Copts in Michigan

The Coptic Community

33 TheCopticCommunity D espite being an oppressed minority in Egypt, Copts have traditionally been prominent among the major professions, such as engineering, medicine, law, and education. Since it was the skilled and educated who were most easily able to emigrate from Egypt from the late 1960s onward, the Coptic community in Michigan is generally an educated lot. It is easy to conclude that Michigan has benefited enormously from this brain drain, but it is harder to capture in a nutshell the professional characteristics of the Coptic community, or any community, without making broad generalizations . Nevertheless, a general outline can be discerned in accordance with Mansour Sidhom’s observation in the early 1980s that, “since the belief in getting a good education is strong in the Coptic community, most Copts in Michigan are medical doctors or college or university professors.”58 This statement is, I believe, more than just vainglorious hyperbole. In my conversations with members of the Coptic community, both young and old, I frequently heard such statements as: “I got my engineering degree and then . . . I worked for some years as an engineer,” or “I’m studying engineering at Wayne State University.” Father Mina and Father Maximus are role models as well as examples of this professional inclination. For instance, Father Mina explained, “I came here in 1974 as an engineer. I graduated from the college of engineering at Assiut University in Upper Egypt with a 34 Eliot Dickinson bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1967.”59 When I asked him why Copts move to Michigan, of all places, and not sunny California, he responded: “It’s mainly the auto industry. A lot of us who come have degrees in engineering, accounting, or medicine. Engineers, they have a lot of work in the auto industry; also, through the hospitals here, medical doctors have found employment. And some other businesses were flourishing here so they found work.”60 Similarly, Father Maximus said, “I came in March of 1991 as a structural engineer, since I used to work for a construction company back home. We came in March, and I started studying for a Masters degree to find a job as an engineer, because the market is very slow. So I started at Wayne State and I took the Masters degree in 1995. I used to take just one class a semester, because I have a family—my wife Nancy and at the time one kid. She used to study to get her license as a medical doctor.”61 Such a refrain is enough to leave the impression that all Copts are either engineers or doctors. Of course, not everyone is or can be a highly skilled professional, and Copts do all manner of things for a living. Some are wealthy general medical practitioners, gynecologists, neurologists, dentists, and accountants; others are middle-class professors, educators, small business owners, nurses, realtors, construction workers, undertakers, and lawyers; still others are just scraping by financially, living at or below the poverty line. Members of the community do say, however, that Copts arriving today are different from their counterparts a generation ago, as there are now fewer with professional degrees and more who are uneducated. This recent phenomenon is, to some extent, explained by the fact that global telecommunications and jet-age travel have combined to make it easier for less educated Copts to make their way out of Egypt. Whereas the thought of actually immigrating to Detroit might never have entered the sphere of thinking of a semi-literate Egyptian in 1965, it is surely more than just a dreamy idea to many youngsters today who communicate via email with their cousins in America. Assimilation The Copts with whom I spoke all agreed that arranged marriages are a thing of the past and do not happen in Michigan. They point out that there are ample ways for young Copts to get to know each other, and courting is COPTS IN MICHIGAN 35 facilitated through St. Mark Church. However, one notes an occasional hint of tension between the old-world expectations of the immigrant generation and new-world freedom of American-born children, as illustrated in the following experience of a young Copt: The Bishop . . . Anba Antonius Markos . . . was saying at a convention that I went to, the Midwest Coptic Orthodox Youth Convention, that happens in some of the colleges around here . . . he was frowning upon it. He said we should . . . intermarry, marry within our own culture, to bring up our kids the right...