Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Arab and Middle Eastern Americans in the United States Congress


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Procedural keep. Apart from most people expressing some form of "keep" opinion, this is a topic that is better discussed on the talkpage, not at AfD. Renaming, restructuring, things like that. Tone 08:37, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

List of Arab and Middle Eastern Americans in the United States Congress

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This AfD might strike people as odd. At first blush, the page seems like an anodyne piece of demographic interest, no different to "list of Native American members of Congress." So why the AfD? I ask you to bear with me because it will take some time to explain my rationales, although they are rock-solid.

In sum: the page must be deleted because it fails (and will inevitably fail, as I argue below) the standards of the encyclopedia in terms of WP:V and WP:RS.

There are two key ways in which the page fails (and will inevitably fail) WP:V and WP:RS. First, the page relies on WP:OR, rather than reliable sources, to determine who is Middle Eastern. Second, the page relies on WP:OR, rather than reliable sources, to determine who is Arab. As I will show, the problem of OR is unfixable because (due to the nature of the definition of “Middle Eastern," which unlike, e.g., "sub-Saharan African" is extremely fuzzy and controversial) it is impossible to verify the claims as to who is Middle Eastern. I propose the deletion of the page and the creation of new pages with the same information that do not violate WP:V and WP:RS.

Unverified/OR claims to as who is Middle Eastern

The page relies on WP:OR to determine who is Middle Eastern. People of Iranian, Armenian, and Georgian descent (countries often included in the Middle East) and Ashkenazi Jews (who are partially descended from the Levant, and often identify with their ancestral roots), are excluded for no reason but OR, despite being considered "Middle Eastern Americans" on the wikipedia page on that subject, as well as being considered as such by the US Census Bureau.

There are no sources cited in the page as to which of the Congresspersons are Middle Eastern, and since the definition of the Middle East itself is fuzzy and controversial, there will never be such sources. (To illustrate how fuzzy the region is: many commentators would consider Turkey Middle Eastern, others would say it’s part of Europe; many would include Armenia and Georgia while others would not; many would include Sudan, and others would not. Others still would exclude the Levant and all countries West of the Gulf.) Following the census definition would not add any additional clarity; this too is controversial and was on the verge of being changed in 2016, to exclude Armenians and Georgians.

The subjectivity of the definition of Middle Eastern leads to an inevitable problem of lack of verifiability. This problem is showcased by the completely OR talk page debates about who does or does not “count” as Middle Eastern, as well as the absence of reliable sources in the article. In particular, the editor User:AuH2ORepublican has been active in removing former members of Congress of Armenian and Jewish descent from the page, based on nothing but OR. As silly and vulgar as this kind of amateur ethnic line-drawing is, no one can say AuH20 is "wrong" in his definition of Middle Eastern, and his exclusion of Armenians and Jews therefrom. And this is exactly my point: There is no way to present a verifiable, RS-supported list of "Middle Eastern Congresspeople," so it must be deleted.

Unverified/OR Claims to as who is Arab, which contradict the non-Arab identity of those cited as Arabs

There is an even more glaring and embarrassing OR/WP:V problem: the overwhelming majority of the people on this page didn’t/don’t identify as Arab, yet we are labeling them as such based on our own opinions about who should be considered Arabs. Specifically, the vast majority of the people on the page are Lebanese Christians. This ethnic group tends not to identify as Arab (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_people#Identity). It is extremely disrespectful to label them as “Arabs”, not to mention an expression of OR and inaccurate on the merits in most if not all of these cases.

So the page, in implicitly rejecting the ethnic identities of the Lebanese Christians (and instead insisting that we are Arabs, contrary to our identity and also contrary to genetic testing showing we are more closely related to Mediterranean Europeans than Gulf Arabs or North Africans) is not only a failure in terms of WP:RS and WP:V, but offensive, insofar as it imposes an ethnic identity on people which they do not or didn’t accept.

Again, the editor User:AuH2ORepublican has been active in insisting that Congresspersons of partial or full Lebanese descent be labeled "Arabs" and included on this page, stating that it is irrelevant whether these people identify as Arab, and they must be included on the page of Arabs elected to the Congress. He cites no sources for his OR view that we (Lebanese Christians) are Arabs regardless of how we identify. I don't accuse him of bad faith, but I instead cite him as an expression of how unverifiable and OR-based the assertions on the page are.

Proposal

So, my proposal? Delete this page (on grounds of WP:V and WP:RS, as described above) and create a new page for "Arab American Congress members," that is not combined with the vast and nebulous category “Middle Eastern congresspersons.” There we should list anyone who 1) identifies as Arab and 2) is fully or partially descended from an Arabic speaking country. (For example, Ilhan Omar is from Somalia where Arabic is one of the official languages; since she identifies as Arab we should include her, but we shouldn’t automatically include all future Somali-American Congresspersons in this category, unless they identify as such, since many Somali people reject an Arab identity.) That will solve the problems of OR, V, and offensiveness.

