Posted on 08/19/2006 6:07:18 AM PDT by CobaltBlue
Arab Americans are as diverse as the national origins and immigration experiences that have shaped their ethnic identity in the United States, with religious affiliation being one of the most defining factors. The majority of Arab Americans descend from the first wave of mostly Christian immigrants. Sharing the faith tradition of the majority of Americans facilitated their acculturation into American society, as did high intermarriage rates with other Christian ethnic groups. Even though many Arab Christians have kept their Orthodox and Eastern Rite church (Greek Catholic, Maronite, Coptic) affiliations, which have helped to strengthen ethnic identification and certain rituals, their religious practices have not greatly distinguished them from the Euro-centric American culture. Roughly two-thirds of the Arab population identifies with one or more Christian sect.
(Excerpt) Read more at aaiusa.org ...
In the field of entertainment, Arab American stars have included the actor-comic Danny Thomas, actress Kathy Najimy, and Tony Shalhoub, singers Paul Anka and Paula Abdul, and Casey Kasem, “America’s Top 40” disc jockey. Sports icons include Doug Flutie and Jeff George of the National Football League. Such business giants as J.M. Haggar (the clothing manufacturer) and Paul Orfalea (founder of Kinko’s photocopy stores) are also among the many Arabs who have made their mark in America.
Good. They still need to be profiled if not just shipped out. This is war, best to err on the side of our safety.
Right On Target!
Omitting the hyphen (re Arab Americans) doesn't mean sh!t!
Islam Is Our Enemy!
I knew it was only a matter of moments before you started getting a bunch of idiotic posts. Yeah, we'll be a lot safer once Marlo Thomas is "shipped out."
I'm really not against profiling at airports, etc. But a good "profile" would never simply be "stop everyone who looks like an Arab."
And one more thing: to all those fringe people bent on rounding up innocent American Arabs or American Muslims--I, and I think most of the real freedom loving Americans, will never allow you to do it.
This is absolutely correct. You can't tell a Muslim by looking at him, nor can you tell one by the name (unless he's named Mohammed).
After we exclude all the men named Mohammed, are we safe?
Theodore Roosevelt Advocates Americanism, 1915
... There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.
Americanization
The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population - no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is to not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.
We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?
One America
All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.
From Philip Davis (ed.), Immigration and Americanization (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1920)
Back to Proud to be an American
"History doesn't repeat itself - but it rhymes."
- Mark Twain
Not without a fight, at any rate. I guess it depends on whether there's more people who believe in freedom, or more people who believe that they can tell terrorists just by the size of their nose and the color of their skin.
So let's abolish celebrating St. Patrick's Day? No more "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" pins?
Freedom Loving Americans???
You mean The Enemy Within--just spit out, don't dance around truth!
You might want to take a look at this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1685952/posts?q=1&&page=1
There are 1.8 million muslims living in America, spread out over all of America. They function as trojan horses, or are terrorists in training.
Coptic churches number 40 in all of North America which would indicate that a figure of somewhat under 100,000 would be practicing Coptic Christians.
Racial profiling is a workable method of ferreting out the muslims, all of whom are potential terrorists. After closer examination the Coptic Christians could be weeded out from the ranks of the evil ones.
It's still a free country, and I hope it always will be.
Thus, we are free to disagree.
Just profiling??Every arab in America should be thankful we did not do to them what we did to Japaneese after Pearl Harbor--they were rounded up,their property seized and then placed in internment camps till either the war was over or their backgrounds checked. No these Arabs should either support this their adopted country(they came here we did not drag them)or get the hell out!!!!!
Good for you. Dearborn's quite a long way from me, Fairfax, VA. I have Christian Arab-American neighbors, originally from Egypt. Very nice people.
But I don't want to imply that I think non-Christian Arabs are automatically bad people, either.
I don't. I think it's irrational to condemn entire groups of people on the basis of the few.
Unfortunately, irrationality is impossible to refute with logic.
Lynch mob mentality.
BTW -- what do you mean by "these Arabs should support their adopted country"? What makes you think they don't?
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