ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the entangled US media representations of all three groups—Arabs, Muslims, and Arab Americans—noting the history of these representations, their various manifestations in current popular culture, and their enduring, harmful effects. In reality, of course, Arab and Muslim “looks” span the racial spectrum and cannot be reduced to one “type.” Television dramas participate in the construction of a phenotype and the fiction of an Arab or Muslim “race” and hence the notion that Arabs and Muslims can be racially profiled. Representations of Arabs/Muslims as terrorists emerge with the inauguration of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arab-Israeli war and subsequent Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, and the formation of Palestinian resistance movements. Arab-American actors, such as Wendy Malik, Kathy Najimy, F. Murray Abraham, and Tony Shalhoub, appear on television and film, but rarely in roles as Arab Americans.