I don’t think we should re-create a “Middle Eastern Congressmembers” page because the category is too broad and fuzzy and diverse to be descriptively useful, and will inevitably lead to problems of verifiability. People who are interested in the subject of American representatives from the region should instead create pages like “List of Armenian-American congressmembers” or “List of Lebanese-American Congressmembers” or “list of Egyptian-American Congresspersons”, which can have all of this information and will not have to rely on OR. GergisBaki (talk) 17:56, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Survey

 * Delete Combining the extremely broad (and fuzzy) categories of Middle Eastern and Arab in one page is a total disaster, the page should be deleted. I am fine creating a separate "Arab-American Congresspersons" but OP's point about self-identification is important to keep in mind when we do create that. Arab identity is controversial and new outside of Arabia (the Gulf Arabs), and we shouldn't label anyone as Arab (apart from literal Arabians, e.g. Saudis) without RS evidence that they self-identify as such. Steeletrap (talk) 18:48, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep For the reasons set forth under "Discussion" below. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 19:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep The issues raised by GergisBaki are substantial, however they do not merit the deletion of the article, which is a commendable effort to compile a list of Congressman/Congresswomen from the same ethnic background. The said list is similar to many other lists on Wikipedia of Congressman/Congresswomen from different ethnic/national backgrounds and is of encyclopedic value to the common reader on the internet. A number of good points have been raised by Steeletrap and AuH2ORepublican; this being said, it's clear this is an issue with semantics or the title of the article, rather than deleting this prodigious article, we should discuss a newer title that avoids the controversies raised by the said editors. George Al-Shami (talk) 07:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete This page is eurocentric nonsense, attempting to racially or ethnically classify the populations of such a vast region into "Middle East," regardless of personal identity. By the way, while AuH20 may not know this, Arab identity outside of Arabians is a 20th century invention, and is very tenuous and controversial. It is extremely dubious to label a group of Lebanese American Christians (including people who are 1/4 or less Lebanese Christian like Charlie Christ) "Arabs" without citation. For the reason Gergis says, it is impossible to find reliable sources for this so the page should be deleted. A new page can be created that only includes those people who identify as Arab, and gets
 * (Full disclosure: OP emailed me about this thread. We have corresponded in the past after working on a completely different page concerning the law, and are both Lebanese Americans and have discussed Lebanese identity. I thought I should disclose this. But while OP flagged this page for me he certainly didn't influence my opinion to delete.) PlainLawSam08 (talk) 10:39, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep I agree that the issues are substantial, but I don't agree that they amount to a justification for deleting the article. That being said, amalgamating Arab with Middle Eastern Americans is awkward, for the reasons discussed. Each (overlapping) category deserves its own article: "Arab Americans in the United States Congress" for people who identify as Arab, and "Middle Eastern Americans in the United States Congress" for people who, say, have held citizenship of a country in the Middle East. Joe in Australia (talk) 10:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete OR Rename Despite my AfD, I would be fine with keeping the article so long as it is renamed. Middle Eastern needs to go. The article should simply be renamed to Arab Americans Congresspersons. Then we can proceed to the talk page and debating the issue of whether Lebanese Christians (or 1/4 Lebanese Christians like Charlie Christ) who do not identify as Arab should be included based on OR about who Arabs are, in spite of the fact that most Leb Christians do not identify as Arab. GergisBaki (talk) 13:26, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * My only question (and the reason I'm still a delete for now) is whether it's possible to rename articles. Is it? Please reply to this comment explaining how to rename an article if it is. GergisBaki (talk) 13:27, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep As per the reasons stated by and  in the discussion below. QuestFour (talk) 18:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per a very well-written nomination statement. Squeeps10  Talk to meMy edits 17:45, 23 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve, which may possibly entail a split into two or more articles, or imposition of stringent rules for citation of sources. bd2412  T 04:41, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion
This article was created after a British editor, based on how the term "Asian" is used in the UK (but unfamiliar with how the term is used in the U.S.), wanted to add Arab-American members of Congress to the article on Asian-American (and Pacific-Islander) members of Congress. I recommended to him, and he accepted, adding "and Middle-Eastern Americans" to the title because otherwise it would exclude persons from Arab countries who are not Arab speakers, such as persons of Assyrian (aka Chaldean), Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, etc. descent.

While Arab Americans are not considered ethnic minorities under U.S. federal law and do not comprise an individual category under the U.S. Census, they nevertheless are deemed--by themselves and by society writ large--as an ethnicity within the Caucasian race, with use of the Arabic language by their forebears and certain traditions and cultural norms being the main points of commonality. While sub-groups within the Arab diaspora sometimes prefer to focus on differences between the groups--no one claims that there are no differences between Lebanese Christians and Saudi Arabian Muslims--the term "Arab American" is one that generally is used to describe the descendants of all such peoples.

I do not claim to be an expert on sociological characteristics of descendants of Lebanese Christians, but, anecdotally, I can tell you that my grandfather, who was the child of Lebanese Christians from the Zgartha/Eden region of North Lebanon, considered himself an Arab American. So does my father-in-law, also the child of Lebanese Christians from (a different part of) North Lebanon. It isn't that they didn't or don't acknowledge the differences among Arab sub-groups, or that they ignore that they descended from Phoenicians while people from, say, Yemen likely didn't, but they still considered all Arabic-speaking peoples to be fellow Arabs. This dichotomy is no different from that of Cuban-Americans who consider people from other parts of Latin-Americans to be fellow Latinos despite recognizing that Argentines and Hondurans and Cubans do not have identical cultures.

As for GergisBaki's characterization of the removal by myself and other editors of edits in which persons with non-Arab and non-Middle Eastern ancestry (such as Armenians from the Caucasus, and European Jews who immigrated in the 1930s to what later became the State of Israel) had been included in the article, such decisions were taken by consensus, with discussion in the Talk page. If the issue of including "Middle Eastern" in the title (so as not to exclude Assyrians and such) is creating more controversy than such article can withstand, then I guess that "Middle Eastern" can be excised from the title and only persons of Arab ancestry would be included (which would exclude Congressman Benjamin and Congresswoman Eshoo, as well as future non-Arab Middle Easterners in Congress), but certainly it wouldn't be grounds to delete the entire article.

