MENA category federal plan is long time, according to supporters

 Americans with Middle Eastern and North African ancestry have long had to select "white" or "other" on census forms and other official documents.

The 2020 Census.Justin Sullivan / Getty Images file

The latest development in a decades-long battle to ensure representation for a traditionally statistically invisible minority is the Biden administration's plan to add a "Middle Eastern or North African" (MENA) identification to official records like the census.

The Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards made the case in a Federal Register notice that was published on Friday that "many in the MENA community do not share the same lived experience as white people with European ancestry, do not identify as white, and are not perceived as white by others," and recommended the addition of the identifier as a new category.

Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the first advocacy organizations to seek for an identifier for the MENA community, stated, "It's as we always say, 'White without the privilege.'" Although we are classified as white, we have never enjoyed the privileges that come with it.

The Office of Management and Budget is responsible for establishing the country's current racial and ethnic standards, which haven't been changed since 1997. The OMB lists two categories for ethnicity and five categories for racial data: The federal register notification lists the following groups as Latino or non-Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White.

Because Middle Eastern and North African origins fall under the "white" category, Americans with ancestry in those places must mark "white" or "other" on forms for federal assistance, the census, medical records, and employment.

This has made a group of people—roughly 7 to 8 million strong, according to experts—invisible, underrepresented, and ignored.

There's power in numbers, experts say

"The thing about data is that it establishes rules. There isn't a single part of life that isn't impacted by how we use census data, "said Maya Berry, the Arab American Institute's executive director. It determines where trillions of dollars in federal funding are spent, how our towns are protected, how we are represented in politics, everything.

Berry argued that there is strength in numbers, and that because there is currently no identity, the majority of study on the American MENA group is anecdotal. The Covid-19 epidemic is a prime example of this.

There was a desire to comprehend how Covid affects particular communities, but Berry claimed that the majority of the research on the MENA community was ineffective since the community was not clearly named. "Due to this, we still don't know how many of us received the Covid vaccine."

According to Samer Khalaf, the former head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, as a result, MENA Americans have missed out on possibilities for health and social services as well as small business subsidies.

Counting us would provide us with resources for health, mental health, education, and everything else, according to Khalaf. Small business owners in the neighborhood would be able to benefit from awards that they are not eligible for since they fall within the white category.

According to Ayoub, MENA Americans have historically been "on the receiving end of poor policies" like watch lists and surveillance programs with no means to analyze them because there is no hard evidence.

We haven't been able to oppose these policies or demonstrate our strength to lawmakers because we lack those numbers, he claimed.

Who are MENA Americans?

According to the Migration Policy Institute, immigration to the United States from MENA countries started in the late 1800s and increased significantly in recent decades as a result of political unrest.