I wanted to find an article this week that really spoke to the stereotypes that minority groups still face today. One group that has faced harsh and unfair stereotypes since 9/11 is the Muslim population in America. The belief that any and every Muslim you see is a terrorist is a fear that many people still have in our country, and it is one that has severely impacted the lives of many innocent Muslims.

The article I found this week was from the L.A. Times from April 10, 2023. It was about how police were searching for a man that vandalized a mosque in Koreatown. They said he defaced the mosque with anti-Muslim hate words. He was not in custody yet, but was wanted for felony vandalism.

The article goes on to discuss how hate crimes are such a prevalent problem in Los Angeles still, particularly among the Muslim population. It talks about how hate crimes in general have slightly decreased overall, but the Muslim population was one of the groups where they rose. They talked about how it was a hopeful statistic for some, but there is still plenty of work to be done.

This article relates back to this course because a population of people who don’t get the attention they deserve when it comes to social justice is the Muslim American population. We as communicators cannot forget this population. There are harmful stereotypes all over the media when it comes to the Muslim population. Every crime show has Muslim terrorists as the villains. The news portrays Muslims as dangerous in the media, constantly highlighting the groups like ISIS that are the outliers of the population. There are little to no television shows or movies that have a Muslim family or even a character as the main protagonist. Women in hijabs can never speak English and are typically very traditional. Not all of this is true in real life. We need to change that narrative, and normalize Muslim Americans in our media culture. This population still stands apart from feeling like they are part of America, mainly because most Americans still view them as foreign and other. Until we can change that narrative in the media, these real-world hate crimes will continue. It is an integral part of our job as communicators to bridge that gap and market to this population just as we do to other marginalized groups in America.