In addition, it would be futile (and a violation of NPOV) to try to establish whether an American of Lebanese descent "identifies as Arab American" (particularly when we're talking about people long dead), as GergisBaki proposes, just as it would be inappropriate to second-guess the Latino bona fides of a Mexican-American who is proud of his Mexican heritage but is not into Pan-Hispanicism. There shouldn't be a test prepared by an editor with a particular POV to determine whether a descendant of an Arab-speaking people "truly is" an Arab.

So that's my two-cents' worth on this issue. As always, I welcome the opinion of other editors interested in this article. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 19:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * In the first place, Au, can we say you are in favor of deleting the page and creating a new Arab-American Congresspersons page, and scrapping Middle Eastern? I don't want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like you basically favor a delete while disagreeing on what the content of what the Arab American Congresspersons page should be.


 * On the issue of whether we should include all Lebanese: I still think Gergis has the right of this. You say that Arab is a sub-group of white but the reality is a lot fuzzier and more controversial than you think, which makes sense because racial categories like white/Caucasian are themselves social constructs, with only crude relations to biology. Rashida Taliba, for example, is generally referred to as a racial minority (i.e. non-white) by the press, despite being Arab. Danny Thomas, the legendary Lebanese American actor, was not referred to as Arab or non-white. And as Gergis states many ethnicities (Lebanese, Somalis, Sudanese, Egyptians, etc) can't agree about whether they are Arabs or something else.


 * Our own Wikipedia page Arab American makes self-identification a requirement of being an Arab in a way we don't make self-identification a requirement of being, for example, Japanese or African-American. We should uphold that on the Arab Americans page and (apart from obvious cases, e.g. people literally from Arabia) only include as Arabs those who identify this way.


 * To emphasize the lack of clarity as to the definition of Arab, let me note that the US Census Bureau is currently debating changing Arabs from Caucasian to some other race, based on the experience of many Arabs in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Americans#Arab-American_identity


 * In any case, regardless of who is more persuasive on an anthropological level, the fact remains that (because the issue is controversial) there is no way to verify Arab-ness apart from self-identification. And thus we shouldn't list people as Arab who don't identify as such. Steeletrap (talk) 20:22, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * My preference is not to exclude Assyrian Americans, who come from Arab-majority countries and share similar experiences in Americans as Arab immigrants and their descendants, just because the term "Middle Eastern" can lead to some hard cases. But I will support whatever the consensus is.


 * As for the whole "Arabs may not be white" spiel, that's absolutely POV, and something that is rejected by almost all Arabs (albeit perhaps not by Congresswoman Tlaib, who insists that any criticism of her is an attack on a "woman of color" despite her not being of sub-Saharan African, South Asian, East Asian or Amerindian ancestry). If the Census Bureau ends up adding Arabs as a separate category someday, it wouldn't be one that excludes then from the "white" category, but as an additional ethnicity category that would allow people to check that box *in addition to the box for "white," "black" (think Congresswoman Omar) or another race*.  It would be like that Census category labeled "Hispanic or Latino," which does not substitute or contradict the selection of racial categories by the person answering the Census.  It also should be noted that the Census Bureau has decided *against* adding "Arab" as a special category, so "is considering" is not a correct characterization of that particular goal of some Arab-American groups.


 * And I believe that your proposal to have a committee to determine who "identifies as Arab" as opposed to who descends from Arabic speakers from Arab countries would be an exercise in POV and a terrible way to determine inclusion in an article listing Arab-American congressmen. In America, Lebanese Americans are considered Arab Americans both by Arab groups and the popular at large, and the particular words of affiliation used by an individual shouldn't matter when compiling a list of Arab-American congressmen.


 * Question: Is your goal to exclude Lebanese Americans, as well as Assyrian Americans, from the article? Because your hand-wringing about nomenclature could be solved by changing the title to "List of Arab-American, Lebanese-American and Assyrian-American Members of Congress" (and to add "Kurdish-American," etc. to the title when other Middle Eastern ethnicities elect members of Congress someday).  AuH2ORepublican (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * My friend, you're full of PoV pushing. Saying almost all Arabs think they're white is PoV pushing, and ridiculous by the way. Have you looked at pictures of Saudis or Yemenis, or Upper (southern) Egyptians? Perhaps Lebanese Christians generally identify as white; that would make sense because, as Gergis has said, people from the northern Levant are genetically a lot closer to Mediterannean Europeans than they are to North Africans or Gulf Arabs. But Saudi Arabians, Yemenis, southern Egyptians, etc virtually never look or identify as white. There is massive racial diversity within Arab-speaking peoples. And Rashida Taliba (a Palestinian, i.e. someone of southern Levantine heritage) is seen as a minority as well; even her critics generally credit her identification in this regard.
 * Regardless, all of this is OR. You need sources saying all of these people on the page are Arabs. Right now you just have OR, and even if you're "right" that they should be considered 'white Arabs,' that's not enough when the definition of Arab is contested as concerns Lebanese Christians. Wikipedia itself, in its entry on Lebanese, notes that the Arab identification is controversial as applied to Lebanese, and rejected by many. Steeletrap (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * By the way, Gergis Baki's proposal that we should identify Lebanese as Arabs only if they themselves identify this way is supported by the Wikipedia Manuel of Style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Identity. "When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by reliable sources. If it isn't clear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses." In other words, unless we have a consensus of reliable sources saying x is/was an Arab, we should not identify him or her as an Arab unless he/she publicly identifies this way.
 * Finally, the goal isn't to exclude Lebanese from being called Arab. It is excluding Lebanese who do not identify as Arab from having an Arab identity imposed on them. Any Lebanese who identifies as Arab should be included in the list. Our only difference is that you want to impose, based on OR, an Arab identity on these Lebanese Christians who almost certainly rejected it. Steeletrap (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

So, @Steeletrap, your problem is with the word "Arab" (and "Middle Eastern," of course). In that case, let's just call the article "List of Arab-American, Lebanese-American and Assyrian-American Members of Congress" and avoid the whole imbroglio.

