Becoming American, Remaining Ethnic: The Case of Armenian-americans in Central California (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

227 Pages·2008·3.08 MB·English

by  Matthew A. Jendian

The New Americans
Recent Immigration and American Society

Edited by
Steven J. Gold and Rubén G. Rumbaut

A Series from LFB Scholarly
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Becoming American, Remaining
Ethnic
The Case of Armenian-Americans in Central
California

Matthew A. Jendian

LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC
New York 2008
Copyright © 2008 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jendian, Matthew A. (Matthew Abram), 1968-
Becoming American, remaining ethnic : the case of Armenian-
Americans in central California / Matthew A. Jendian.
p. cm. -- (The new Americans : recent immigration and American
society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59332-261-8 (alk. paper)
1. Armenian Americans--Cultural assimilation--California--Fresno
County. 2. Armenian Americans--California--Fresno County--Ethnic
identity. 3. Armenian Americans--California--Fresno County--
Statistics. 4. Social surveys--California--Fresno County. 5. Ethnicity--
California--Fresno County. 6. Interethnic marriage--California--Fresno
County. 7. Fresno County (Calif.)--Ethnic relations. 8. Fresno County
(Calif.)--Social conditions. I. Title.
F868.F8J46 2008
305.891'992079482--dc22

2008021807

ISBN 978-1-59332-261-8

Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: ASSIMILATION AND ETHNICITY.........................................1
CHAPTER 2: UNCOVERING ETHNICITY..................................................11
CHAPTER 3: ARMENIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE..................................39
CHAPTER 4: ARMENIANS IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA..............................61
CHAPTER 5: BECOMING AMERICAN, REMAINING ARMENIAN...............73
CHAPTER 6: ETHNIC IDENTITY..............................................................99
CHAPTER 7: INTERMARRIAGE..............................................................115
CHAPTER 8: ETHNICITY IN LATER GENERATIONS...............................141
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS..................................149
APPENDIX...........................................................................................161
REFERENCES.......................................................................................191
INDEX.................................................................................................205

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This publication is a result of many years of study, research, guidance,
and reflection on the issues of assimilation and ethnicity as they pertain
to Armenian-Americans. First and most importantly, I would like to
thank the respondents, the 294 men and women of Armenian descent in
Central California who participated in the study.
For the insights regarding ethnicity and ethnic identity contained
herein, I am intellectually indebted to Anny Bakalian, John Tinker,
Richard Alba, Milton Gordon, Herbert Gans, and Ed Ransford.
I want to acknowledge and thank Roseann Giarrusso for sharing
her methodological expertise in survey construction, research design,
sampling, strategies to increase response rates, etc. as well as Eun Mee
Kim, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotello, and Elaine Bell Kaplan.
A number of others were of assistance in a variety of ways,
including Richard Hrair Dekmejian, Nomie Derderian, Barlow Der
Mugrdechian, Bob Fischer, Steve Gold, Tim Griswold, Ara
Hairabedian, Deborah Helsel, Glen Hunt, Allan and Rosemary Jendian,
Megan Jendian, Micah Jendian, Pam Jendian, Isabel Kaprielian,
Dickran Kouyoumjian, Pat Ledesma, Hector Lopez, Phil and Jackie
Manoogian, Al McLeod, Kevin McNeill, Beth Najarian, Ed Nelson,
Elizabeth Nelson, Lars Newlander, Rubén Rumbaut, and Laurie
Schmidt.
For financial support, I appreciate the generosity of Isabel Lion of
Fresno and the Armenian General Benevolent Union.
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PREFACE

This body of work originated from research that I began in the fall of
1990. As a self-described Armenian-American, I was interested in
assimilation and ethnic intermarriage among Armenians in California.
In consultation with Professor John Tinker, I decided to examine the
marriage licenses of people of Armenian descent in Fresno County
(California) for the years 1930, 1960, and 1990. Access to the data for
1940 and 1980, collected by Beth Najarian (1982), allowed me to
combine the two data sets to make one large sample.
The marriage licenses contained information about where the
participants and their parents were born, where the ceremony was
performed, occupation, and, occasionally, education of the bride and
groom. From this data, I was able to document the rates of
intermarriage for the given years and control for generation. Table 1 is
a multivariate crosstabulation with intermarriage as the dependent
variable, year of marriage as the independent variable, and generation
as the control variable.
TABLE 1
Intermarriage Rates of Armenian-Americans in Fresno County
by Year and Generation, 1930, 1940, 1960, 1980, & 1990
1930 1940 1960 1980 1990 Total
Both Parents 10.4% 14.7% 42.0% 63.6% 42.3% 28.5%
foreign born (48) (68) (50) (22) (26) (214)
Both Parents 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 89.2% 87.9% 90.4%
born in U.S. (0) (0) (13) (37) (33) (83)
Total 10.4% 14.7% 54.0% 80.0% 67.8% 48.5%
(48) (68) (63) (59) (59) (297)
Source: Fresno County Marriage Records.
*Note: Read the table in the following way: In 1930, 10.4% of the 48
marriages in Fresno County of people whose parents were born in a
foreign country were intermarriages.
**People with one parent born in the U.S. and one foreign-born parent
are not presented in this table. They represented only 30 (9%) of the
327 total marriages. The cell frequencies were too sparse for
meaningful comparison.
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