Arab Americans

By 1945, most of the camps were closed. In the 1980s, the US government admitted that its wartime action had violated the internees’ civil liberties, and compensated them. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 provided a presidential letter of apology and monetary reparations for more than 82,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who had been interned without due process of law during World War II.83

Japanese Americans reconstituted their communities within the larger American society in the 1950s. Participation in postsecondary and professional education increased as nearly 90 percent of Japanese Americans were attending institutions of higher education.84

Other Asian Americans After the 1960s, immigration increased among other Asian groups, especially Koreans and Indians. Following the collapse of the American-supported government in South Vietnam in the 1970s, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong arrived with differing educational backgrounds. For example, among the South Vietnamese were former military officers, government officials, businesspersons, and professionals. The Hmong, by contrast, came from a rural culture without a written language. Along with the more recent Asian American immigrants, there is also an older, well-established Filipino American population.

5-6f arab americans

The designation “Arab,” a cultural and linguistic rather than a racial term, refers to those who speak Arabic as their first language. The majority of Arab Americans are descendants of immigrants from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt and are Muslims. There is also a large Christian Arab American community.

The early Arab immigrants came to the United States from the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century, especially between 1875 and 1915.85 Many early immigrants from Lebanon and Syria were Orthodox or Catholic Christians who settled in ethnic neighborhoods in the northeastern states. Some became small business owners, merchants, and restaurateurs. Like other immigrant groups, they established fraternal organizations and recreational societies such as the Syrian Brotherhood Orthodox Society, often sponsored by a church or mosque.86 One of the earliest Arabic newspapers, Kawkab America (trans. The Star of America), was founded in 1892.87

A more recent wave of Arab immigration, especially from Palestine, Egypt, and Jordan, which began after World War II, still continues.88 More recent immigrants are predominately Islamic and generally have more formal education than earlier immigrants.

Arab Americans have much in common with other immigrant groups. Many older Arab Americans became assimilated by attending public schools, through membership in community and political organizations, and through business and work. While assimilating into the larger American society, many maintained their Arabic culture through language, customs, religion, music, literature, and storytelling.89 Many

83Spickard, Japanese Americans, pp. 132–133. Also, see Minoru Kiyota and Ronald S. Green, The Case of Japanese Americans during World War II: Suppression of Civil Liberty (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 2004); and Kenneth K. Takemoto, Nisei Memories: My Parents’ Talk about the War Years (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). 84Allan W. Austin, From Concentration Camps to Campus: Japanese American Students and World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 85Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2006). 86For the Arab American experience, see Amir B. Maruasti and Karen D. McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004); and Randa A. Kayyali, The Arab American (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006). 87Elizabeth Boosahda, Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), pp. 84–86. 88For the Palestinian experience and the forming of Arab American identity, see Edward Said, Out of Place (New York: Knopf, 1999). 89Boosahda, Arab-American Faces and Voices, p. 9.