Your proposal to obtain a statement from members of Congress as to whether they identify with the word "Arab" seems rather silly, particularly when it comes to the dead ones. And why do you assume that Lebanese-Americans don't want to be listed in an article about Arab-Americans? Why not include them but let those who wish to opt out to say that they should be removed? It is biased to assume, with no evidence whatsoever, that a particular Lebanese American rejects the label "Arab American" just because many Lebanese Christians wish to differentiate themselves from Arab Muslims. @GergisBaki twice removed from the article's introduction a factual statement about Senator James Abourezk, a child of Lebanese Christians, being the first Arab American to serve in the U.S. Senate, because "Lebanese don't consider themselves Arabs." Now, Senator Abourezk was one of two co-founders (among with James Zogby) of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (see https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-american-hustle-does_b_4541307?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIJWRuk7hGpIa09XQWkU0JS3x5bf7urSF0BC-dWuJloLj1RIvo_VRsjVNUwcsfvY2iFcGK8jDwdDIbf_t2nsOKNjbFa4m8UKfnXFza7lGyPUovnu3uyzI022X3_FAx-dW6FnT4zkWMj2eHujvw639zyXUsgxcVFEOGhRzQMuixaV), but I guess that he's a Lebanese Christian and thus not a real Arab. (Do you know how I learned that about Abourezk? I went to his Wikipedia article and clicked on one of the sources cited therein.)

Call me a "PoV pusher" if you wish, but I'm not the one trying to exclude Lebanese Americans from an article based on some subjective standard. If you don't like the term "Arab-American" as applied to Lebanese Americans, then let's add "Lebanese-Americans" to the title and settle this once and for all. And if we add "Assyrian-American" as well, and, when a Kurdish American, etc., is elected to Congress, add such other Middle-Eastern ethnicities to the title as are agreed by consensus, then we can get to the same place without inviting controversy. A rose by any other name still smells as sweet. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 22:38, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Gentlemen, at times this discussion has either become silly or has verged on the absurd; appointing a group to determine which Lebanese Americans identify as "Arab", (and this has to be sourced) as if personal identities are totally exclusive of each other. Moreover reputable sources cannot always be found for distinct "identities". In today's modern world, people maintain overlapping identities; one could identify as "Arab" (politically-speaking), "Arab-American" (politically-Speaking), Mediterranean, Aramean-Canaanite (ethnically-speaking), and Lebanese-American (nationally and politically-speaking). Don't forget the designation "Arab" can be interpreted in two ways, ethnically or politically. Before the 19th century the "Arab" designation was mostly ethnic in scope and referred to the peoples of the Arabian peninsula. In the early 1800s and onward the "Arab" designation became very political starting with the Arab renaissance movement, spearheaded by writers and intellectuals from the Arabic-speaking world and then by politicians, most prominently by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser during the heady days of the Arab nationalist movement, which peaked in the late 1950s.


 * Moreover, the Pan Arab-American movement is a by-product of the immigration process, which entailed Syrians immigrating to the U.S in the 1880s and was further expanded when other immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries arrived to the U.S after the 1960s. This Pan Arab-American movement became much larger and more emotional in political scope for members of the community during 1960s America; this said movement was influenced by the Chicano-American movement, the Civil Rights movement and the 1967 Israeli war. One can delineate this movement has produced many tangible efforts, such as notable Arab-American political strategists who are actively trying to shape the political discourse on the many conflicts and issues of this region to the foundation of the Arab-American National museum in Dearborn, Michigan. I don't know if the concerned editors have been to the aforementioned museum as I have, but I can tell you that a lot of the prominent Americans who hail from the Arab World are included in the museum.


 * Anyways, there's too much I can say about this topic, if the designation "Arab-American" is problematic, we should change the title. I will think of one. I suggest we describe in concrete terms what we agree and don't agree about the employed words of the title, this will perhaps make a consensus easier to achieve. I will start with the following:


 * 1) The Eurocentric and highly subjective term "Middle East" should be removed quickly. This French term has no value whatsoever, and it is open to different interpretations as to what constitutes the "Middle East". Some political scientists exaggerate by including Afghanistan and Pakistan in the "Middle East"; which I maintain is preposterous.


 * 2) Assyrians and Somalis should not be included. Assyrians almost never employ the "Arab" designation when identifying themselves and have no desire whatsoever to be grouped with them. (There is plenty that can be said of that) Even though Somalia has Arabic designated as an official language, the vast majority of Somalis identify with the Somali language. The minority who do identify as Arabs are very conservative religious Muslims. Children of Somali parents in the West, overwhelmingly don't speak Arabic, they speak Somali. George Al-Shami (talk) 08:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems like everyone other than Au agrees that the article is extremely problematic in its current form, but think it call be salvaged if it is renamed to "Arab American Congresspersons", and then we re-evaluate the inclusion of various persons (the problem with including all Leb anese Christians as Arabs, as I have mentioned, is that this is based on OR; since Lebanese=Arab is a contested definition, as the Wikipedia entry on Lebanese itself describes, their inclusion is based on OR; instead we should only include those Lebanese who identify as Arab). I actually would be inclined to agree with this in lieu of an AfD, though my vote is delete for now.
 * My only question is: Is it possible to rename articles? If so, can a more experienced WP user explain how do we do that? GergisBaki (talk) 13:37, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

The threshold issue is whether descendants from native inhabitants of Arab countries are a distinct enough group that a list of those of them who have served in Congress is a matter worthy of an encyclopedia article. If the consensus is that such an article should exist, the issues remaining are (i) which descendants of such native inhabitants of Arab countries should be so listed and (ii) what do we call the article?

