WEBVTT

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"Has the crowd dispersed now?"

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"No, its still out there, but unarmed.

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Just chanting. You know, standard

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'Death to America' stuff."

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From True Lies to American Sniper,

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From 24 to

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,

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western media is full of images of

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evil brown people who need to be wiped

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from the earth by noble righteous white men,

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heroically fighting for freedom and justice.

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And sure, it's so commonplace by this point

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that maybe you don't even bat an eye at

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old-fashioned American Islamophobia

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in our media.

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"[laughter]

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[characters speaking in Arabic]

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[protestors chanting in Arabic]

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"This is a hijack!"

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[passengers screaming]

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"Sit down! Sit down!"

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"Nobody move! Nobody!"

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"All right!"

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"Engage hostile targets as they appear!"

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"Waste the motherfuckers!"

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"You have killed our women and our children.

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"Bombed our cities from afar...

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"like cowards...and you dare

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"to call us 'terrorists"?!"

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"Here, my desert blossom.

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"Keep the change!

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"Have you ever considered joining a harem?"

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"Oh my God. They found me.

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"I don't know how, but they found me."

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"Nooooooo!"

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What?! Back to the Future!!

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Even that beloved comedy classic

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takes a moment to toss in a few scary brown men

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to menace and terrorize our white heroes.

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Unfortunately, we can't hop in

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Doc Brown's DeLorean

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and undo all the harmful representations of

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Muslims, Arabs, and Middle Easterners

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that have haunted our stories since,

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well, basically since the Crusades.

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But we can make sure that history

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doesn't keep repeating itself.

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Ok, ok. Maybe that's not entirely fair.

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In some ways, things have changed.

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Once upon a time,

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non-white actors could hardly

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get any work in Hollywood at all.

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These days, shows like

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Homeland and movies like

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Executive Decision are providing some brown

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actors with ample opportunity to portray

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scary terrorists who get gunned down

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while screaming something absurd like

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"Death to America!"

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It doesn't even matter if you're not actually

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of Middle Eastern descent.

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If you're vaguely brown, you can stick around

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(to play bad guys).

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"Oh, are you an artist, Mr. Thurkettle?"

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"No, uh, sir. I work for a little company

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"called Texan Oil."

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"Well, there is no oil here, Mr Thurkettle."

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"Just sand."

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Now sure, not every Middle Eastern character

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in films is a villain.

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In the 1921 box-office smash,

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The Sheik,

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the dashing hero gets the girl in the end.

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But the Arab world of the film is presented as

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exotic and dangerous,

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and the sheik himself,

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the one, good, heroic Arab,

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is played by Italian-American heartthrob

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Rudolph Valentino.

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You see, since he's not really Arab,

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he's allowed to get the girl in the end.

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If you think this kind of racist coding

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to signify the difference between

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"good" Arabs and "bad" Arabs went away with the

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advent of talkies, think again.

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Have you ever noticed how in Disney's Aladdin,

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the good guy might as well be

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a tanned American surfer dude,

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but the bad guys look and sound a little more...

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uh, Arab?

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"You are late."

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"A thousand apologies, oh patient one."

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"You have it then?"

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"I had to slit a few throats,

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but I got it."

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While Hollywood has historically given

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"good" Arab roles to non-Arab actors,

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it has also given not-so-good Arab

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and South Asian roles to white actors, too --

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denying brown people work and decent

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on-screen representation in one fell swoop.

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It's basically the world's worst Catch-22.

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For example, take Mr. Habib,

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the scheming Middle Eastern villain in

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Father of the Bride 2,

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who's played by Eugene Levy.

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"The Habibs would like to buy the house, George."

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"It's exactly what they've been looking for!"

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"We've lived here for 18 years."

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"I don't know if we can get everything--"

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[gibberish]

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Those aren't even real words

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he's saying to his wife!

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It's just vaguely Middle-Eastern sounding gibberish

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And the written equivalent of this is

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very common as well.

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Video games and tv shows

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constantly just toss up some squiggly text

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and try to pass it off as actual Arabic.

