Category talk:Egyptian Americans

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[edit] Arab American

I don't think that Category:Arab Americans is appropriate as many Egyptians--those who do not consider themselves 'Arab' American--would regard this as POV. Arabism has always been a question for Egyptians, so it seems Category:Egyptian American suffices — Zerida 17:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

There are always certain people who will not agree with associating them with a group or ethnicity. Some Lebanese Americans or Palestinian Americans could have the same opinion. Nontheless, most Americans believe Egyptian Americans are of Arab descent because Egypt is an Arab country. If you are referring to Arab as a descendent of one of the original Arab tribes, then only very few people who live in the Arabian Penninsula can be defined as such. I think it is appropriate to leave the category Arab Americans in this until a decision is reached. - Eagletalk 02:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, this category existed for months without the Arab American category, until someone took it upon themselves to add it. At any rate, if "certain people" as you say do not wish to be forced to accept something they do not identify with, it is the more reason that they should not be subjected to it and instead find common ground on which all people agree. Egyptian Americans agree they are Egyptian. However, Egyptians in general are entirely divided on the Arab identity issue and have been so for the last century. The issue is not simply that Egyptian Americans are not descended from Arabs; that's a given. Identification with Arabism is political, and lots of Egyptians and Egyptian Americans do not agree with it. It's very subsuming and superimposes itself on Egyptian identity to the point where Egyptians are simply written off!
Third, I disagree that "most" Americans believe Egyptian Americans are of "Arab descent." I find that Americans generally tend to know little about modern Egyptians, let alone Egyptian Americans. The US government on the other hand lumps Egyptians with all North Africans and Middle Easterners as "Caucasian/White" which is even more ridiculous for the Egyptians in particular, most of whom most assuredly would not consider themselves or be regarded by others as such.
Now, as far as the examples you used, I am totally mystified as to who those Palestinians who do not identify with Arabism are?! That's the first time I've heard this. Palestinian identity/nationalism is inextricably linked with Arabism. You almost cannot separate the two. That's also what I've heard from them. I'd be interested to know more about that though. At any rate, in Egypt, it is the opposite--ethnic Egyptian identity has always competed with and questioned the Egyptians' affiliation with Arabism.
The Lebanese example, too, doesn't really apply because the Egyptians' lack of identification with Arabism is not based on fringe Christian separatism. This is something that many Egyptian Muslims and Christians whether in the US or Egypt equally believe, and it's more about emphasizing their Egyptian identity than crass hostility to affiliation with Arabism. So it's not necessarily about "certain people" who don't want to be associated with an ethnicity. Finally, in Egypt, it's a nationally recognized movement — Zerida 05:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been asked to provide a third opinion, so here it is. I think the question is basically "are Egyptians Arab?", and according to Egypt they are. Therefore it is appropriate to have this as a sub-category of Arab Americans. The Arab American category describes itself as Arab Americans are Americans who are of ethnic Middle eastern descent. If you accept Egyptians are Middle eastern, shouldn't the Egyptian American category be linked to from that one?

Please also note that the length of time an edit has stood for, or the original state of a page does not indicate the 'correct' version. Petros471 16:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the third opinion; however, I disagree for these reasons:
  • The government of Egypt unfortunately is not democratically elected, so it's not necessarily representative. However, I agree it's appropriate to list Egypt-based articles under a similar category, which they already are. Given that Egypt for the last 50 years has been identified as part of the Arab world, I would not dispute those articles. Notice however how Egyptians as a people are described on Arab-Net, which is just one small example of how the matter is disputed [1]
  • If category Arab American simply describes people of Middle Eastern descent then it would also include Iranians, Kurds and many other peoples, but it doesn't. Now, Egyptians actually debate whether they are Middle Eastern vs. North/Northeast Africans; many Egyptian Americans have been known to list themselves as "African American" as a result, even though this too is not an appropriate category. But if there were a category like Middle-Eastern American (and there is Asian American) it would be an acceptable compromise as it would be more encompassing and not so politically motivated like "Arab American" surely is. — Zerida 22:26, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply Zerida, and a willingness to discuss the issue. You do make some good arguments there, and Middle-Eastern American does sound like a more neutral geographical term rather than political. I'll give Eagle another message, asking for his reply. Hopefully agreement can be reached soon to allow page protection to be lifted :) Petros471 12:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
  • In the Arab American aritcle, an Arab American is defined as an ethnicity made up of several waves of immigrants from 22 Arab countries, stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east. Arab Americans are also Middle Eastern and North African Americans i.e. terms that do not equate ethnic heritage with nationality but rather a geographic area.
  • In the list of Arab Americans, many Egyptians are listed. I can not find an instance of one who wouldn't be regarded as an Arab. (That is not to say it does not exist.)
  • The US official definition is that an Egyptian is an Arab (you may check the World Fact Book and US Census information). You may also disagree with these ones, but they are still two of the verifiable sources used in Wikipedia as a reference. I consider them more reliable than (Arab.net).
Whether an Egyptian is an Arab from a historical point of view is a completely different issue, but the answer, in short, is simply no. However; the modern definition of an Arab is a national of an Arab country (22 countries as above). Their American descendants are therefore Arab Americans, all of whom have ancestors who spoke Arabic. IMHO, this is just an attempt to politicize an ethnicity. I think a critique section can surely be added to the Arab American article.. but since the overwhelming majority of sources and people, both Americans and Arabs, think Egyptians are Arabs, it's mainly pointless to remove a category just because some people think Egyptians should not be regarded as Arabs. -- To illustrate the point, I have been to certain places in the Middle East where over 95% of a city population do not acknowledge the government's authority. Do you think we should remove cateogies of that country from articles of this city? (WP:Not original research and WP:Not a soapbox)
Including Iranians or Kurds and all the second part is a false circular argument since there is no proposition to move the category to Middle Eastern Americans. - Eagletalk 16:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Egyptian self-identification

