New Perspective

Yesterday in class we had our small group discussions about the book Habibi and I was able to walk away with a new perspective on the book. This section of the course about Arab-Americans is something I struggle to personally relate to. When I read Habibi I saw a somewhat unrealistic story about a girl who was up-rooted from her "home" and moved into a completely different culture. While discussing this with my group, Mallory brought to my attention a different part of the book that I had completely overlooked. To her, this book spun a negative light on the Jewish people and yet left the Arabs in a positive light. While I am neither Jewish or Arab, I read through the part of Habibi discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without a second look. I was really grateful to see this book through someone else's eyes, especially from someone that related to this book more than I had. I'm glad that there is a purpose for our small group discussions!

On another note, during class yesterday when we were watching the two videos I began thinking about the movie Crash. For those of you that have not seen it, Crash is a movie that intertwines several different stories into one (with a diverse cast). It blatantly uses racial stereotypes in order to bring forward the type of things we assume about others. At one point in the movie an older man's store gets robbed and defaced with things about Arabs. The man then says "they think we're Arab. When did Persian become Arab?" This movie really changed my outlook on the tendency to group people together and stereotype them. This movie will definitely get you thinking about how easy and common it is to stereotype someone without knowing a lick about them. Like I said, I highly suggest watching this movie if you have never seen it. Hopefully it will give you a new outlook like it did for me.