Final paper - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Therefore, in this paper, I will be discussing institutional racism based on stereotypes and how it has come to affect Middle Easterners. I will attempt to make a comparison between past and present treatment of students of Middle Eastern origin in the United States as well as show different places where this type of discrimination might take place. Furthermore, I will discuss how stereotypes of these individuals often affect these individuals in both their public and personal lives based on my own experiences.
In the United States, institutional racism has become a part of everyday life for many individuals especially from the Middle East or for those Americans who have origins in this region. In my experience as a student of Middle Eastern origin, institutional racism enforces stereotypes of people from this region without necessarily taking into account their individual differences. I have been faced with many problems during my stay in the United States and this has been based on beliefs by ordinary Americans that because of the way I look, I am a threat to them. There was an instance where after going into a restaurant to get something to eat, I was viewed suspiciously by not only its staff, but the customers as well. Many of these customers actually moved away from the table that I took and despite waiting for a long time, no one seemed to be willing to come to my service. This was within my first few days in the United States and my dreams of this country being a bastion of liberalism were shattered as I came to realize that the stereotype of Arabs as terrorists had become firmly entrenched in American viewpoint (Oswald 1775). I later came to experience open discrimination at the University of Arizona when attending classes, and this became a trend because whenever I entered a classroom, and took a seat, the students who had been sitting all around me would move away from me and take other seats. Only those who did not seem to have a problem with me or my ...Download file to see next pagesRead More