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Well, this one is Arabic,

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but it sure doesn't say what the

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producers of Homeland wanted it to!

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As insidious as it is to flatten

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entire cultures and populations into

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The Land of Squiggly Writing,

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there's nothing so pervasive and damaging

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as Hollywood's tendency to constantly portray

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vaguely-Middle Eastern people

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as generic terrorists.

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It's so common that, on-screen,

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brown skin has practically become synonymous

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with bad guys who have little or no

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character development beyond

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hating America and freedom fries.

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[screaming]

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"Allahu Akbar!"

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Ah! Thanks, Jack Bauer!

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What would we do without you?

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One of the biggest problems with this

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is that it erases the actual lives and cultures

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of Middle Eastern people and leads

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many Western viewers to lump all of them

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into the same group.

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So let's start by clarifying a few terms

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whose meaning has been obscured by

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media that paints the entire Middle East

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with the same broad, shallow, ignorant brush.

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First of all, we've done a lot of research,

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on this, and as it turns out

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words actually have meanings.

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Weird, right?

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You can't just lump Arabs and Muslims together

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because they're not the same thing!

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Arabs are a specific ethnic group,

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united by culture and language,

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and who primarily originate from

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Middle Eastern countries.

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Arab is not, repeat not, a racial category.

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Got it?

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You can be white, black, brown

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and still be Arab.

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But not all people from the Middle East are Arab,

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and vice versa.

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Like, say, ethnic Persians in Iran.

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A "Muslim" is someone who practices Islam,

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a religion with over 1.7 billion members

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spanning a vast number of ethnic

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and cultural identities.

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The Muslim world actually comprises a multitude

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of groups that folks often forget, including

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Iranians, South Asians, North Africans,

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Indonesians, black Americans...

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Islam is not confined to the Middle East,

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to olive-skinned people,

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or just people who speak Arabic.

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But despite the fact that Islam is a religion,

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not a race,

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it's vital for us to understand that

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Islamophobia is racism.

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If you've been paying attention thus far,

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you might be asking yourself,

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if Islam isn't a race,

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then how can Islamophobia be racism?

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The answer lies in another "ism,"

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one many Westerners aren't

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particularly familar with: that's Orientalism.

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In short, the term "Orientalism" refers to how,

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for hundreds of years,

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Western artistic and academic history

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has perpetuated an ignorant and prejudiced

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view of "the East."

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A view rooted in the idea of Western culture as

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inherently more advanced and enlightened,

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and Eastern culture as more inherently more ignorant,

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irrational, primitive, and often,

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highly-sexualized.

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Again, Muslims come from many different races,

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and span a myriad of cultural identities.

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In fact, the former president

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of the Islamic Society of North America

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is a white woman, Dr. Ingrid Mattson;

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but let's be real:

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nobody who spreads the hate of Islam

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is talking about white ladies.

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Western media has contributed to a level

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of ignorance so great, that for many

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people, it has resulted in

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equating Islam with scary brown people,

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particularly scary brown men

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from the Middle East.

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It's been so effective,

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that most of you probably didn't even know

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that this man isn't Muslim -- he's Sikh!

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It isn't just film and television that

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perpetuates this kind of ignorance.

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Here's comedian Kumail Nanjiani

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on how video games often don't put in the

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absolute bare minimum of effort or research

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when representing the Middle East --

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or South Asia for that matter--

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which is not the same thing as

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the Middle East!

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"Ok, so the language we speak in Pakistan

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"is Urdu.

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"That's the name of the language we speak: Urdu.

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"But all the street signs in Karachi in

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"Call of Duty are in Arabic...

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"yeah, it's a completely different language.

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"And I know it does not seem like a big deal,

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"but this game took three years to make.

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"If you look at it, the graphics are perfect.

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"You can see individual hairs on people's heads;

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"when they run, they sweat.

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"When they run, their shoelaces bounce!

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"All they had to do was Google:

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"Pakistan language."

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"They were literally like,

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'What language do they speak in Pakistan?'

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'I don't care.

