Racial/Ethnic Identification and Impacts of Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination for Communities of Arab, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Descent

Although many believe that discrimination and racism against Arabs and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) communities started after the events of 9/11, prejudice and discrimination toward this group was documented as early as the 1900s. In psychology, this population is often overlooked in scholarship on racism and discrimination with communities of color. This omission is in part due to the mischaracterization of this pan‐ethnic group as White racially. This paper will present a history of the racialization of the Arab/MENA community in the United States followed by a discussion of the conflation of Muslim and Arab that complicates and sometimes obscures the ethnic minority experiences of this population. We will also explain the simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility that is common with this population. The current literature on prejudice and discrimination toward Arab/MENA Americans will be reviewed and the Cumulative Racial/Ethnic Trauma Model (CRET) will serve as a framework of the unique factors involved in the racism and discrimination experiences of this community. This paper will also provide recommendations for future research on racial/ethnic identity, prejudice and discrimination for the Arab/MENA community.