Supporters say federal ‘MENA’ proposal is long overdue

The Biden administration’s proposal to add the “Middle East or North Africa” ​​(MENA) identifier to official records such as the census is the latest advance in a decades-long struggle to ensure that the historically invisible statistical community is represented.

In a Federal Register notice released Friday, the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards recommended that ID be added as a new category, arguing that “many in the MENA community do not have the same life experiences as white people.” . with European ancestry, do not identify themselves as white and are not perceived by others as white.”

“We always say, ‘Whites without privilege,'” said Abed Ayub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the first advocacy groups to push for an identity for the MENA community. “We are considered white, but we have never had the corresponding privileges.”

The current race and ethnicity standards in the United States are set by the Office of Management and Budget and have not been updated since 1997. According to the OMB, there are five data categories for race and two for ethnicity: American Indian or Alaska. Native; Asian, black or African American; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; White; Spaniard or Latino; and non-Hispanic or Latino Americans, according to the federal registry notice.

The Middle East and North Africa are included in the “White” category, which means that Americans who trace their origins to these geographic regions must mark “White” or “Other” on documents such as censuses, medical records, statements of employment and forms of federal assistance.

This has made a community estimated to be between 7 and 8 million people invisible, underrepresented and unnoticed.

Experts say strength is in numbers

“The point of data is that it sets policy. It is impossible to imagine any aspect of life that is not affected by how we use census data,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. “It decides where trillions of dollars of federal spending goes, it affects protecting our communities, our political representation, everything.”

According to Berry, there is strength in numbers, and currently much of the research on the American MENA community is anecdotal due to the lack of an identifier. The Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect example of this.

“There was a desire to understand how Covid is affecting certain communities, but if you look at the research done on the MENA community, you can see that a lot of it is useless because the community hasn’t been specifically identified,” Berry said. “We still don’t know how many of us got the Covid vaccine because of this.”

As a result, MENA Americans have lost opportunities to receive health and social services and even small business grants, said Samer Khalaf, former president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“Counting us would give us a piece of the pie, resources for health, mental health, education, whatever,” Khalaf said. “Small business owners in the community will be able to take advantage of grants that we are not eligible for because we are white.”

Throughout history, MENA Americans have been subjected to “bad policies” such as watch programs and watch lists, and have not had the opportunity to learn these methods because there is no hard data, according to Ayub.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to fight this policy and show our strength to politicians because we don’t have those numbers,” he said.

Who are MENA Americans?

According to the Migration Policy Institute, migration from MENA countries to the US began in the late 1800s and has intensified in recent decades mainly due to political upheavals.

MENA Americans can trace their origins to over a dozen countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Kuwait, and Yemen, just to name a few. The region is racially and ethnically diverse and people originating from there can be white, brown or black and also identify with an ethnic group such as Arabs, Amazighs, Kurds, Chaldeans and others.

“A lot of how America sees identity is based on skin color because of its history. Dividing us into categories based on skin color is very outdated,” Khalaf said.

The proposed change is to include “Middle East or North Africa” ​​as a separate category, with subcategories for Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Israel, according to the document. There will also be an empty space where people can write how they identify themselves.

“It’s like deja vu”

This is not the first time the US has come to the conclusion that the MENA category is necessary.

The Census Bureau already tested the inclusion of this category in 2015 and considered it an improvement in the data collection process. When the Trump administration was sworn in, the agency didn’t pick up where the previous administration left off.

“The politicization of the 2020 decennial census comes into play here,” Berry said. “We thought we were moving forward with the category, but then the Trump administration abandoned those efforts. I am now in 2023 and this proposal has just been put forward by the Biden administration.”

Khalaf says it sounds like deja vu and wonders why it took the Biden administration two years to come up with this proposal.

“All this work has already been done,” he said. “My problem is, why did they wait two years from the administration to do this?”

it’s a process

The recommendation to adopt the MENA category OMB is just a recommendation.

Now that the federal registry notice has been issued, experts and members of the public have another 75 days to submit their comments on the proposed changes. The Race and Ethnicity Standards Working Group will share its findings with the OMB in 2024. The OMB will decide to accept it as is, accept it with modifications, or not accept it at all.

“For generations, we went unnoticed, unaccounted for, and were made to feel like our identity didn’t matter,” Ayub said. “For us, that would be huge.

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