Has the world-wide impact of the terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden as “public enemy number one,” the war in Afghanistan, and the proliferation of Palestinian homicide bombers all contribute to labeling Arabs as “most hated people in the world?”
Profiling “Arab-looking” people is now the norm. Can this perception ever be un-done?
I don’t look at an Arab any differently than any other human.
He’s just someone else out to get me.
Honestly, if you just add up raw numbers, I’d say that Americans are the most “hated” people in the world.
I’m sure, given time, that it can be undone – the Germans and Japanese, after all, shook off their WWII-era reps within 20-30 years. Consider also that the warlike reputations of the Axis nations faded away even after nearly a decade of sanctioned “indoctrination” in the American media. For instance, children, in their formative years, would see pre-PC Bugs Bunny cartoons featuring caricatures of “the nip” and “the Fuhrer” as villains. Today, the media bends backwards to avoid such depictions – you won’t ever see the Powerpuff Girls going after any obviously Arab or Muslim terrorists, for example.
Any child just has to turn on CNN or open up the newspaper to see Arabs blowing up women and children. Reality is far more impactful than cartoons.
Yeah, but when was the last time you heard a little kid say, “Cartoon Network is boring, lets watch CNN!” ?
According to who?
Uh, how do you figure? When Al Gore is being searched at airports, I don’t think it’s fair to say that profiling is even occurring at airports, let alone a societal norm.
Probably Americans (the jealousy factor, and our own self-critical attitudes), Jews, and both the wealthy and underclass in their respective societies (i.e. yuppies/trixies and PWT/rednecks/culturally unassimilated African-Americans in the US).
I’d say that child-rapists pretty much universally hated, outside of certain parts of Africa.
I would say Americans are for the simple reason that since Americans are the world’s most visible people.
I mean Albanians may be disliked in Serbia, Greece, and Italy; but most Chileans don’t have much of an opinion on Albanians. Bloivians, Peruvians, and Argentines may often dislike Chileans - but the average Pakistani doesn’t have an opinion. But the United States’s reach is so global it has more die hard haters-
-and perhaps more admirers as well.
As for “Arabs”, North African Arabs are widely disliked in some European countries as poor immigrants, especially in France and Spain. In most western countries, they are sometimes profiled as terrorists. Conversely in some South Asian and African countries the rich Gulf Arabs have a negative image for being exploitative (hiring help from these countries).
But in many parts of the world, such as Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia - Arabs are mostly thought of as merchants and traders - especially Lebanese and Syrian people. In the USA before the conflict with the Muslim world became so apparent, that was the image Arab people had here too. You can find Lebanese merchants everywhere, southern Mexico, Ecuador,Paraguay, Haiti, Senegal, and a lot of other places I can name. Where I live there is still a strong Arab element among the older jewelry, carpet, locksmith, garment, and furnishing business.
Many of the Lebanes and Syrian Arabs are Christian though which complicates things. A lot of people may not even think they are Arab, as if Lebanese was some other ethnicity.
Good fucking god.
What arabs?
Palestinians (I presume you mean)?
Saudis?
Emiratis?
Bahrainis?
Qataris?
Omanis?
Yemenis?
Sudanese arabs?
Kuwaitis?
Iraqis?
Egyptians?
Moroccan arabs?
Lebanese?
Jordanians?
Syrians?
American arabs?
Australian arabs?
European arabs?
…or just anyone a little bit “dusky” whose ethnic heritage happened to include native fluency in Arabic?
I am curious as to what part of Africa are you refering to?
I’d say yes. I admit to being a bit insular. Until people of Arab extraction began blowing things up on American soil I didn’t give a rat’s ass what as going on in any Arab country.
istara: yes. All of them. Do you have a preference? Maybe that should be amended to: “all of them that want to blow me or other innocent people up.”
I can’t tell the difference by sight and I don’t care. Sure, it bothers me that there is not just one crazy ass group out there that wants all Americans dead, but I can’t tell the difference between Syrians and Saudis and the rest. As law enforcement at an airport or otherwise, I would be more wary of any of them. The phrase: “Don’t worry, I’m a nice Arab.” Is not very comforting to me.
Just because some Arabs have committed atrocties, hardly means they all will. Even white, “christian” Americans have committed mass killings of Americans. Rather than tar an entire ethniticy with your bigoted brush, why not save your condemnation for those and ONLY those that “blow innocent people” up. Killing is not just done by Arabs, besides which, all Arabs I know totally condemned the Word Trade Centre attacks.
That said, yes, Al Qaeda killers were predominantly Arab descent. Realistically though, there are far too many people of “middle eastern appearance” for racial profiling at airports to be effective, IMO. Obvious examples are the many sikhs who have suffered race hate attacks since 11th September. Likewise the many Arab americans who have suffered prejudice since that time. Learning to move forward, and join with “nice” (as you put it) Arabs to help root out the real troublemakers will be far more effective than alienating an entire geographics region/ethnicity.
SMUsax
I think you’re overlooking the fact that the OP asks the question “who is the most hated group in the world?” and not “who is the most hated group in the USA?” And, in any event, your answer deals with who you fear rather than who you hate.
I think Jews have a distressingly strong case for saying that they are the most hated group in the world. Between what happened to European Jewry and what is happening to Israel now, few other nations can say that they have been the target of such concentrated attempts to destroy them from different people in different continents at different times.
The USA is pretty widely disliked, and perhaps hated, for different reasons in different places. As I’ve said in other threads, to an extent that comes with the territory of being the world’s only superpower, and it may be exacerbated by the fact that being liked internationally has never really been a consistent goal of US foreign policy.
I guess that Efrem was refering to the stories about gangs of men raping children in order to ‘cure’ Aids - as sex with a virgin was a cure according to the local Shamams. Think it was mainly reported in South Africa.
I don’t think for a second Efrem meant the average person in that area condoned this behavior, just that a (comparatively) large proportion of men seemed to be involved in the crimes.
Sorry, for Efram, read ** the grim spectre of red death ** above.
aro I have read the stories and understand what you and grim are refering to.
However, I always get a little ticked off when people say “Africa” (hell, even "South Africa’) which is the mother-of-all-lumping-together a person can possibly do.
True, you could probably chalk up profiling of Arabs in America to a type of fear. I would call it self preservation. If Arabs are the ones who are blowing us up, who else should we profile? If you load the word “profiling” with racist intent you are missing the point. I see it as a viable security precaution, not racism. If I were a member of a widespread ethnicity, some of whose members took to blowing up the property and persons of another culture, I would expect to be checked out before entering that country. It’s just smart.
As I said, I am a bit insular. The US is not the biggest State and so even if the entire US decided to hate Arabs it would not make them the most hated. I retract my statement. I don’t think that there can be any kind of agreement on the “most hated” people.
Efrem: “Certain parts” was probably poor wording. “Certain peoples” would have better expressed my point. It’s not like the belief is limited to Africans; sex with a virgin was widely used as an STD cure in England for many years.