Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

Early on in the class, we had to select a broad topic of interest to do research on.
My selected topic was ‘Racial profiling‘.

:::::::::I found this definition online:::::::::

racial profiling: the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining if a person is considered likely to commit a crime

Examples of racial profiling in USA:
• Native Americans: mistakenly profiled as Hispanics or middle easterners.
• Mexicans: Illegal immigration
• Arabs, muslims, middle easterners, and south Asians: terrorists
• Blacks and Puerto Ricans: Crime

I started to free associate with the term racial profiling and came up with a number of other interesting words.

• xenophobia: is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreigners. The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself.

• racism: by its simplest definition, is discrimination based on a racial group.

• Islamophobia: is a term that refers to prejudice against Islam or Muslims.

Since I am an Egyptian-American I want to focus on the Arabic issue in the West and i would like to understand how Arabs are stereotyped and objectified in that culture. I also want to change that stereotyping by raising awareness to it.

“I think that whenever we see a group of people being demonizeed on a regular basis we have to speak up.”