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US Census Reports on Arab Americans for the First Time

By Haya El Nasser
USA Today
Posted on Friday November 21, 2003

The Grove Park neighborhood of this rambling city is better known for ranch homes and lush foliage than ethnic flavor. But Grove Park has become an enclave for Arab-Americans.

At least three Arab-American families live on every block. Most parishioners at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church a few miles away are Arabs. Nearby, young Arabs play hoops at a Palestinian community center. In a smoky room inside, old men play rummy. Some speak mostly Arabic. Some pepper their southern twang with Arabic phrases. Others never learned a word of Arabic.

Jacksonville’s former mayor is Lebanese-American. Doctors, lawyers and business owners named Bateh, Rukab, Ossi, Soud, Demetree and Bajalia have Palestinian, Syrian or Iraqi ancestry.

They’re part of the USA’s diverse mix of Arabs, a tiny but fast-growing population that will be reported on for the first time by the Census Bureau. The first of two reports on Arabs in the USA is to be released next month. But the information it analyzes has been public for more than a year.

It shows that Arabs numbered 1.2 million in 2000, up 38% since 1990 and double the number in 1980, when the Census began tracking ancestry. The overall U.S. population grew 13% in the 1990s to 281.4 million. Despite their rapid growth, Arabs still make up less than half of 1% of the population.

About half live in five states: California, New York, Michigan, Florida and New Jersey. The Census counts all U.S. residents who claim Arab ancestry, including those who are not American citizens.

Normally, a Census report on such a small ethnic group would be a victory in the battle for pride and recognition. Arab-Americans had lobbied the Census Bureau before the 2000 population count for recognition as a distinct group.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Since that day, when 19 Arab Muslim men launched suicide missions that killed almost 3,000 people on U.S. soil, Arab-Americans have gotten more attention than they wished. Fifteen of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, one from Egypt, one from Lebanon and two from the United Arab Emirates.

The attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., had chilling effects on many Arab-Americans. Today, FBI agents scour neighborhoods to interview residents of Middle Eastern descent. Donations to Muslim charities are scrutinized. Arabs in the country illegally have been detained and deported. Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, which broadened the government’s use of electronic and physical surveillance to investigate terrorism. Travelers who have Arab surnames often are subjected to more intensive searches than other passengers at airports, a practice some have dubbed TWA (Traveling While Arab).

In this post-9/11 climate, the upcoming Census report will be greeted by some Arab-Americans with suspicion.

“It’s kind of like profiling,” says Altaf Ali, director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which reported a 15% increase across the nation last year in incidents of violence, discrimination and harassment against Muslims. “If it was being done at any other time, I would say, hey, this could be very beneficial to us.”Arab-Americans come from more than 30 countries whose political, cultural and historical legacies vary widely. The Census classifies anyone who reports ancestry in an Arabic-speaking country as Arab.

The Census shows that:

• More than a third claim Lebanese ancestry. Syrians and Egyptians each account for about 12%.

• Many Arabs claim mixed ancestries. There are Arab-Irish Americans, Arab-Italian Americans and Arab-German Americans.

• About 80% of Arabs are white; 17% say they’re white and another race.

• Arabs are concentrated in suburbs of metropolitan areas: Jersey City; Arlington, Va.; and Burbank, Calif.

Religion not tracked

The Census report doesn’t track religion. Many Americans assume that Muslim means Arab, but surveys show that Arabs make up less than 25% of the Muslim population in the USA. Most Arabs in this country are Christian.

Long before 9/11, some activists wanted a separate “Arab” category added to Census forms. The only ethnic group that has that distinction is Hispanic. The Census Bureau compromised. It provided translators and forms in Arabic to reach out to Arabs when the Census was taken in 2000. It eventually agreed to publish a report.

The decision shows the growing political clout of Arab-Americans, a segment that is better educated and more affluent than the U.S. population as a whole.

Another sign of that influence: Seven Democratic presidential candidates addressed a national leadership conference last month in Dearborn, Mich., either in person or by speakerphone. It was sponsored by the Arab American Institute, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Speaking on behalf of the Bush administration were Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, an Arab-American, and Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.
Four years ago, only two candidates accepted invitations to address the gathering, although Arab-Americans make up 4% of registered voters in Michigan, a battleground state.

“Anything that moves hundreds or small thousands of voters one way or another in key states can determine the victor in the presidency and the majority in Congress,” says John Zogby, a prominent political pollster who’s Arab-American.

Some advocacy groups complain that the Census count of Arabs falls short by at least 2 million. But even critics say that the report could bring positive recognition.

“The only story really about Arab-Americans has been this question of the terrorists amongst us,” says Helen Samhan, executive director of the educational foundation of the Arab American Institute. “We must do everything that we can to counter with the truth. I think the Census profile can be a tool. ...We can really put a face on those numbers and humanize the experience of our community.”

The descendants of Arabs who began settling here more than 100 years ago find the Census count for Jacksonville laughable.

“They say 5,800? That’s just one family,” says Jim Bajalia, a Palestinian-American who runs a liquidation business. He’s half-joking. Many of the Palestinians here are related. They trace their roots to Ramallah, Palestine.

Settled in Jacksonville

Palestinians and Lebanese immigrants are established in Jacksonville, a city of 735,000. Thomas Hazouri, a former mayor and state legislator, is Lebanese-American. The personal injury lawyer whose face adorns billboards is Eddie Farah, a Palestinian-American. Local resident David Bateh, is the deputy president of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, which represents 30,000 Christian Palestinians in the USA.

Bateh’s father came to the USA in the 1930s and sold household products door-to-door in Detroit, Houston and Jacksonville.

“He ended up in the South because he liked the climate,” says Bateh, 56, who runs a pharmacy with his brother, Johnny, and his uncle, Issa.

The city’s Christian Arab community keeps a subtle distance from the smaller Muslim Arab community, many of whom are more recent immigrants.

Palestinian Shakib Shaban, 32, has a foot in both worlds. His father is Muslim, his mother Christian. He came to the USA four years ago to enjoy “the freedom we dream about.”

He manages the Casbah Cafe, a Middle Eastern restaurant in the upscale Avondale neighborhood. The owner is Jason Bajalia, the son of Palestinian immigrants.

Arabs and non-Arabs, families and young singles flock to the trendy Casbah for Arabic food and after-dinner drags on a hookah, a Middle Eastern water pipe. The pungent smoke from the mixture of tobacco, molasses, fruit and honey fills the cafe.
Shaban says the terrorist attacks cast suspicion on all Arabs, but more so on Muslims. That’s why many Arab Christians emphasize their religion, he says.

Muslims may feel more vulnerable to persecution since Sept. 11 because of their religion or the way they dress.

“But those who have been here longer, who feel less jeopardized” are speaking out on rights issues, Samhan says. Arab-American business leaders are forming political action committees and monitoring the treatment of Arabs by the media, businesses and public agencies.

In Jacksonville, Palestinians are renewing ties to community groups their parents founded. They’re encouraging young Arabs who may feel more American than Arab to attend picnics and meetings. They know that as more of their children marry non-Arabs, their ethnic identity could fade.

“I want them to see my heritage,” David Bateh says.

“We’re ambitious to start telling people who we are. We have to for self-preservation. After 9/11, we feel that we have to educate. ... We are not responsible for 9/11.”

Contributing: Paul Overberg