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"I can't get his sideburns even."

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Modern films, tv shows, and games

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definitely perpetuate Islamophobia,

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but it's no exxageration to say that

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ignorant representations of people

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from the Middle East in Western media

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date back for centuries.

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Orientalist paintings of the 1800s

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were often characterized by

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overly-sexualized depictions of daily life.

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And romantic Orientalist literature

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of the late 1700s and early 1800s

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served to justify European imperialism,

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presenting Middle Eastern people and cultures

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as inherently exotic and strange.

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So there's a conflation of Arab with Muslim,

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and because our ideas about Islam are so deeply

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linked to stereotypes about terrorism and violence,

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both of those categories are associated with masculinity

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and men.

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While many male Muslim actors in Hollywood

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can only find work playing bit parts as evil terrorists,

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Muslim women are often erased altogether.

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The very real advances that Arab women have made

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in many parts of the world are ignored,

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because depicting them would complicate

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the simplistic racist narrative about Arabs and Muslims

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that Hollywood continues trying to cash in on.

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It's almost as if we don't know how to contend with women

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as real people!

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"Say what?!!!"

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Filmmakers and tv producers know how to

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objectify women,

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how to prize them for their physical attributes,

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and their appearance.

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The stories we allow ourselves to tell about the Middle East

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dont allow for the same kind of easy objectification

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of these brown women's bodies,

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and so we resist including them at all.

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"Mom!"

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At least we can thank 24 again for casting the great

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Iranian actor, Shohreh Aghdashloo in season 4

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as a Muslim terrorist who is also a wife and mother!

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But there are artists, critics, and writers out there

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speaking about what it means to be the target

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of all this anti-brown racism;

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and a lot of the most interesting critiques

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are coming from Muslim women themselves.

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[Phone rings]

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Crap! I think I missed a call.

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I wonder if they left a message?

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Feminist Answering Machine!

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What's up, Anita???!

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It's your favorite feminist Muslim Iranian-American

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comedian calling!

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I was just thinking...

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how come, in all the like, terroristy movies,

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you know the ones where brown people are in,

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why are we always, like, late?

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To all of our, like, terroristy adventures.

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Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:11:29.950 --> 00:11:33.377
Like, they always have these brown dudes yelling,

00:11:33.377 --> 00:11:36.028
"Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!"

00:11:36.028 --> 00:11:38.363
"Yalla" just means "hurry up."

00:11:38.363 --> 00:11:39.636
It's like a thing you say when you want

00:11:39.636 --> 00:11:40.593
somebody to hurry up.

00:11:40.593 --> 00:11:41.733
"Yalla, let's go."

00:11:41.733 --> 00:11:44.943
"Yalla, kids! Hop in the car so we could go to school!"

00:11:44.943 --> 00:11:48.955
And get in on some wicked adventures

00:11:48.955 --> 00:11:51.733
against Claire Danes and Homeland.

00:11:51.733 --> 00:11:54.475
What is the deal with that?

00:11:55.005 --> 00:11:56.121
Yo, seriously!

00:11:56.121 --> 00:11:57.390
What is up with that?

00:11:57.390 --> 00:11:58.624
"Yalla" in my house just meant

00:11:58.624 --> 00:12:01.425
"hurry up because dinner's getting cold."

00:12:02.426 --> 00:12:04.456
There's tremendous harm in centuries of images

00:12:04.456 --> 00:12:06.745
that reduce entire nations, cultures, and religions

00:12:06.745 --> 00:12:08.971
to the status of sub-human savages.

00:12:08.971 --> 00:12:10.515
As Jack Shaheen, the author of

00:12:10.515 --> 00:12:11.985
Reel Bad Arabs has said,

00:12:11.985 --> 00:12:15.628
"Politics and Hollywood's images are linked.

00:12:15.628 --> 00:12:17.189
They reinforce one another.

00:12:17.189 --> 00:12:20.138
Policy enforces mythical images;

00:12:20.138 --> 00:12:23.815
mythical images help enforce policy.

