Arab Americans ( or ) are Americans who trace ancestry to any of the various waves of immigrants from the Arabic-speaking countries. In the United States census, Arabs are racially classified as White Americans which is defined as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa".
Data from the 2020 U.S. census regarding Arab Americans is categorized under the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) group, which included 3.522 million people identified as MENA alone or in any combination with another group. Within this population, over 2.5 million people reported MENA descent alone. This classification, included for the first time in the 2020 census, includes both Arabic-speaking groups, for instance Lebanese Americans, or Egyptian Americans and non-Arabic speaking such as Iranian Americans and Israeli Americans. The Lebanese Americans was the largest MENA alone or in any combination group with 685,672 people. The following largest groups were Egyptians Americans with 396,854, Syrian Americans with 222,196 and Iraqi Americans with 212,875. Additionally 238,921 defined themselves as simply "Arabs".
According to the 2010 United States census, there were 1,698,570 Arab Americans in the United States. 290,893 persons defined themselves as simply Arab, and a further 224,241 as Other Arab. Other groups on the 2010 census are listed by nation of origin, and some may or may not be Arabs, or regard themselves as Arabs. The largest subgroup was also by far the Lebanese Americans, with 501,907, followed by; Egyptian Americans with 190,078, Syrian Americans with 187,331, and Iraqi Americans with 105,981. Approximately 1/4 of all Arab Americans claimed two ancestries. A number of these ancestries are considered undercounted, given the nature of Ottoman immigration to the US during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
A number of ethnic and ethnoreligious groups in West Asia and North Africa that lived in majority Arab countries and are now resident in the United States are not always classified as Arabs but some may claim an Arab identity or a dual Arab/non-Arab identity; they include Assyrians, Israelis, Jews (in particular Mizrahi Jews, some Sephardi Jews), Copts, Kurds, Iraqi Turkmens, Mandeans, Circassians, Shabaki, Armenians, Yazidis, Persians, Kawliya/Romani, Syrian Turkmens, Berbers, and Nubians.
Population
The majority of Arab Americans, around 62%, originate from the region of the Levant, which includes Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, although overwhelmingly from Lebanon. The remainder are made up of those from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other Arab nations.
There are nearly 3.5 million Arab Americans in the United States according to The Arab American Institute and more than 2.9 million according to the U.S. 2020 Census. Arab Americans live in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C., and 94% reside in the metropolitan areas of major cities. According to the 2010 US census, the city with the largest percentage of Arab Americans is Dearborn, Michigan, a southwestern suburb of Detroit, at nearly 40%. The Detroit metropolitan area is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans (403,445), followed by the New York City Combined Statistical Area (371,233), Los Angeles (308,295), San Francisco Bay Area (250,000), Chicago (176,208), and the Washington, D.C., area (168,208). This information is reportedly based upon survey findings but is contradicted by information posted on the Arab American Institute website itself, which states that California as a whole only has 272,485, and Michigan as a whole only 191,607. The 2010 American Community Survey information, from the American Factfinder website, gives a figure of about 168,000 for Michigan.
According to the 2000 US census, 48% of the Arab American population, 576,000, reside in California, Michigan, New York, Florida, and New Jersey, respectively; these 5 states collectively account for 31% of the US population. Five other states – Illinois, Texas, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania – report Arab American populations of more than 40,000 each. Also, the counties with the greatest proportions of Arab Americans were in California, Michigan, New York, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
In 2016, the cities with 100,000 or more in population with the highest percentages of Arabs are Sterling Heights, Michigan 3.69%; Jersey City, New Jersey 2.81%; Warren, Michigan 2.51%; Allentown, Pennsylvania 2.45%; Burbank, California 2.39% and nearby Glendale, California 2.07%; Livonia, Michigan 1.94%; Arlington County, Virginia 1.77%; Paterson, New Jersey 1.77%; and Daly City, California 1.69%.
Bayonne, New Jersey, a city of 73,000, reported an Arab American population of 17.0% in the 2020 US census.
