Joshua Wong – DB 5

The article “Arab and Other Middle Eastern Americans” provided information that I was not aware of that Middle eastern immigrants go through in this country. I think a lot of our information about these people and they are portrayed comes from the media and Hollywood which usually paint them in a negative light. I had no idea that immigration from Middle Eastern countries had been occurring in this country since the late 1800s and that the U.S had impeded on this immigration on multiple occasions. The article broke these immigrants into waves. The ones that stood out to me were the second and third wave that occurred were mostly intellectuals and well-educated peoples were immigrating from counties like Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq to name a few. The article also pointed out that “Arab Americans in the twenty-first century are better educated, more prosperous and more politically active than the average American.” (2). Though, with what the previous president Trump and the Bush administration has done along with Hollywood has had a major impact on what is portrayed about Arabian Americans and the discrimination they face in this country.

I can relate to a lot of what Melika Rahmani discusses in her video “Misconception of Middle Eastern Culture and Religion” I think every demographic has had to break a stereotype about their people that was portrayed by the media. The movies she listed in the video such as “300” was an eye opener for me about how they depicted Persian people. I can relate to her to wanting to give a proper background about our peoples and its customs. Me, being guyanese and Chinese, I’m always explaining how our peoples came to overlap with each other and the history of Guyana.

The article ““Literacy Reform in the Middle East“ mostly served to illustrate where the Bush Administration could and should aim a number of their Middle East policy plans. The article goes into where the literacy corp should aim to be most effective in aiding the Middle East’s literacy issue. I found this article interesting to read because I was contrasting it with what I learned from the first article.  According to the article, literacy rates in more populated and poor Arabian countries are low compared to smaller and wealthier nations. The percentages were astonishing especially among the women in literacy levels. The article quotes literacy levels in Jordan at “91%” for men and “86%” for women. When compared to countries like Yemen which had a literacy percentage for women at 29%

https://borgenproject.org/tag/literacy-rate-in-yemen/. I wanted to see what literacy was like in Yemen in our current time. I found this article from 2018 which went into more detail as to why literacy levels in Yemen are low. One of the issues listed was a strike that teachers were on to protest wages. Because of this students were not able to learn and be educated.