Regarding the first question, it seems wrong to me to say that an Arabic-speaker from Syria or Iraq should be included but a Neo-Aramaic speaker from Syria or Iraq shouldn't. Assyrians/Chaldeans have lived in those countries for millennia and, when they emigrate to the United States, they face many of the same issues as do Arabic-speakers from such countries. Assyrians/Chaldeans are native inhabitants of Arab countries, and I don't think that they should be excluded from the article.

I also wholly oppose the notion that only such Lebanese as taken an affirmative act to "identify as Arab" (whatever that means) should be included in the article. The vibrant Arab community in Dearborn, MI was built by Lebanese and Syrians who thought of themselves as Lebanese or Syrian first and Arab as an afterthought, but without them the more recent pan-Arab immigrants would have been starting out from scratch. If a Sunni thinks of himself as a Sunni first and as a Muslin second, that does not make him any less Muslim; the same holds for persons from Arab countries whose main loyalty is to their particular country or tribe. (This reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia, when Anthony Quinn's character tells Lawrence that he doesn't know what an Arab is, but rattles off the names of a half-dozen tribes within Saudi Arabia, implying that their loyalty was only to the tribe.) In any event, it is easy to confirm that a person's ancestors emigrated from an Arab country, and much harder to tell whether he or she "identifies as Arab" irrespective of the subjective standard that one imposed. I would stick to objective criteria.

As for the second question, to avoid the term "Middle Easterner" (which, unbeknownst to me, has fallen into disfavor, and which leads to controversy due to changing definitions of the term), and in order to make sure that all Lebanese-Americans and Syrian-Americans are included without the need for a subjective litmus test, perhaps we should retitle the article "List of Lebanese-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Palestinian-Americans and Assyrian-Americans in Congress" and add a new demonym to the title whenever someone from a different ethnicity from the Arab World is added. (Somalia is not an Arab country, and IMHO Congresswoman Omar shouldn't be in the article, but there was consensus that she should be included and thus she was; by changing the name there would be no doubt that she should be excluded.)

What do other editors think? AuH2ORepublican (talk) 17:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * List of Lebanese/Syrian/Palestinian Americans in the United States Congress is not bad and if AuH2ORepublican wants to add Assyrians to the title then I would support that too; however the problem with that title is that it would have to be periodically updated, let's say if a Jordanian or Egyptian American gets elected to the Congress.


 * Another suggestion, List of descendants from Arabic-speaking Americans in the United States Congress, the wording is a bit clumsy, but something to that effect would include all the people the concerned editors would want to include. If any of you have a better way to articulate the idea I described then I would support that too. The good thing about this title is that it includes the adjective Arabic and does not impose an identity on anyone, in that it merely states that they descended from Arabic-speaking Americans; which is indeed factual as even the Assyrian immigrants who immigrated to the US spoke Arabic when they arrived. Moreover it mirrors the consensus that was reached when hyphenated Americans categories were removed from biographical articles and replaced with a descent category. For example, unless specifically mentioned by a person of Arabic-speaking descent, we would not know if they identify as Arab Americans, but if we add from Arabic-speaking descent, then that simply makes it factual and neutral and removes the controversial identity part.


