America’s “hidden” Armenians
We have heard and read a lot about the hidden Armenians in Turkey. We know how they became hidden during and after the Armenian Genocide. Thousands of orphaned young boys and girls were taken in by Turkish or Kurdish families and raised as Muslims. Many others converted to Islam to avoid being killed. They basically had no choice.
Who and what are the “hidden” Armenians in the United States today? Are they hidden by force (as in Turkey) or by choice? America has been called the melting pot of nations for a reason. Almost every race, ethnic and religious population currently exists in the United States. The freedoms and opportunities offered here were almost non-existent in the countries from which immigrants came. Many who arrived by the hundreds of thousands settled in communities with others from their homeland. They established churches, community centers and other organizations, forming ghettos.
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https://armenianweekly.com/2012/01/22/hamparian-were-all-armenians/
Surely the figure for German Americans must be higher than 10 million. They should totally take DNA tests!
Correct. It should be between 40-45 million with Italians close to 20 million.
Assimilation is a double-edged sword for every diaspora, regardless of country. The biggest threat facing the Armenian Diaspora, and every diaspora, is assimilation. Any ethnic group who is living outside its homeland as an ethnic minority, inevitably assimilates to the larger society, when parents don’t pass the language, culture and traditions, and through intermarriage. There is the urge by the diaspora to integrate into the larger society while trying to keep its language, culture and traditions alive and pass it on to the next generations. On the other hand, there is the powerful and inevitable process of assimilation, in which diaspora identity becomes diluted and even disappears, with only surnames being left as a vestige of one’s heritage. The much larger and older Italian, German or Irish diasporas, whether they live in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil or Argentina, are virtually fully assimilated, to the point where the only visible vestige of their heritage today is only their surname. Hence the dilemma.