I am a Syrian American Christian, which many Americans ...



I am a Syrian American Christian, which many Americans find somewhat unusual. Many Americans automatically think that anyone of Arab race is a Muslim, but in fact, Christianity in Syria has a long and noble tradition dating back to Biblical times.

While there were undoubtedly a few Syrian Christians who arrived on the shores of the United States prior to the latter half of the nineteenth Century, the first main wave of Syrian immigration began in the 1880’s. It is very difficult to be definitive about where these earlier immigrants came from, because until 1920, Syria comprised not only the country we know as Syria today, but also Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, the whole being referred to as “Greater Syria”.

The problems of the historian of Syrian immigration to the United States id further compounded by the fact that for four hundred years, Syria was under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and many immigrants were simply registered on arrival as ‘Syrian Turks’.

While much of the immigration was motivated by poverty and a desire to share in the almost fabulous wealth of America, a significant proportion of immigrants came to escape religious persecution within the Ottoman state.

In terms of sheer numbers, immigrants from the Middle East were few compared with those who came from Western Europe. Immigration continued at a steady pace until in 1924, Congress passed the Immigration Act, which laid down strict quotas for immigrants, constraints which remained in place until the passing of a new Immigration Act in 1925.

Syrian Christian movement into the US could hardly be described as colonization – it was slow and small scale, and the first immigrants tended to concentrate on the Eastern seaboard, in New York and Boston.

Many of these new Americans had few skills, and little grasp of the language.

What they did have was hundreds, even thousands of years of heritage as merchants and small traders. Small individual traders had been the economic lifeblood of the Middle East for as long as history records.

They wasted little time in putting these skills to use, and most of them began to earn their living as peddlers, mainly in the clothing industry The job required no great language skills, and an absolute minimum of investment.

Many of these early immigrants became quite successful, amassing reasonable abounts of capital. Indeed, by 1908, there were around 3000 Syrian-American owned business in the country.

As with most immigrants, these people had to deal with a certain amount of xenophobia, partly because of their skin color, and partly because many of them adhered to there traditional style of dress, at least at first.

Notably, it was claimed at one stage that Syrians should have no right to become naturalized because “they were Asians, and did not belong to the white race”.

People of Syrian Christian origin have, however, not been particularly discriminated against as compared with other ethnic groups such as Mexicans, Haitians. The fact is, that compared with most immigrants, the have fared substantially better than the average.

In sensitive areas such as redlining (the practice of demographically identifying and isolating specific groups such as poor white or Black Americans for inferior treatment, or of institutionalized discrimination, Syarian Americans have hardly suffered at all. This is probably because they are relatively small in number, and do not tend to have particularly identifiable areas of residence in the larger conurbations.

Insofar as affirmative action is concerned, Syrian Arabs (as a subset of American Arabs) have benefited considerably from affirmative action. Some Universities (Wayne Stae and Michigan Dearborn, for example) set out specifically to attract Arab American students, and there are several grant and scholarship progams available specifically for that group.

Dual labor market problems do not, by and large feature hugely in the Syrian American population, partly because Syrian Americans tend to be either self-employed or to be employed in management or in the professions (42% for Syrian Arabs as opposed to 34% for all Americans), and earn 20% than the average American. There may have been some issue within the small Syrian Arab populations employed in agriculture in California, but not for the SAA population in general.

The fact is that Syrian Americans as a group, do not appear to be singled out as a group to be treated adversely in relation to the rest of the population.

The commercial and professional success of SAA individuals across an extremely broad spectrum of employment, taken together with their much higher than average level of educational attainment seems to suggest that glass ceilings are no barrier, and ther is little evidence to suggest on the other hand that glass elevators are easily available for this group.

However, on the basis that many books are judged by their cover, like it or not, they are liable to suffer some forms of discrimination and suspicion within the community at large, given the country’s current concern with homeland security. It is quite sufficient, post 9/11, to look Arab and therefore attract an undue degree of suspicion. There is no easy way out of this, and many Arab Americans will simply have to live with it until there are better times.

For myself – I am an American. I identify readily with American mainstream culture – perhaps because my religious views make it easier than if I was an Arab Muslim. Nevertheless, I am fascinated – and proud – of the people and the culture from whence my forefathers came. I count myself fortunate to be able to enjoy those two aspects of my being.

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