically subjected to harassment at border crossings, and the US repeatedly sought to deport politically active Arab visitors or immigrants as ‘terrorist supporters’, even though they have not been convicted of any crime.” We can see how they face discrimination when trying to enter the United States just because where they are coming from. Generalism has caused all this misunderstanding that the Middle Eastern is just a specific set of things when it's not. Misinformation and the lack of knowledge among US society has helped all these stereotypes go along for years. Another fact that has not help, is how US films will focused widely more on the negatives stereotypes about middle eastern as we can see in the text where it also mentioned the following “Negative stereotypes of Middle Eastern characters and of Islam have been common in US film and television, and in radio and newspaper commentaries.” All of this media is available for almost everyone. Millions of people watch these movies, listen to the radio and read the newspaper making the misconception easily consumed instead of bringing light about everything that comes along with this culture which is not what we mostly see in the media.

2) Discuss something you learned and/ or can relate to from 1-2 of this week’s videos.

I learned from this week's videos that the Middle Eastern is full of a variety of languages across its countries and that there is a misunderstanding that they just speak Arabic but this is clearly not true. Also, how most of the people tend to associate the middle east with the Islamic State when most of the muslims do not even leave in the middle east according to this week's first video. The fact that muslims encounter almost ¼ of the human population is also something new to me, I would never have imagined that this is such a big group around the world. Lastly, I learned that there are more women enrolled in higher education than men with most of them being in STEM majors.

3) Discuss the article on “Literacy Reform in the Middle East.” Provide examples from the reading.

According to the article “Literacy Reform in the Middle East” we can see that “Literacy rates of smaller and wealthier Arab countries are generally higher than those of more heavily populated Arab countries” this means that literacy levels seem to vary depending the Arab country, where those with the lowest literacy tend to be the ones with higher population. This is a clear contradictory history and this is also why focusing on literacy among these countries is essential for the development of their society and other areas as well.

4) Share your source on this topic–let us know what it is, why you selected it, and why it matters.

My source is a video from Frank Garner, a formal BBC security correspondent who talks about his experience in the Middle east. He also explains how despites the bad things that happened to him over there he still believes it is one of the best regions of the world. This is why I selected it, it brings hope and also it helps to see how their culture is much more than those that do bad, this is why matters. Awareness and knowledge are necessary to surpass these stereotypes.

Here is a link to the video:
(8) Misunderstanding the Middle East | Frank Gardner OBE | TEDxYouth@Bath - YouTube