GRITtv: Alia Malek: Not So Foreign

After 9/11, most Americans' view of Arab-Americans changed--often for the worse. Alia Malek, author of "A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories," notes, though, that there were multiple shifts in American perception of Arab-Americans. "We keep seeing Arabs as only foreign but I wanted to place in the consciousness the idea of the Arab American," Malek tells us. Her book weaves together the narratives of Arab-Americans from a football player in Birmingham in 1948 to a Republican (yes, Republican) campaign volunteer in 2000, creating a picture of Arab America that is far outside the stereotype perpetrated during the Bush era.