A Penchant for the Pejorative

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

One of the things I enjoy most in my free time is browsing through book stacks at the library. You just never know when you will find a book that immediately piques your interest. The American Civil War historian James McPherson likes to conduct research in libraries because of the serendipitous qualities combing through old books provide.

Today I was looking through some stacks and I came across a book called "Crossing Cultures" and I opened it to an essay by Jack Shaheen titled "The Media's Image of Arabs," which appeared in the February 1988 issue of Newsweek magazine.

In it, Shaheen points out something that made me shake my head in disappointment. He writes,"In his memoirs, Terrel Bell, Ronald Reagan's First Secretary of Education, writes about 'an apparent bias among mid-level, right-wing staffers at the White House,' who dismissed Arabs as 'sand niggers.'

It seems that this term first surfaced in the American collective memory years ago and now is solidly entrenched within the psyche of the American landscape. This is a vile term that has yet to draw the same charge as the 'n-word' does. Anti-Muslims these days cannot even claim to be original. How sad.

Related articles

• Redefining Muslim Roles on Film (newsweek.com)