 * I am pinging to join the discussion, he has contributed to similar discussions in the past and has written good articles about the peoples of the Arabic-speaking world. George Al-Shami (talk) 20:00, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@George Al-Shami, you wrote "[t]he problem with that title is that it would have to be periodically updated if a Jordanian or Egyptian American gets elected to the Congress." You are absolutely correct, but if that's what it takes to make everyone happy, I think that it's worth going through that extra trouble when someone whose ancestors came from another Arab country is elected to Congress. I would not recommend calling the article "List of descendants from Arabic-speaking Americans in the United States Congress" because not only would it exclude Assyrians/Chaldeans, but it also could be deemed to include someone with a British father who had learned Arabic while in foreign service or something. Moreover, you'd always have some wise-ass say "Congressman X was born in Michigan to Arabic-speaking parents from Syria, but his parents never became U.S. citizens, so the Congressman isn't a descendant of an Arabic-speaking *American*. More seriously, it could be used to exclude someone whose Lebanese or Palestinian parents emigrated to South America or Central America but never to the U.S.--for example, had Rashida Tlaib been born in Nicaragua, where her Palestinian parents first emigrated, and moved to the U.S. on her own as a teenager, then she would not descend from Arabic-speaking Americans yet clearly would be a Palestinian-American once she was naturalized.  AuH2ORepublican (talk) 20:46, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Let's proceed one issue at a time. If you guys rename the page to "Arab American Congresspersons" (or something to this effect) I will close the AfD. Then we can debate whether we should use OR (our opinions about who is Arab, which is a controversial issue) or reliable sources to figure out whom to list as an Arab American. GergisBaki (talk) 11:15, 31 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm an Arab American, but this is not my area of focus on wikipedia. From the outset the solution seems simple: rename this article for Arab Americans exclusively. The U.S. Census groups Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians as subcategories of "Arab" so it wouldn't be "original research" to say that Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian Americans are Arab Americans. The Census is certainly an imperfect source as it includes Berbers and Kurds under "Arab", which is false but that's mostly irrelevant to this article until we have a Moroccan or non-Assyrian/Chaldean Iraqi American congressperson. Lebanese Americans are a pillar of the country's Arab community, but if there are individual cases where Arab identity has been rejected then those individuals should be removed. I'd say it's pretty similar to Hispanics, who are very diverse yet share the same language and geographic region of origin and have some basic cultural similarities and are officially recognized as a common heritage group. The Census does not count "Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs" under "Arab", they have their own category, while Somalis are grouped under "Sub-Saharan Africans". Both these groups would be excluded at least on these grounds (in addition to other reasons), but we would be avoiding original research. Assyrians in America and the Arab world are pretty unanimous in rejecting Arab identity for linguistic and cultural reasons not just political ones and the argument that they've shared similar experiences and origins as the Syrians and Lebanese is understandable yet not convincing enough and indeed relies on O.R. unless reliable sources indicate otherwise. The alternative "List of Lebanese/Syrian/Palestinian Americans" is not bad, but it seems odd for a title and then more importantly the question becomes on what basis are we grouping those three particular heritage groups together? What do they have in common? And if we add Yemenis and Egyptians should that time come, well then what do those five groups have in common? And the answer is a common mother tongue (Arabic) and geographic region (Arab world) of origin. --Al Ameer (talk) 15:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Al Ameer, I have absolutely no problem using the term "Arab Americans" to refer to what the Census Bureau considers Arab Americans (which certainly includes Lebanese). The only reason that I suggested the more cumbersome route of listing each individual Arab sub-group in the title is because several editors are advocating for the deletion of the article if it refers to Lebanese Americans as "Arab Americans" absent their specific and public self-identification as "Arab Americans." So if we can reach a consensus that Lebanese-American congressmen would be included under the term "Arab-American congressmen," then separately listing "Lebanese-American," "Palestinian-American," etc. in the title would be unnecessary.

As for Assyrian Americans, I am well aware that they are not Arab Americans under any plausible definition of the term. That being said, their ancestors are native residents of Arab countries, and the immigrant experience of, say, a Syrian Christian is not markedly different if he's an Assyrian or if he's an Arab. For these reasons, I think that they should be included in the article. If the consensus is that they should be removed, then so be it, but if they are to be kept in the article then I propose that "Assyrian-American" be added to the title, given that the term "Arab American" does not encompass Assyrian Americans while "Middle Eastern American" is overbroad and problematic.

Somali Americans, on the other hand, are neither Arabs nor descendants of native peoples of Arab countries (most Somalis have some Arab admixture in their ancestry, but it's from a millennium ago), have a very different immigrant experience from Arabs and Assyrians/Chaldeans, and should not be included in the article (although they are included in the articles on African-American members of Congress). One thing that is clear from this discussion is that there is a consensus that Congresswoman Omar should not be included in this article. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 16:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)


 * You're generally right about the similar immigrant experience and other factors but we need a reliable source or two backing that up. I think entering in Assyrians opens up a pandora's box, the criteria for inclusion becoming increasingly subjective. The debate about Lebanese (Christians?) being included under the Arab American umbrella might be better held on the talk pages of Lebanese Americans or Arab Americans and then reflected here. In the meantime, I don't see a problem with adding a qualifier to this article that not all Lebanese Americans (and even Syrians, Palestinians and others) identify as Arab for whatever reasons assuming that we have reliable sources to back it up. --Al Ameer (talk) 17:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * To be clear, my opposition to including Lebanese Christians as Arab is rooted primarily in my concern about OR. As Wikipedia's own page on Lebanese says, the inclusion of Lebanese in the "Arab" category. It is not up to us to determine whether they are or are not Arabs. Instead, we should go off of RS/self-identification of people, listing only those as Arabs who publicly identify as such or are described as such in RS. GergisBaki (talk) 09:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@GergisBaki, with all due respect, if only such Lebanese as "self-identify as Arab" to your satisfaction are included in the article, the correct name for the article should be "List of Pan-Arabists in the U.S. Congress," and such article would not be appropriate for an encyclopedia. Lebanon is an Arab country and the U.S. Census Bureau classifies Lebanese as an Arab ethnicity, so one would be deviating from NPOV, and manufacturing a controversy where none exists, were one to exclude Lebanese-Americans from the article based on their individual points of view regarding Arab identity. Your point regarding how many Lebanese Christians nowadays do not describe themselves as "Arabs" is well taken, but the way to deal with that reality is to add a sentence to the introductory paragraph explaining that those listed in the article are descendants from immigrants from Arab countries (or immigrants from such countries themselves) and that inclusion on the list should not be understood to constitute an assertion regarding such individuals' self-identification as Arabs. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 15:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's fairly easy to find sources indicating how people identify. Affinity groups like AAS list people with their permission. If they are listed on such lists we can infer they identify as Arab. If they don't (like CHarlie CHrist, who is 1/8 Lebanese but you list as Arab on the page) inclusion of them is OR.
 * Do you have a source for your claim that the Census Bureau calls Lebanese Arabs? I was under the impression that the only controversy regarding the Census Bureau definition of Middle Eastern/North African was that they are all labeled as white (something that the Obama Admin planned to change, but the Trump Admin overruled). Is there a definition of Arab in the Census Bureau more specific than white? GergisBaki (talk) 08:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Honestly dude I think you just need to read up a bit more on the diaspora, which is extremely diverse in terms of identity, skin color, genetics, etc. You claimed early that people descended from Arabic-speaking countries are all white which is just ludicrous. Do you actually think this is a white man? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halim_El-Dabh (He's a Copt of southern Egyptian descent and his look is typical of Upper Egyptians.) http://www.halimeldabh.com/ GergisBaki (talk) 08:26, 2 August 2019 (UTC)