00:12:23.815 --> 00:12:28.569
"We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones;

00:12:28.569 --> 00:12:31.348
and unite the civilized world against

00:12:31.348 --> 00:12:34.261
radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:34.261 --> 00:12:36.916
Recently, during the 2016 presidential campaign,

00:12:36.916 --> 00:12:39.067
Republican candidates tossed around the phrase

00:12:39.067 --> 00:12:41.614
"radical Islamic terrorism" as if it were

00:12:41.614 --> 00:12:43.449
some kind of magic spell they could use to

00:12:43.449 --> 00:12:45.299
make votes appear out of thin air.

00:12:45.299 --> 00:12:46.686
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:46.686 --> 00:12:48.271
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:48.271 --> 00:12:50.013
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:50.013 --> 00:12:52.539
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:52.539 --> 00:12:53.372
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:53.372 --> 00:12:59.337
"Radical Islamic terrorism."

00:12:59.377 --> 00:13:00.553
"President Obama, if you won't say it,

00:13:00.553 --> 00:13:02.294
I will: radical Islam."

00:13:02.294 --> 00:13:04.942
The only reason tactics like these have any effect

00:13:04.942 --> 00:13:06.814
is that, to so many Americans,

00:13:06.814 --> 00:13:08.923
people in the Middle East have never been established

00:13:08.923 --> 00:13:11.640
as human beings with real lives, hopes,

00:13:11.640 --> 00:13:13.449
dreams and struggles.

00:13:13.449 --> 00:13:15.555
When almost every story you've ever seen about

00:13:15.555 --> 00:13:18.106
a particular part of the world paints the people who live there

00:13:18.106 --> 00:13:20.636
as monolithic, evil, and scary,

00:13:20.636 --> 00:13:24.282
you're a lot more likely to believe that it's actually true.

00:13:24.282 --> 00:13:25.602
When people believe it's true,

00:13:25.602 --> 00:13:27.502
they aren't just more likely to support politicians

00:13:27.502 --> 00:13:29.589
and policies that appeal to fear and ignorance

00:13:29.589 --> 00:13:30.559
about the Middle East.

00:13:30.559 --> 00:13:32.276
They're also more likely to act on that

00:13:32.276 --> 00:13:34.093
fear and ignorance themselves.

00:13:34.093 --> 00:13:35.702
The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that

00:13:35.702 --> 00:13:37.354
the number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled

00:13:37.354 --> 00:13:40.112
in the United States in 2016.

00:13:40.112 --> 00:13:42.478
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Commitee noted

00:13:42.478 --> 00:13:45.499
the same increase after the release of patriotic fever dream,

00:13:45.499 --> 00:13:46.776
American Sniper.

00:13:46.776 --> 00:13:51.523
2016 also saw a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes,

00:13:51.523 --> 00:13:53.515
and there's no question that Trump's racist,

00:13:53.515 --> 00:13:55.849
fearmongering rhetoric has played a part in this

00:13:55.849 --> 00:13:58.126
surge of xenophobia and violence.

00:13:58.126 --> 00:13:59.707
Of course, Trump doesn't stop

00:13:59.707 --> 00:14:01.007
with rhetoric himself.

00:14:01.007 --> 00:14:03.121
Within the first 100 days of his presidency,

00:14:03.121 --> 00:14:04.988
he has repeatedly tried to push through bans

00:14:04.988 --> 00:14:06.389
preventing the citizens of several

00:14:06.389 --> 00:14:09.082
Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

00:14:09.082 --> 00:14:11.681
He dropped the US military's most powerful

00:14:11.681 --> 00:14:13.809
non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan,

00:14:13.809 --> 00:14:16.325
and he fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at,

00:14:16.325 --> 00:14:17.520
I don't know, SOME

00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:19.705
Middle Eastern country...while eating the most beautiful

00:14:19.705 --> 00:14:22.007
piece of chocolate cake.

