Armenian Americans

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armenian dancers in Manhattan ( New York ) in July 1976 during the 200th anniversary of the United States Independence Day

Armenian Americans ( Armenian Ամերիկահայեր - pronounced Amerikahayer in Eastern Armenian , and Amerigahayer in Western Armenian ) are Americans of Armenian descent. Most of them come from the areas of today's Turkey and form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after the Armenians in Russia . Many are survivors of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire .

Immigration and Numbers

Armenian settlement centers in the USA
Armenian residents in the US counties according to self-reports in the 2000 census
Armenian population 2000 in the neighborhoods north of Downtown Los Angeles with “ Little Armenia ” in East Hollywood and some suburbs such as Burbank and Glendale

The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire from the Hamidian massacres (1894–1896) and the 1909 Adana massacre . The deportations during the far bloodier genocide of the Armenians (1915–1923) resulted in a larger wave of surviving refugees, deportees and displaced persons. Since the 1950s, Armenians immigrated from Middle Eastern nations such as Turkey , Iran and Lebanon - as a result of the instability in these countries. Immigrants from Soviet Armenia have also been found since the late 1980s . And since the independence of the Republic of Armenia from the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent war with neighboring Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh , additional Armenian citizens have fled to the United States.

The 2011 American Community Survey estimated that 483,366 (0.15%) Americans are wholly or partially of Armenian descent. Various organizations and the media criticize this number as underestimated and instead suggest a figure of 800,000 to 1,500,000 (0.5%) Armenian Americans. The highest concentration of Americans of Armenian descent is in the greater Los Angeles area , where 166,498 people identified themselves as Armenians according to the 2000 US Census , making up over 40 percent of the 385,488 Armenian descent in the United States. Glendale , a suburb of Los Angeles, is commonly considered the center of Armenian-American life.

religion

The 1891 built Redeemer Church in Worchester ( Massachusetts ) was the first Armenian church in the US

The majority of Armenians are followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church , the oldest state church in the world, with Armenian Americans being no exception: at 80 percent, most Armenian Americans are also followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the largest Oriental Orthodox Church in the United States. It owns over 90 church buildings across the country. 10 percent are Protestants (mainly Armenian Evangelicals ) and 3 percent are supporters of the Armenian Catholic Church .

Language and assimilation

Multilingual notice in Glendale in Spanish , English and Armenian

The Armenian-American community is one of the politically most influential communities in the Armenian diaspora. Organizations such as the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Armenian Assembly of America are fighting for the United States government's recognition of the Armenian Genocide and supporting closer ties between the United States and Armenia. The Armenian General Charity Union (AGBU) is known for its financial support and sponsorship of Armenian cultural and language schools in the USA.

The Armenian language (especially the West Armenian dialect, but also East Armenian) is also spoken in the United States, especially in California , where a particularly large number of Armenian immigrants have settled and long-established Armenian communities have developed. Almost all of them have a perfect command of American English . In 2000, of the 385,488 ethnic Armenians, only 202,708 (52.6%) of them stated Armenian as the language spoken at home in the census .

Throughout the diaspora, the Armenians have developed a path of rapid acculturation and slow assimilation . Armenians often adapted quickly to their society, learned the local language, attended school and took on political and economic life. Meanwhile, they are also at the same time resistant to assimilation per se by maintaining their own schools, churches, associations, languages, and networks of endogamous marriage and friendship. The sociologist Anny Bakalian observes that over generations, US Armenians have moved from a central self-image of “being an Armenian” to a superficial “perceiving themselves as an Armenian”. In doing so, they express nostalgic pride in their origins, while at the same time behaving like full-fledged Americans.

Today the US Armenian community is held together by a network of Armenian groups, including approximately 170 church congregations, 33 day schools, 20 national newspapers, 36 radio or television programs, 58 student teaching programs, and 26 professional associations. The anthropologist Margaret Mead estimates that over the centuries Diaspora Armenians (as well as Jews ) have developed a closely connected family structure, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against the assimilation and extinction of Armenian culture.

