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.

He 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.

People 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.

Actually Arabs were living in Syria in 9th century BC.

9th century BC is ~100 years more recent than 3,000 years 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

>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.

> 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.

I thought that the original Arabs came out of Yemen.

Syrians consider themselves Arab and are so according to most definitions. Even the name of the country is Syrian Arab Republic.

As 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.

"We all know that DNA and genes mean nothing for success."

Actually, in the Patriarchy, they do.

(ducks & runs)

"We all know that DNA and genes mean nothing for success"

No. Please explain.

I'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.

Many 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.

I'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.

Reasonable 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.

>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.

like who? curious if you have a few examples.

From the article: Khalil Gibran.

Bill Gates should be in a "great American humanitarians" series.

Why exactly should Steve Jobs be on a stamp?

This gives me an idea, Post Office should sell application fees for stamp ideas like license plates to fund their insane retirement plan requirements.

But then we might end up with confederate flag stamps like Georgia plates.

Of course you can print almost anything as your own stamps legally now. And in the end I think people spend a whole second if any time at all looking at a stamp.

> Why exactly should Steve Jobs be on a stamp?

Iconic figure of the late 20th/early 21st century IT revolution?

Led a company that was involved in multiple hugely-successful, era-defining products (the Apple II, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad) along with many industry leading products (the Macbook Air and iMac to name but two)?

Had a unique management style - I don't mean the unpleasantness, I mean the laser-sharp focus on a few product categories and on pushing smart people to deliver amazing things that even they didn't think they could deliver - a management style which everyone tries to emulate in some ways these days...?

Founded, built up, was kicked out of, came back into and rescued what became for a little while the most valuable company in the world by market cap?

Any of the above is reason enough for a postage stamp, of all things. All of them together seem to make it a no-brainer.

And yes, Bill Gates no doubt deserves a postage stamp too - but I'd argue it's for his relentless delivery of Microsoft's mission: a computer on every desk and in every home. They achieved it and they changed the world with that.

I've never found any of these reasons very compelling. Esp. that various Apple devices "define an era." I shudder to think that history will look back on the last twenty years and think primarily of iPads and iPods, and even worse that a manager will be considered the genius behind it all. Certainly he's an inspiration for business people, and maybe that's enough for a postage stamp, but I'd pick plenty of other people before Jobs.

For all the people ranting how great iPhones are at the moment, just look back 6 or 7 years to the "revolutionary scrollwheel!" rants that were going on back then. Seems kind of irrelevant and unimportant these days.

Because he made more money than most people though was possible.

“We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth.” - Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Nobel prize winner for chemistry in 2009

You know how difficult it is to remove "religion" (using it as a general term; so nationalism is a part of) from humans? Very difficult. It's part of our biology. Although thousands of years ago it was crucial for our survival, it is primitive behaviour right now and destroys us unfortunately.

The title appears to be link-bait in order to discuss the (so far unsuccessful) effort to get another American of Syrian decent (Khalil Gibran) on a postage stamp.

Big mistake calling Gibran Syrian... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran

Actually, even calling him American is wrong. From the Wikipedia article:

> The young emigrant from Lebanon who came through Ellis Island in 1895 never became an American citizen; he loved his birthplace too much

Thank you for correcting me, I skimmed the article quickly after realizing it wasn't really about Jobs and clearly misread something.

I've always found it ironic that the same people that claim race does not exist are the same people who encourage and support these types of race-based promotions and classifications (well, as long as they are non-white).

I find it ironic that the people who claim to be against racism actually seem to promote it with positive discrimination policies. Positive discrimination for one person is negative discrimination for the rest.

Truly non racist behaviour would not mention the race, and treat everyone as equal.

(I also find the attitude in the States kind of strange, as there is a lot more mention of racial background than in the UK. If someone "does well" in life and is from a racial minority, the background is pretty much always mentioned).

Americans claim, he is our, Buddhist claim, he is our, and now Arab. Solely because of his success, not because, who he was.

Well said.

So how many Americans will be described as X American where X is any other country? How about European American? If not, why not?

European background is not considered 'interesting' because most Americans have some.

If someone's a first generation immigrant (whether from Europe, Africa, or elsewhere, then that's considered interesting).

For example, one of the most dynamic young African-American entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, immigrated to the US.

Speaking of European Americans... I never really got if the term "Latin" in the US applies to those of Latin European descent (Spanish, French, Romanian, etc.), olny to Latin Americans (Mexican, Brazilian, etc.) or if it means something completely different??

Anyone can help me there?

You know Europe is not a country, Although Americans seam to think Africa is :)

Last I checked Europe and Africa are both continents.

Is it just me who thinks this heritage bullshit needs to stop? Why are people just content knowing that someone of their (or certain) heritage is the one who made it big? My question has always been what have I or you done or contributed? Granted I am far off from doing anything substantial in life but please, let's be a little mature here.

Is being on a stamp even a good thing anymore? I'm not sure I'd want people to associate my picture with snail mail.

-"We've put your picture on a mail stamp. Now people will see your face everytime they send mail".

-"You mean my face will be pasted in their signature?"

How much of an Arab was Steve Jobs? Why not Swiss?

He was adopted from Egypt that is as arab you can get.

WTF? Steve Jobs was not adopted from Egypt.

His father was Arabic, not his mother.

I guess i had my facts wrong then.

nature and nurture... you can't dismiss either. one is your genetic wiring (hardware) and the other is your indelible early childhood experience (firmware) ... and then there's your re-programmable self (software) ... His bio father being from that part of the world means his dad's genetic make is probably shared with 14% of Semites (Jews and Arabs of that area), 75% of south east Turks and southern Greeks, and 10% of sub-Saharan Africans. This is by no means an informed analysis of his dad's genetic heritage. Just an educated guess.

I know two identical twins (well they have an unidentical triplet sister as well). Interestingly they have reasonably different personalities - the nice one and the arse (relatively speaking).

and 1% saint or devil, pick one...

Oh I see, arabs are opposed to differential treatment based on race only when they are getting the short stick.

Yeah, bro, because getting your picture on a postage stamp totally makes up for 40+ years of systematic racial vilification.

No bro, because you don't have the right to scream racism while you have arab organisations who fight to "put pictures of an arab poet on a postage stamp".

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp, sample a look back you look and you find nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check.