American national identity was partly forged through media portrayals of foreign Arabs

Evidence

As the United States began its geopolitical ascendancy, representations of the “foreign” contributed to the making of American national identity; the projection of erotic and exotic fantasies onto the Middle East began to shift to more ominous representations of violence and terrorism. Representations of Arabs as terrorists emerged 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. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 72

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: National Geographic travel journalism was the leading channel imparting anti-Arab racism — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 216; American Orientalism couples inherited European alienness claims with produced Arab stereotypes. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 204; National Geographic and Hollywood were prime twentieth-century vehicles of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 216