ABSTRACT
Scholars often refer to the late 1800s as the time when a significant stream of Arabs – mostly Christians from the region that now includes Syria and Lebanon – began to arrive in the U.S. (Naff, 1985). However, people from the Arab world have a much older bond with the U.S., having voyaged across the Atlantic to “discover” the New World before this claim was bestowed upon the Europeans (Suleiman, 2010). Although many of the earlier generations of Arabs melted into the fabric of American society, the Arab community in the U.S. has evolved into a distinct ethnic minority group, albeit one whose boundaries and characteristics (e.g. religion, national origin, language) are constantly changing.
