Arab-American Advertisement Analysis

Similar to television, advertisements have begun to attempt to combat the negative stereotyping that Arab Americans faced following the events of 9/11. It seems that a main theme that many advertisements attempt to address is the misrepresentation of Arab Americans as unpatriotic. The American media has created numerous advertisements with the sole purpose of changing other American's views on Arab Americans, but similarly to the television strategies these advertisements can in fact harm the Arab American community. In many advertisements, you can see an Arab American who is made to look like they are living the typical "American dream". Asultany* highlighted a specific commercial in particular where an Arab man was shown speaking about the

This advertisement was a part of a campaign called ** and was produced in response to discrimination and hate crimes against Arab Americans. The advertisement featured a "diverse" group of people who one-by-one said "I am an American" to the camera. There appears to be every race, age, gender, social class, etc. included within the advertisement, all in attempt to project the idea of a multicultural and inclusive America. By creating the image of a diverse America the hope was that viewers from all cultures would be able to identify with the advertisement and potentially feel compelled to say "I too am an American", taking on that role while imagining themselves in relation to the rest of the diverse America. Despite the advertisement being created in response to discrimination against Arab Americans, they were not specifically included within the diverse group of people. There were no visible indications of anyone Arab, Muslim or Sikh, for example; a veil, turban, Arab accent, traditional clothing etc. Although the intention of this advertisement was to promote diversity and inclusivity, the clear lack of Arab American representation has the opposite effect for Arab Americans but it allows other Americans to not even recognize Arab Americans as a part of their America. In order for America to be truly inclusive and for Arab Americans to be completely accepted by other Americans, the American media needs to show visual representations of Arab Americans so that the rest of America can begin to recognize them as Americans, same as all other citizens. If this representation doesn't begin to appear than other American will continue to treat Arab Americans as outsiders, which has very negative effects on Arab Americans'