00:14:22.007 --> 00:14:22.774
"I was sitting at the table,

00:14:22.774 --> 00:14:26.161
we had finished dinner and we're now having dessert

00:14:26.161 --> 00:14:29.185
and we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake

00:14:29.185 --> 00:14:32.197
that you've ever seen...and we've just launched

00:14:32.197 --> 00:14:35.162
59 missiles heading to Iraq.

00:14:35.672 --> 00:14:37.905
"...Headed to Syria."

00:14:38.175 --> 00:14:39.077
"Yes, heading toward Syria."

00:14:39.197 --> 00:14:42.259
[waaaaah-waaaah sound]

00:14:42.259 --> 00:14:44.542
Iraq, Syria: what's the difference?`

00:14:45.248 --> 00:14:46.450
It was just one of those countries

00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:50.207
that the evil, scary brown people live in.

00:14:50.207 --> 00:14:51.879
Now I can already hear the army of

00:14:51.879 --> 00:14:54.582
Richard Dawkins-parroting anti-feminist twitter users

00:14:54.582 --> 00:14:57.401
typing up their responses about how Islam is a religion

00:14:57.401 --> 00:14:58.987
dedicated to oppressing women.

00:14:58.987 --> 00:15:01.490
It's amazing how suddenly everyone's a feminist

00:15:01.490 --> 00:15:03.878
when it lets them perpetuate hate against brown people

00:15:03.878 --> 00:15:06.103
or dismiss concerns about how women are oppressed

00:15:06.103 --> 00:15:07.849
in their own culture.

00:15:07.849 --> 00:15:08.985
So let's be clear:

00:15:08.985 --> 00:15:11.017
misogyny is not a problem with Islam.

00:15:11.017 --> 00:15:13.249
Misogyny is a problem that some cultures,

00:15:13.249 --> 00:15:15.422
which happen to be Muslim, use the religion to

00:15:15.422 --> 00:15:17.513
perpetuate and justify.

00:15:17.513 --> 00:15:19.176
Christianity has been used as a tool to oppress

00:15:19.176 --> 00:15:20.678
women around the world for millenia.

00:15:20.678 --> 00:15:23.144
It's specifically because our media perpetually

00:15:23.144 --> 00:15:26.331
equates Islam, a religion followed by nearly a quarter

00:15:26.331 --> 00:15:27.754
of the world's population,

00:15:27.754 --> 00:15:30.459
with evil, terrorism, and oppression

00:15:30.459 --> 00:15:32.403
that so many people believe that that's what Islam

00:15:32.403 --> 00:15:34.295
actually is.

00:15:34.295 --> 00:15:35.432
Our entertainment media's insistence

00:15:35.432 --> 00:15:37.654
on constantly portraying people from the Middle East

00:15:37.654 --> 00:15:40.397
as scheming oil sheiks, slavers, snake charmers,

00:15:40.397 --> 00:15:43.064
and suicide bombers but never as real people

00:15:43.064 --> 00:15:45.246
has real consequences.

00:15:45.246 --> 00:15:47.397
Muslims here in the US and everyone who is,

00:15:47.397 --> 00:15:49.184
or looks like they could be Middle Eastern

00:15:49.184 --> 00:15:51.682
constantly face ignorance and racism.

00:15:51.682 --> 00:15:54.093
They live in fear of the very real possibility of being

00:15:54.093 --> 00:15:56.046
accosted or attacked because someone

00:15:56.046 --> 00:15:57.578
takes a look at them and associates them

00:15:57.578 --> 00:15:59.317
with everything they've seen in the movies

00:15:59.317 --> 00:16:01.147
and everything the president has said about

00:16:01.147 --> 00:16:02.987
people from the Middle East.

00:16:02.987 --> 00:16:04.525
What we need now are more stories

00:16:04.525 --> 00:16:06.988
that dispel the deeply harmful stereotypes

00:16:06.988 --> 00:16:08.897
and encourage us to see people from

00:16:08.897 --> 00:16:09.485
the Middle East --

00:16:09.485 --> 00:16:12.419
whether they're Arab, or Muslim, or neither or both

00:16:12.419 --> 00:16:15.791
as what they really are: human beings.