Stereotype, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means "a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing". In summary, a stereotype is a generalized image that people creates about something or someone. Countries and regions around the world aren't the exception. Here, I will focus on explaining how does the world sees the Arabian Peninsula, and the reactions of the Arabian people to these stereotypes.
In general, the world shares the idea of Arabs being insecure, billionaire, belly dancers, bomber people. People with a strange accent, who live in the desert, with a deep love for their God, men who wear long black beards and woman being repressed by wearing burkas or headscarfs. As a region, the most of the people recognize Arabia as a place of violence or barbarian acts, deserts, and camels. For this, in magazines, comic books or cartoons, we can often find the villian as an Arab character; we almost never see an Arabian hero. An exception for this is the famous Disney movie "Aladdin". And even in this film, according to Wingfield and Karaman, there are certain scenes, characters and dialogues that are considered racist by the ADC (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee). For example, in the main song the lyrics say: "Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear if they don‘t like your face. It‘s Barbaric, but hey, it‘s home." In this sentence we can see a summary of the ideas expressed before, and how media tries to give us an specific image of this culture.
This generalizations and offensive stereotypes upsets Arabians and gives confusing messages for children, since the ideas they receive from the Occidental culture, in general, are different than the ones they see at home. This statement is especially applicable for Arabian children living at the United States. One example the ADC gives about this disrespect for the Arabic culture, its when in Halloween the kids dress up as Arabs, with masks that exagerate physical attributes or even "cultural" facts. In order to avoid this kind of racism to this culture, organizations like ADC had been created. This organisms defend the rights of Arabian population and promote their cultural heritage.
To conclude, every region and country has its own stereotype. Even though sometimes it may sound like fun, when we think about the cultural implications of every nation, and how we are offending a whole culture by setting a stereotype for it, we can really see why we shouldn't do this. Arabian countries have had to deal with this problem for many years, and most of schools and governments don't do nothing in order to stop this attitude. A culture based on respect is the solution.
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Alsy Arista
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