Arab American ethnic groups + Arab Americans in the 2000 – 2010 US census – 2020 US censusAncestry20002000 (% of US population)20102010 (% of US population)2020 (alone or in any combination)2020 (% of US population)Lebanese440,2790.2%501,988%685,672%Syrian142,8970.1%148,214%222,193%Egyptian142,8320.1%181,762%396,854%Palestiniansunsurveyed%85,186%174,887%Jordanian39,7340.03%61,664%121,917%Moroccan38,9230.03%82,073%147,528%Iraqi37,7140.01%105,981%212,875%Yemeni11,6540.005%29,358%91,288%Algerian8,752%14,716%38,186%Saudi7,419%%30,563%Tunisian4,735%%15,270%Kuwaiti3,162 %%6,923%Libyan2,979%%13,681%Emirati459%%2,480%Omani351%%1,336%BahrainiUnknown (less than 300)%%973%QatariUnknown (less than 300)%%650% "North African"3,217%%% "Arabs"85,151%290,893%238,921% "Arabic"120,665%%% Other Arabs%224,241%292,612%Total1,160,7290.4%1,697,5700.6%2,928,448%
Arab population by state (2010) The US Census Bureau calculates the number of Arab Americans based on the number of people who claimed at least one Arab ancestry as one of their two ancestries. The Arab American Institute surveys the number of people of Arab descent in the US, regardless of the number of people who claimed Arab descent in the census. State/territory 2010 American Census Percentage Arab American Institute (AAI) Percentage Alabama 9,057 0.189 34,308 No data Alaska 1,356 0.191 4,464 No data Arizona 29,474 0.461 95,427 No data Arkansas 5,019 0.172 14,472 No data California 269,917 0.616 817,455 No data Colorado 27,526 0.074 51,149 No data Connecticut 17,917 0.501 57,747 No data Delaware 1,092 0.122 9,000 No data District of Columbia 4,810 0.799 10,821 No data Florida 114,791 0.610 301,881 No data Georgia 25,504 0.263 81,171 No data Hawaii 1,661 0.122 4,983 No data Idaho 1,200 0.077 7,617 No data Illinois 87,936 0.685 256,395 No data Indiana 19,049 0.294 46,122 No data Iowa 6,426 0.211 17,436 No data Kansas 8,099 0.281 23,868 No data Kentucky 10,199 0.235 28,542 No data Louisiana 11,996 0.265 50,031 No data Maine 3,103 0.234 13,224 No data Maryland 28,623 0.496 76,446 No data Massachusetts 67,643 1.033 195,450 No data Michigan 153,713 1.555 500,000 No data Minnesota 11,138 0.196 32,406 No data Mississippi 6,823 0.230 20,469 No data Missouri 18,198 0.304 51,869 No data Montana 1,771 0.179 5,313 No data Nebraska 6,093 0.334 25,227 No data Nevada 10,920 0.404 37,554 No data New Hampshire 6,958 0.529 25,068 No data New Jersey 84,558 0.962 257,868 No data New Mexico 7,716 0.375 13,632 No data New York 160,848 0.830 449,187 No data North Carolina 33,230 0.348 91,788 No data North Dakota 1,470 0.186 4,410 No data Ohio 65,011 0.564 197,439 No data Oklahoma 9,342 0.249 No data No data Oregon 13,055 0.341 41,613 No data Pennsylvania 63,288 0.498 182,610 No data Rhode Island 7,566 0.719 26,541 No data South Carolina 9,106 0.197 32,223 No data South Dakota 2,034 0.250 6,102 No data Tennessee 24,447 0.385 71,025 No data Texas 102,367 0.407 274,701 No data Utah 5,539 0.200 17,556 No data Vermont 2,583 0.413 7,749 No data Virginia 59,348 0.742 169,587 No data Washington 26,666 0.397 8,850 No data West Virginia 6,329 0.342 16,581 No data Wisconsin 22,478 0.424 60,663 No data Wyoming 397 0.070 1,191 No data USA 1,646,371 0.533 3,700,000 No data
Religious background
According to the Arab American Institute based on the Zogby International Survey in 2002, the breakdown of religious affiliation among persons originating from Arab countries is as follows:
63% Christian 35% Latin/Eastern Catholic 18% Orthodox, including Antiochian, Syrian, Greek, and Coptic 10% Protestant 24% Muslim, including Sunni, Shia, and Druze 13% other or no affiliation
The percentage of Arab Americans who are Muslim has increased in recent years because most new Arab immigrants tend to be Muslim. In the past 10 years, most Arab immigrants were Muslim as compared to 15 to 30 years ago when they were mostly Christian. This stands in contrast to the first wave of Arab immigration to the US between the late 19th and early 20th centuries when almost all immigrants were Christians. Those Arabs were often Eastern Orthodox, otherwise Catholic and a few Episcopalians. A small number are Protestant adherents, either having joined a Protestant denomination after immigrating to the US or being from a family that converted to Protestantism while still living in the Eastern Mediterranean (European and American Protestant missionaries were fairly commonplace in the Levant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries).
Arab Christians, especially from Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, continued to immigrate to the US in the 2000s and form new enclaves and communities across the country.
The US is the second largest home of Druze communities outside the Middle East after Venezuela (60,000). According to some estimates there are about 30,000 to 50,000 Druzes in the US, with the largest concentration in Southern California. Most Druze immigrated to the US from Lebanon and Syria.
The New York City metropolitan area has a large population of Arab Jews and Mizrahi Jews. New York City and its suburbs in New Jersey have sizable Syrian Sephardi populations. Syrian Jews and other Jews from Arab countries may or may not identify as Arab Americans. When Syrian Jews first began to arrive in New York City during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews on the Lower East Side sometimes disdained their Syrian co-coreligionists as Arabische Yidden, Yiddish for "Arab Jews". Some Ashkenazim doubted whether Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East were Jewish at all. In response, some Syrian Jews who were deeply proud of their ancient Jewish heritage, derogatorily dubbed Ashkenazi Jews as "J-Dubs", a reference to the first and third letters of the English word "Jew". In the 1990 US census, there were 11,610 Arab Jews in New York City, comprising 23 percent of the total Arab population of the city. Arab Jews in the city sometimes face anti-Arab racism. After the September 11 attacks, some Arab Jews in New York City were subjected to arrest and detention because they were suspected to be Islamist terrorists.
Arab American identity
In 2012, prompted in part by post-9/11 discrimination, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee petitioned the Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency to designate the MENA populations as a minority/disadvantaged community."Lobbying for a 'MENA' category on U.S. Census" Wiltz, Teresea. USA Today. Published 7 October 2014. Accessed 14 December 2015. Following consultations with MENA organizations, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would establish a new MENA ethnic category for populations from West Asia, North Africa or the Arab world, separate from the white classification that these populations had previously sought in 1909. The expert groups, including some Jewish organizations, felt that the earlier white designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they lobbied for a distinct categorization. The 2020 census did not include a separate MENA race category and collected detailed ethnicity information.