  • The list of Arab Americans is rather comical. It used to list Jerry Seinfeld as an "Arab" until the last editor correctly removed him for the same reason that we are having this discussion. It's a list of people that others want to claim as "Arab", like they are trying to do with Egyptians, regardless of how the people in question identify themselves.
  • There is no such thing as "US official definition" of an Egyptian. US census, however, defines Egyptians simply as those who themselves "marked their ethnic origin as 'Egyptian'" [2]. This means that unfortunately they might also be included by others under an Arab category, despite the fact that lots of Egyptian Americans categorically reject it. The US census does mention that given a choice between Middle Eastern and Arab descent, many choose the former. But to further complicate the issue, "The Arab Population: 2000" US census report says this, "...some people from these countries [in the Middle East] may not consider themselves to be Arab, and conversely, some people who consider themselves Arab may not be included in this definition. More specifically, groups such as Kurds and Berbers who are usually not considered Arab were included in this definition for consistency with 1990 census and Census 2000 data products" [3]. So Berber and Kurdish Americans are subsumed into this definition "for consistency" (which is merely statistical), but would Berbers and Kurds be listed on Wikipedia as Arab or Arab American? Absurd!
  • While the CIA World Fact Book, like the US census, is far from being an authority on such questions, it lists Egyptians as people of "Eastern Hamitic stock", i.e., of Northeast African descent, which includes Egyptians, some eastern Berbers, and some east African bedouins like the Beja [4].
  • The definition of an Arab given at Arab American is the official Arab nationalist propaganda line—it purports to be inclusive of a wide range of people but uses an ethnochauvinist term like 'Arab American', rather than a more accurate geographic term like Middle-Eastern American, and superimposes it on all of those people. According to that definition, any ethnic group from Egyptians to Berbers to Persians to Kurds to Nubians to Turks should happily accept the imposition of that definition. The same goes for these statements, "the modern definition of an Arab is a national of an Arab country (22 countries as above). Their American descendants are therefore Arab Americans, all of whom have ancestors who spoke Arabic"—they sound like they are taken straight out of the Arab nationalist "manifesto"!!
1. A lot of people from those so-called Arab countries do not speak an Arabic language at all.
2. Egyptians speak an Arabic-derived language, Masri, much like Maltese is 'Arabic';
3. Even then, language does not necessarily equate with ethnicity. French-speaking Africans are not "French" anymore than Egyptians are "Arab"!
4. Egyptian Americans maintain a distinct ethnic and communal organization, as do Egyptians elsewhere in the West;
5. Only members of the Egyptian community are qualified on what or how they choose to identify themselves, not according to how they are seen by others.

As I said, affiliation with Arabism is constantly questioned by Egyptians. Here is what prominent Egyptian American Harvard professor Leila Ahmed says about this whole issue in her autobiography A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman's Journey (1999) New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux;

The year was 1952, the year of [Nasser's coup d'état] ... I remember how I hated the incessant rhetoric. Al-qawmiyya al-Arabiyya! Al-Uruba! Nahnu al-Arab! Arab nationalism! Arabness! We the Arabs! Even now just remembering those words, I feel again a surge of mingled irritation and resentment. Propaganda is unpleasant... Imagine what it would be like if say, the British or the French were incessantly told, with nobody allowed to contest, question, or protest, that they were now European, and only European... But for us [Egyptians] it was actually worse and certainly more complicated.
Egyptians, who in that era [before Nasser] were preoccupied with getting rid of the British, were either uninterested in or positively hostile to this strange Syrian idea of an Arab identity ... Well into the first decades of this century, neither the self-defined new Arabs nor the Egyptians themselves thought that this new identity had anything to do with Egyptians ...[But today,] there are two different notions of Arab that I am trapped in [the Arab nationalist notion and a Western racist notion]—both false, both heavily weighted and cargoed with another and silent freight. Both imputing to me feelings and beliefs that aren't mine.
...the steady spread and imposition of this culture of [Arab] literacy throughout the Arab world seems to represent a kind linguistic and cultural imperialism—a linguistic, cultural, and also a class imperialism that is being conducted in the name of education and of Arab unity and of the oneness of the Arab nation. Steadily throughout the Arab world, as this Arab culture of literacy marches inexorably onward, local cultures continue to be erased and their linguistic and cultural creativity condemned to permanent, unwritten silence. And we are supposed to applaud this, not protest it as we would if it were any other form of imperialism or political domination. This variety of domination goes by the name of "nationalism," and we are supposed to support it.

— Zerida 01:45, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protection

I'm removing the protection for now, as no discussion has taken place for a while. Please do not start another revert war- if you need to discuss the issue further do so here before editing the category. Petros471 10:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


Categories for discussion This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 2006 July 14. The result of the discussion was no consensus.