Ethnic group
Middle Eastern Americans are Americans of Middle Eastern background. Although once considered Asian Americans, the modern definition of "Asian American" now excludes people with West Asian backgrounds.[2]
According to the 2020 United States census, over 3.5 million people self-identified as being Middle Eastern and North African ethnic origin. However, this definition includes more than just the Middle East.[3]
History
One of the first large groups of immigration from the Middle East to the United States came by boat from the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s. Although US officials referred to them as Turkish, most referred to themselves as Syrian, and it is estimated that 85 percent of these Ottoman immigrants came from modern Lebanon. Later, new categories were created for Syrians and Lebanese.[4]: 4
The number of Armenians who migrated to the US from 1820 to 1898 is estimated to be around 4,000 and according to the Bureau of Immigration, 54,057 Armenians entered the US between 1899 and 1917, with the vast majority coming from the Ottoman Empire. The largest Armenian American communities at that time were located in New York City; Fresno; Worcester, Massachusetts; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Jersey City; Detroit; Los Angeles; Troy, New York; and Cleveland.
Another wave of immigration from the Middle East began in 1946, peaking after the 1960s. Since 1968, these immigrants have arrived from such countries as Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.[4]: 11
MENA census category
The US Census Bureau is still finalizing the ethnic classification of MENA populations for the 2030 US census. Middle Eastern Americans are currently counted as racially White on the census, although many do not identify as such. In 2012, prompted in part by post-9/11 discrimination, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee petitioned the Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency to designate the MENA populations as a minority/disadvantaged community.[8] Following consultations with MENA organizations, the US Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would establish a new MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab world, separate from the "white" classification that these populations had previously sought in 1909. The expert groups felt that the earlier "White" designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they successfully lobbied for a distinct categorization.[9][10] This process does not currently include ethnoreligious groups such as Sikhs, as the Bureau only tabulates these groups as followers of religions rather than members of ethnic groups.[11]
According to the Arab American Institute, countries of origin for Arab Americans include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. As of December 2015, the sampling strata for the new MENA category includes the Census Bureau's working classification of 19 MENA groups, as well as Armenian, Afghan, Iranian, Israeli, Azerbaijani, and Georgian groups.[12]
The new question on the US census will identify members of the MENA category to include:[13]
- "Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of the Middle East or North Africa, including, for example, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli."
Population
The population of Middle Eastern Americans includes both Arabs and non-Arabs. In their definitions of Middle Eastern Americans, United States Census Bureau and the National Health Interview Survey include peoples (diasporic or otherwise) from present-day Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Armenia.[36][37]
As of 2013, an estimated 1.02 million immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) lived in the United States, making up 2.5 percent of the country's 41.3 million immigrants.[38] Middle Eastern and North African immigrants have primarily settled in California (20%), Michigan (11%), and New York (10%). Data from the United States Census Bureau shows that from 2009 to 2013, the four counties with the most MENA immigrants were Los Angeles County, California; Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit), Cook County, Illinois (Chicago), and Kings County, New York (Brooklyn); these four counties collectively "accounted for about 19 percent of the total MENA immigrant population in the United States."[39]
By ethnicity
Although the United States census has recorded race and ethnicity since the first census in 1790, this information has been voluntary since the end of the Civil War (non-whites were counted differently from 1787 to 1868 for the purpose of determining congressional representation).[40] As such, these statistics do not include those who did not volunteer this optional information, and so the census underestimates the total populations of each ethnicity actually present.[41]
Although tabulated, "religious responses" were reported as a single total and not differentiated, despite totaling 1,089,597 in 2000.[42]
Independent organizations provide improved estimates of the total populations of races and ethnicities in the US using the raw data from the US census and other surveys.
According to a 2002 Zogby International survey, the majority of Arab Americans were Christian; the survey showed that 24% of Arab Americans were Muslim, 63% were Christian and 13% belonged to another religion or no religion.[43] Christian Arab Americans include Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants; Muslim Arab Americans primarily adhere to one of the two main Islamic denominations, Sunni and Shia.[43]
Notable people
- Rami Malek, Coptic Egyptian, Emmy Award and Academy Award - winning actor for Bohemian Rhapsody
- Mehmet Öz, Turkish, cardiothoracic surgeon, formerly host of The Dr. Oz Show
- Kim Kardashian, half Armenian, reality television star, socialite, model, businesswoman, producer, and actress
- Gigi Hadid, half-Palestinian, supermodel and TV personality
- Paul Anka, Lebanese, singer/songwriter
- Hoda Kotb, Egyptian, broadcast journalist and TV host on Dateline NBC and the Today Show
- Casey Kasem, Lebanese Druze, radio personality and voice actor, co-founder of American Top 40 franchise
- Jamie Farr, Lebanese, character actor
- Tony Shalhoub, Lebanese, three-time Emmy Award-winning television actor on Monk
- Shannon Elizabeth, Syrian-Lebanese, film actress (American Pie, Scary Movie)
- DJ Khaled, Palestinian, hip-hop DJ, rapper, music producer
- Haim Saban, Egypt-born Israeli American, television and media proprietor
- Peter Attia, Coptic Egyptian, physician known for his work in longevity medicine.
Academia
- Daron Acemoglu, economist, of Armenian descent
- Mohammed Salah Baouendi, was a Tunisian American mathematician. His research concerned partial differential equations and the theory of several complex variables
- Moungi Bawendi, is an American–Tunisian chemist. He is known for his advances in the chemical production of high-quality quantum dots. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023.
- Zohra Aziza Baccouche, was an American physicist and science filmmaker.
