Minority representation on prime time television is currently a topic of great interest. The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium recently released a study arguing that there is "a dearth of quality roles for [Asian Pacific Americans] in prime time programming" (previous post here).

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) is also featuring a story on Lost, the hit ABC show which features an Iraqi character, Sayid (played by Naveen Andrews of English Patient, Kama Sutra, and Bride & Prejudice fame). The article offers interesting insight into how Lost developed Sayid. Damon Lindelof, creator and executive producer, explains:

We thought it would be compelling to make American audiences bond with an Arab character by virtue of not writing him as an Arab but as a human

The fact that he’s also Iraqi was never meant to define him, it was simply a way of making audiences potentially question their own ethnic/religious stereotypes as they (hopefully) fall in love with Sayid as much as we did.

Film critic Jack Shaheen also offered his thoughts on Hollywood's general treatment of Arab characters. He noted, "there are gobs of TV shows that stereotype Arabs in a negative light. Gobs and gobs of them."