Guest Speaker Helen Samhan~Courtney Reid

I thought that our last speaker was amazing! Mrs. Helen Samhan talked to our class about the Arab culture and how we receive a distorted view of what actually is the truth. She also gave us a brief timeline of how Arab families that immigrated to the United States worked to earn money and the laws that were passed by our government [United States] to prevent so a large population of Arab families coming over to would create our country to be an Arab nation.
In 1924, she talked to us about the National Origins Act which meant that only approximately 2 percent of the Western Europe were allowed to enter into the United States. This was called Xenophobia because they were afraid that the cultures from Europe would influence America and make the country seem European itself. This ignorance was soon changed in the 1960s when the New Act (also known as the Country Origin Act) which states that anyone can immigrate over to this country if he or she has family members are proof that they can support themselves while they are over here. Also during this time, institutions for Arabs in many different cultures were being established because of how people were being accustomed to the fact of people immigrating to the country [United States]. However, after September 11, this began to change.
People from the Arab culture would become scrutinized because of their culture by being called a “terrorist or kamikazes.” Even when Arabic institutions want to be started in, our nation people become angry and feel as if the institution wants to promote more suicide bombers. The morale of the men that were from this particular culture did not feel as proud to be of Arabic descent anymore because of the stereotype that was being placed upon them. The women that are of Middle Eastern descent continue to express their love and devotion to their culture because they were not getting such a harsh stereotype as the men because of the attack on the twin towers. However, our media tries to portray that Arab women are being held captive in their homes cooking and cleaning all day. That is actually not the case at all, 63 percent of women that are reside in Arab countries have their bachelor’s degree. Women in Iraq held the most positions in the workforce than any other Arab country! That is not the perspective we see because we want to portray how nothing is or any better than our country and we will continue to do so. We need to open our eyes and understand that there are other countries besides our own, which are able to progress and move forward in the sexism gap than we are. Even though, we “claim” to be more liberating and advanced country.