 * The debate is not whether Lebanese and Upper Egyptians genetically belong to the same genetic race. They don't. Even within those nationalities there is considerable diversity. George al-Shami's summary about the modern evolution of Arab identity is pretty spot on and he is also right in that there's a lot more to say about it. Yet, there is an understanding that an Arab is someone whose mother tongue is Arabic and hails from that massive, contiguous region of native Arabic speakers. That's one of the main reasons why Berbers, Kurds, Armenians and Assyrians who live in that same geographic space are not counted as Arabs (they have their own mother tongue) without controversy. That doesn't make a native Arabic speaker a member of the classical Arabian race or declare that an Algerian and an Omani have the same origins (again, they probably don't). The Arab world is an extremely diverse place. Hence, the comparisons raised between Arab Americans and Hispanic Americans (Americans of Mexican, Dominican and Argentinian descent might look and be considerably different from each other but are still Hispanic/Latino Americans). The question is whether Lebanese Americans fall under the larger umbrella category of Arab Americans and the answer generally is yes. In their reported ancestry compilation, the U.S. Census lists Lebanese Americans under the larger category of Arab Americans.. I'm sure they don't further inquire from a person identifying as Lebanese, Syrian or Palestinian American if they also explicitly identify as Arab or not. For that reason (and others which I noted above), it's not a *perfect* source, but it's also not original research to name Lebanese American congresspeople in a list of Arab American congresspeople. In my opinion, the best solution out of a series of imperfect proposals is to name this list for Arab Americans (not Assyrians or Somalis) and add reliably sourced qualifiers that certain sub-groups within Arab Americans, namely Lebanese but possibly others as well, may not universally identify as Arab or that they solely identify as "Lebanese", "Palestinian", etc. Charlie Crist could be discussed afterward and if there are cases where we have sources holding that certain individuals on this list reject Arab identity, then they could be removed altogether without controversy. --Al Ameer (talk) 13:29, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I composed this response prior to seeing Al Ameer's comment, so my apologies if there's an overlap between what the two of us wrote:

GergisBaki, you are engaged in POV by trying to divide people as "real Arabs" and "non-Pan-Arab-identifying (according to your personal criteria)" instead of using the definition of "Arab American" generally used in the United States (the article, after all, is about U.S. congressmen) and officially promulgated by the U.S. Census Bureau. As Al Ameer wrote in this very page, "The U.S. Census groups Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians as subcategories of "Arab" so it wouldn't be "original research" to say that Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian Americans are Arab Americans." This is evident from the census forms themselves: The census invites people to report Arab ethnicity, and to sublist more specific Arab ethnicities, and includes "Lebanese" in the examples of more specific Arab ethnicities. Moreover, the Census Bureau has long classified persons who list "Lebanese" (or Syrian, Palestinian, etc.) as "Arab" in its population reports. See, e.g., https://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-21.pdf. In other words, the U.S. Census Bureau classifies someone who identifies as Lebanese as an "Arab," without an additional litmus test or shibboleth. So by excluding those who claim Lebanese ancestry from the definition of "Arab" unless they jump through the hoops that you have concocted, it is you who is engaging in Original Research and/or Synthesis.

Besides, even if you got a consensus and managed to turn the article into a list of U.S. congressmen who publicly have identified as Pan-Arab (which I insist would not be an appropriate article due to its insurmountable POV components, not to mention that if would fail notability), it will be exceedingly difficult for you to determine whether the Arab-American congressmen in the list "self-identify as Arab" even if you came up with an objective definition of what "self-identifying as an Arab" means (although from the sound of it you mean @identifying as a Pan-Arabist"). People don't necessarily sign up with Arab-American groups, particularly those with a political agenda; heck, you mentioned the "AAS" as if it were some sort of invaluable resource, and I've never even heard of it.  And how would you deal with Lebanese-American congressmen who died 20-30 years ago?  You already stuck your foot in your mouth when you edited the main article to remove a reference to James Abourezk as the first Arab-American U.S. Senator because he's Lebanese and there was no evidence that he "self-identified" as Arab American, yet Abourezk founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1980. If you couldn't bother to take a minute to read Abourezk's Wikipedia article, how are you going to determine that all of those other congressmen truly "self-identify as Arab"? And if you do spend hours poring through public statements and private correspondence of every Lebanese-American (and Syrian-American and Palestinian-American, I assume, or are they exempt from your suspicions?) ever to have served in Congress, how in the world would that not constitute Original Research?

