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I'm probably going to be hated on for this post, but Steve Jobs doesn't represent Arab Americans, because he was adopted and wasn't brought up in Arab culture,
by dimitar 13y ago
I'm probably going to be hated on for this post, but Steve Jobs doesn't represent Arab Americans, because he was adopted and wasn't brought up in Arab culture, religion or language. He called his biological parents 'an egg and sperm'.
While this is probably obvious for most people, I don't think calling Steve Jobs "Arab" is really of service to anyone. If you want to rise the profile of Arab Americans or Arabs in general there are a lot of great people to choose from.
- amasad 13y agolike who? curious if you have a few examples.
- PeterWhittaker 13y agoFrom the article: Khalil Gibran.
- 0x0007 13y agoHe is half Syrian. Syrians are not even Arabs. Neither are Lebanese or Egyptian, or Iranian (Persian) people. It just happened that at some point Arabs invaded their lands. This is like calling Spanish people Arabs, because Arabs used to be there at some point, or calling English people French, because French used to be there at some point. The ethnicity knowledge of the Americans is no better than their geographical knowledge.
- nayefc 13y agoPeople living in Syria 3,000 years ago were not Arabs. People living in Syria today, are Arabs. Who is an Arab? Well, one that speaks Arabic and living in an Arab country. You want to get into DNA? I'm Palestinian, born in Jordan and now working in the US. My DNA tests show >60% Middle Eastern/Arab DNA albeit my paternal lineage tracing back to ancient Egypt.
- alaaibrahim 13y agoActually Arabs were living in Syria in 9th century BC.
- nayefc 13y ago9th century BC is ~100 years more recent than 3,000 years ago.
- VMG 13y ago> The ethnicity knowledge of the Americans is no better than their geographical knowledge. You were doing so well with your warning about sweeping generalizations.. FWIW his father seemed to identify as Arab > In the 2007 issue of “Campus gate”, a magazine published by the American University of Beirut, Jandali featured as one of the Arab nationalism activists in Beirut who quickly rose to prominence and was appointed as the director of “Al Urwa Al Wuthka” journal (The trustworthy Guide), a journal that embraced the symbols of the Arab nationalist movement like George Habash, Constantin Zureiq, Shafik al-Hout and many others. http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/10/09/170940.html http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/10/09/170940.html
- coldtea 13y ago>You were doing so well with your warning about sweeping generalizations.. He didn't warn against sweeping generalizations. He warned against MISTAKEN sweeping generalization. This one looks pretty spot on, and has even been tested on survey like questions.
- alaaibrahim 13y ago> Syrians are not even Arabs Well that depends on your definition of Arabs, Some people claim that Arabs are the sons of Ismael, and they were in Saudi Arabia, but the word Arab was first used to describe the Bedouins in Syria. So you could say that Syrians are the original Arabs.
- azth 13y agoI thought that the original Arabs came out of Yemen.
- azth 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_people#Identity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_people#Identity
- dimitar 13y agoSyrians consider themselves Arab and are so according to most definitions. Even the name of the country is Syrian Arab Republic.
- nayefc 13y agoAs an Arab, I agree. He might be Arab by DNA, but definitely not by culture. We all know that DNA and genes mean nothing for success. Jobs succeeded as a result of his environment, and not where his DNA roots trace back to.
- georgeorge 13y ago"We all know that DNA and genes mean nothing for success" No. Please explain.
- nayefc 13y agoI'd highly encourage you to look up IQ-wealth correlation studies, and other intelligence experiments. In any case, none of this is proven yet so as far as we know, DNA alone is not a recipe of success. If it was, then us Arabs would have all been Steve Jobs instead of fighting over stupid mythical religions.
- olgeni 13y ago"We all know that DNA and genes mean nothing for success." Actually, in the Patriarchy, they do. (ducks & runs)
- bjourne 13y agoMany of the famous Jews are only Jews in the same way that Steve Jobs is Arab. E.g. Dylan, Einstein, Marx.. The point is that there is precedent in letting the minority itself decide which persons are members of it and which are not. We should extend the same courtesy to all minorities.
- msvan 13y agoI'd say the person should decide himself if he is a part of the minority or not. Did Steve Jobs ever identify as Arab American? I've never heard of it.
- bjourne 13y agoReasonable idea, but just as subjective as any other criterion. That's why I wrote that it was a courtesy to let the minority's criterion be the favored one.
- coldtea 13y ago>there is precedent in letting the minority itself decide which persons are members of it and which are not I've never heard of this precedent of seen it in action. We think of Marx or Dylan as jews because we've read their biographical information, not because some jewish minority decided we should do so.