Well-known Armenian Americans

Armenian Americans collage.png

swell

  • Rouben Paul Adalian: Historical dictionary of Armenia . 2nd Edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD 2010, ISBN 978-0-8108-7450-3 .
  • Arra S. Avakian: The Armenians in America . Lerner Publications Co., Minneapolis 1977, ISBN 0-8225-0228-3 .
  • Hovhannes Ayvazyan: Հայ Սփյուռք հանրագիտարան - Hay sp ' Yurk ': hanragitaran . tape 1 . Hayk. Hanragitaran Hrat, Erevan 2003, ISBN 5-89700-020-4 , pp. 38 (Armenian).
  • Anny Bakalian: Armenian Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian . Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1993, ISBN 1-56000-025-2 .
  • M. Vartan Malcom: The Armenians in America . Pilgrim Press, Boston 1919, ISBN 1-112-12699-6 .
  • Georges Sabagh, Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Claudia Der-Martirosian: Subethnicity: Armenians in Los Angeles . Institute for Social Science Research, University of California Los Angeles, 1990.
  • Artineh Samkian: Constructing Identities, Perceiving Lives: Armenian High School Students' Perceptions of Identity and Education . ProQuest, 2007, ISBN 978-0-549-48257-4 .

literature

  • Richard LaPiere : Armenian settlement in Fresno County . Stanford University, 1930, OCLC 20332780 .
  • Sarkis Atamian: The Armenian community. The historical development of a social and ideological conflict . Philosophical Library, New York 1955, OCLC 55158094 .
  • Paul Kernaklian: The Armenian-American Personality Structure and Its Relationship to Various States of Ethnicity . Syracuse University, 1967, OCLC 5419847 .
  • Gary A. Kulhanjian: The historical and sociological aspects of Armenian immigration to the United States 1890–1930 . R and E Research Associates, San Francisco 1975, ISBN 0-88247-309-3 .
  • Robert Mirak: Armenian Immigrants: Alive and Well in the New World . Armenian Bicentennial Committee of Massachusetts, Boston 1976, OCLC 733944190 .
  • Robert Paul Jordan, Harry Naltchayan. The Proud Armenians . (PDF; 4.4 MB), National Geographic 153, No. 6 (June 1978), pp. 846-873.
  • Matthew A. Jendian: Becoming American, Remaining Ethnic: The Case of Armenian-Americans in Central California . LFB Scholarly Pub., New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-59332-261-8 .
  • Vladimir Wertsman: The Armenians in America, 1618–1976. A chronology & fact book . Oceana Publications, Dobbs Ferry, NY 1978, ISBN 0-379-00529-8 .
  • Ingrid Poschmann O'Grady: Ararat, Etchmiadzin, and Haig (nation, church and kin): a study of the symbol system of American Armenians . The Catholic University of America, 1979, OCLC 23314470 .
  • Robert Mirak: Torn between two lands. Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I . Harvard University by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1983, ISBN 0-674-89540-1 .
  • Armenians in America. Celebrating the first century. Armenian Assembly of America, Boston, MA. 1987, ISBN 0-925428-02-7 .
  • Jenny Phillips: Symbol, myth, and rhetoric. The politics of culture in an Armenian American population . AMS Press, New York 1989, ISBN 0-404-19433-8 .
  • David Waldstreicher: The Armenian Americans . Chelsea House Publications, New York 1989, ISBN 0-87754-862-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. Embassy of the United States, Yerevan: WikiLeaks: US Ambassadors 'Decipher' Armenian American Diaspora . June 1, 2004. Retrieved January 31, 2013. "Of the estimated 8-10 million people living outside the Republic of Armenia who consider themselves" Armenians, "the GOAM and major Armenian cultural and advocacy organizations estimate that 1.5-2 million live in the United States. This number ranks second after the estimated 2 to 2.5 million Armenians that live most of the year in Russia or other CIS Countries. " 
  2. Total ancestry categories tallied for people with one or more ancestry categories reported 2011 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. (PDF; 77 kB) United States Census Bureau, accessed December 22, 2012 .
  3. United States 2000 census: Ancestry
  4. ^ Gary Laderman: Religion and American cultures. An encyclopedia of traditions, diversity, and popular expressions . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, Calif. 2003, ISBN 1-57607-854-X , pp. 302 .
  5. Hovhannes Ayvazyan: Հայ Սփյուռք հանրագիտարան - Hay sp ' Yurk ': hanragitaran . tape 1 . Hayk. Hanragitaran Hrat, Erevan 2003, ISBN 5-89700-020-4 , pp. 38 (Armenian).
  6. ^ Peter R. Eisenstadt, Laura-Eve Moss: The encyclopedia of New York State . 1st edition. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 2005, ISBN 0-8156-0808-X , pp. 118 .
  7. ^ Huberta Von Voss: Portraits of hope: Armenians in the contemporary world . Berghahn Books, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-84545-257-5 , p. 11.
  8. United States 2000 census: Language Spoken at Home
  9. ^ Culture and Commitment. Columbia University Press, New York 1978.
  10. ^ Armenian Americans - History, The armenian republic, Immigration to America. everyculture.com.