Finally, you appear to be obsessed with the question of race, which is wholly irrelevant to this discussion. Arabs, as a group, are classified as white by the U.S. Census Bureau, but if the Census Bureau turned around and classified Arabs as "Asian or Pacific Islander" it would not make any difference in who is an Arab. (BTW, U.S. immigration laws originally classified Arabs as Asians, and thus subject to immigration restrictions, until Lebanese and Syrians--the founders of the Arab-American community--convinced the government to classify Arabs as white.) If you wish to argue that not every Arab is white, I'm not going to disagree with you, particularly given that Southern Egyptians speak Arabic and consider the selves (and are considered by others to be) Arabs while having substantial sub-Saharan African admixture for historical reasons. But, again, that is neither here nor there. What is ridiculous for you to claim is that my blue-eyed, white-skinned Palestinian Muslim friend is not white because he's undisputedly an Arab and thus can't be white, and then to apply that same faulty logic to coaim that indisputedly white Lebanese cannot be Arabs because Arabs are not white. You can't redefine the word "Arab" to mean "dark-skinned Arab" and then assert that Lebanese who (for obvious reasons) don't classify themselves as "dark-skinned Arabs" thus are not "Arabs." AuH2ORepublican (talk) 14:04, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * This is getting too in the woods, and you are spending a lot of energy responding to arguments I haven't made. My argument is simple. The definition of Lebanese as Arabs is (according to RS) controversial. Because it is not an undisputed fact that Lebanese=Arabs, we cannot engage in OR to decide that they are. Therefore, we should only count those Lebanese (or Copts or Somalis or members of other groups that often don't identify as Arabs) as Arab who identify as such. GergisBaki (talk) 14:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * An easy fix to this problem would simply be to change the page to "list of Lebanese-American Congresspersons," since almost everyone on the page is Lebanese. THen there is no OR issue. GergisBaki (talk) 14:33, 2 August 2019 (UTC)


 * As I wrote above, I, speaking only for myself, would have no problem with changing the title of the article to "List of Lebanese-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Palestinian-Americans and Assyrian-Americans in Congress" and then adding a new demonym to the title whenever someone from a different specific ethnicity from the Arab World is added. If a consensus can be achieved for such change, it would have my vote.  And if the consensus is that Assyrians from Syria are so different from Arabs from Syria that they should not be listed in the same article, then I reluctantly would support excluding Congressmen Benjamin and Eshoo and changing the name of the article to "List of Lebanese-Americans, Syrian-Americans and Palestinian-Americans in Congress" (and then adding a new demonym to the title whenever someone from a different Arab ethnicity is added).  In either case, I agree that Somali-Americans should not be listed, which means Congresswoman Omar should be excluded.


 * Regarding whether someone who is 1/8th Lebanese should be listed in the article, that is a good question, and one that should be discussed in the Talk page after a decision is made regarding whether the article stays or goes and what it's name should be. But please note that Charlie Crist is *not* 1/8th Lebanese, he is 1/4th Lebanese.  In an interview with Jewish Insider published on April 10, 2017, Charlie Crist asserted "My father’s mother Mary Khoury immigrated from Lebanon from a village north of Beirut around 1912."  https://crist.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=512  So Crist is 1/4th Lebanese, which should be deemed sufficient for an article listing Lebanese-American members of Congress--and, in fact, almost all newspaper articles about current Lebanese Americans in Congress list Crist. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2019 (UTC)


 * OK, this is as good a place as any to mention this. I was looking at the Arab American Institute's "Arab American Roster" (see https://www.aaiusa.org/arab-american-roster) earlier today to verify whether the Arab American Institute actually includes Ilhan Omar on its list (it does, despite Somalis not being Arabs under any definition), and whether it lists the Lebanese Americans currently serving in Congress (it does, including 1/4 Lebanese Charlie Crist, Garrett Graves and Darin LaHood), when I noticed that the AAI also lists Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL), who immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador at age 14 (Mucarsel is her maiden name, and Powell her married name), as an Arab-American elected official.  I did some Googling and found that (i) the Mucarsel family in Ecuador is of Lebanese ancestry and (ii) Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was described as being of "Ecuadoran and Lebanese descent" in NBC News's article on the 2018 elections: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-minority-voters-helped-drive-democrats-gains-u-s-house-n933706.  I don't think that the fact that her Lebanese ancestors immigrated to Ecuador instead of to America should be held against her, anymore than John H. Sununu's Lebanese ancestors having immigrated to El Salvador (where his mother was born and raised) should be held against him.  (John H. Sununu's father was of Palestinian ancestry, so his son, Senator John E. Sununu, would be listed in the article anyhow, but the principle still holds.)  When a consensus is reached regarding the existence and name of the article, I think that Debbie Mucarsel-Powell should be added as well. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 19:53, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't really edit on Wikipedia im just a regular guy but this shouldn't be an Arab purity text, this is about people with links to the Arabworld, that includes Lebs, Somalis, and any other Arab League member state, there is also another label you can go by Semitic/Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic like the language family which again includes all the people discussed here plus Jews. 2600:1700:4460:41A0:FF:5866:3DCA:7657 (talk) 23:32, 2 August 2019 (UTC)randomguy


 * Comment This discussion page was created without the afd2 template and never transcluded to a daily log. Fixed now--I have no opinion at this time on the merits of the nomination itself. --Finngall talk  16:08, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 16:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Procedural Keep as this is a completely ill-formed and improper nomination which seems like more of a talkpage discussion in AfD space; nobody is going to read through this novel of text that should have a deletion rationale of at most, one succinct paragraph, and which was never placed on any kind of daily log, so it needs to be WP:TNT'ed (I hold no opinion on the actual article here, just of how awful this nom structure is). GergisBaki, please read Articles for deletion and everyone else, let's also read through the AfD guidelines.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 01:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete This classification goes against both census racial classes and how many of these people have self identified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 08:57, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 08:57, 26 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep The deletion nom is rambling and doesn't follow any standard deletion guideline. While I could almost appreciate the novel rationale, it has no basis in reality. Clearly we can determine who is and isn't Arab or Middle Eastern, and any gray areas can be solved by talk page discussion or RfC. Plenty of sources describe these congressfolks as Arab/Middle Eastern, or show their Arab/Middle Eastern origins/heritage. Also see GoldwaterRepublican's very well reasoned discussion comment. Captain Eek  Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 06:12, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.