- Mounir Laroussi, is a Tunisian-American scientist. He is known for his work in plasma science.
- Huda Akil, Syrian American neuroscientist and medical researcher
- Adah al-Mutairi (Saudi Arabian), inventor and scholar in nanotechnology and nanomedicine
- M. Amin Arnaout, Lebanese American nephrologist and biologist
- Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor of political science at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (Palestinian)
- Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Lebanese)
- İlhan Aksay, professor, Princeton University[44]
- Elias J. Corey, organic chemistry professor at Harvard University, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[45] (Lebanese parents)
- Michael E. DeBakey, Lebanese American cardiovascular surgeon and researcher,[46] 1963 Lasker Award laureate
- Mostafa El-Sayed, Egyptian American US National Medal of Science laureate; leading nanoscience researcher; known for the spectroscopy rule named after him, the El-Sayed rule
- Farouk El-Baz Egyptian American space scientist who worked with NASA to assist in the planning of scientific exploration of the Moon
- Yasmine Belkaid, Algerian American immunologist, professor and a senior investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- Hunein Maassab, Syrian American professor of epidemiology and the inventor of the live attenuated influenza vaccine
- Joanne Chory, plant biologist and geneticist (Lebanese)
- Noureddine Melikechi, Algerian American Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physicist, member of the Mars Science Laboratory
- Michel T. Halbouty, Lebanese American geologist and geophysicist; pioneer in oil field research
- Essam Heggy, Egyptian American Planetary scientist
- Shadia Habbal, Syrian American astronomer and physicist specialized in Space physics
- Mohamed Atalla, engineer, inventor of MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), pioneer in silicon semiconductors and security systems, founder of Atalla Corporation[47]
- Charles Elachi, Lebanese American professor of electrical engineering and planetary science at Caltech and the former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Fawwaz T. Ulaby Syrian American professor of electrical engineering and computer science, former vice president of research for the University of Michigan; first Arab American winner of the IEEE Edison Medal
- Taher ElGamal, Egyptian American cryptographer, inventor of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and the ElGamal signature scheme
- Ali H. Nayfeh, Palestinian American mechanical engineer, the 2014 recipient of Benjamin Franklin Medal in mechanical engineering
- Dina Katabi, Syrian American professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and the director of the MIT Wireless Center.
- Abbas El Gamal, Egyptian American electrical engineer, educator and entrepreneur, the recipient of the 2012 Claude E. Shannon Award
- Oussama Khatib, roboticist and professor of computer science
- Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health (Algerian)
- Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah, Lebanese American technology innovator.[48][49] He received 43 patents covering his work. Among the patents were reported innovations in television transmission.
- Mohammad S. Obaidat (Jordanian), computer science/engineering academic and scholar
- Charbel Farhat, Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures; Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center; Chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University (Lebanese)
- Hany Farid, professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, pioneer in Digital forensics (Egyptian)
- Munther A. Dahleh, professor and director at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Palestinian)
- Ismail al-Faruqi, philosopher, professor (Palestinian)
- Fouad Ajami, professor of international relations (Lebanese)
- Saddeka Arebi, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley (Libyan)
- Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America[50] (Sudanese)
- Samih Farsoun, sociology professor at the American University[51] (Palestinian)
- Philip Khuri Hitti, historian of Arab culture and history (Lebanese)
- Philip S. Khoury, Ford International professor of history and associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Lebanese)
- Laura Nader, cultural anthropologist (Lebanese)
- Nada Shabout, art historian and professor of art history at University of North Texas (Palestinian-Iraqi)
- Nadia Abu El Haj, author and professor of anthropology at Barnard College and subject of a major tenure controversy case at Columbia University (Palestinian)
- Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, former director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University, father of Lila Abu-Lughod (Palestinian)
- Lila Abu-Lughod, professor of anthropology and women's and gender studies at Columbia University (Palestinian)
- Leila Farsakh, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (Palestinian)
- Samih Farsoun, professor of sociology at American University and editor of Arab Studies Quarterly (Palestinian)
- Nadia Hijab, Journalist with Middle East Magazine and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies (Palestinian)
- Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University (Palestinian-Lebanese)
- Farid Khavari, economist, specialist in economics, environment, oil, healthcare, & the Middle East.
- Joseph Massad, professor at Columbia University known for his work on nationalism and sexuality in the Arab world (Palestinian)
- Afshin Molavi, author and expert on global geo-political risk and geo-economics, particularly the Middle East and Asia.
- Hisham Sharabi professor emeritus of history and Umar al-Mukhtar Chair of Arab Culture at Georgetown University (Palestinian)
- Rosemarie Said Zahlan, historian, journalist, and author, sister of Edward Said (Palestinian-Lebanese)
- Steven Salaita, former professor of English at Virginia Tech, winner of Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights 2007 (Palestinian)
- Majid Khadduri, academic and founder of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Middle East Studies program (Iraqi)
- Thomas L. Saaty, Assyrian-Iraqi University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh
- Ella Shohat, professor, author and activist (Iraqi-Jewish)
- Saadi Simawe, translator, novelist and teacher (Iraqi)
- Aziz Sancar, biochemist and molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2015 (Turkish)
- Donny George Youkhanna, Iraqi archaeologist, anthropologist, author, curator, and scholar, and visiting professor at Stony Brook University in New York, internationally known as "the man who saved the Iraqi National Museum."
- Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, teaches religion, science, and freedom at the University of Maryland, College Park; directs the Minaret of Freedom Institute[52][53] (Palestinian)
- Muhsin Mahdi, Iraqi American