Ahab the Arab?

If you think you can spot an Arab like a cheap toupee, don't be so sure. In The Washington Post, Richard Morin reports on a study that suggests Americans are pretty rotten at identifying folks from the Middle East:

In tests conducted on the campuses of USC and UCLA in Los Angeles, nearly 100 study participants were shown a series of photos of young people and asked to guess their race or national origin. The images were selected to be a representative sampling of facial types of Asians, blacks, Caucasians, Latinos and people of Middle Eastern descent.

These students were able to correctly identify the ethnicity of Arab Americans only about 27 percent of the time.

Whole thing here.