US moves toward recognizing the ‘Middle East’ in its census data

BEIRUT — The administration of US President Joe Biden is proposing a significant change in the way Washington collects US race and ethnicity data, with the creation of a new “Middle Eastern or North African” category for US citizens and residents with ancestry in the region. Presently, people from the MENA region are classified as “white” alongside people of European ancestry.

The new White-House backed proposal is a step forward on an issue that has been on the political agenda in Washington since at least 2014 as a result of sustained campaigning by Arab American organizations, complaining that the existing categories did not accurately reflect their identities.

The White House sets data standards across the US government via its Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In anticipation of the 2020 census, the effort to update categories gained momentum under Barack Obama’s presidency, only to stall during Donald Trump’s 2016–2020 administration. The census bureau’s official explanation at the time was that “more research and testing [was] needed” before the questionnaire could be updated, but reporting from US National Public Radio’s Hansi Lo Wang found the stalling came from the White House.

Changing the once-a-decade US census is a lengthy process that goes through rounds of research and test surveys to gauge how people respond to changes in the census. Critics of the Trump administration’s inaction said the government was ignoring years of research demonstrating that a MENA category would provide more accurate and useful data.

The 2020 US census questionnaire, 13 March 2020. (Credit: WikiMedia Commons)

A history of “whiteness”

The legal categorization of people from the MENA region as white dates to the early 20th century, when immigrants from geographical Syria filed court cases arguing their eligibility for US citizenship, which was legally limited to “aliens being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent,” and explicitly excluded Asians. These immigrants argued that, though the Levant is geographically part of Asia, they should be considered “white,” in part due to their Christianity, the religion of most Middle Eastern immigrants to the US at that time, and in part due to being Semitic.

The race and ethnicity definitions used in the last census have been in place since 1997, when OMB decided not to include a MENA category, in part because “there was no agreement on a definition for this category,” according to the notice in the Federal Register.

Changes to the way the US federal government collects data on the population of the world’s third largest country could have wide-reaching implications for state and local governments in the US, as well as private institutions like universities, hospitals, and businesses.

The census influences government funding allocations and is used to draw congressional districts. Collecting separate data on citizens of MENA heritage could impact the delivery of resources and services from healthcare to education to housing, for instance, where policies require that interventions be free of discriminatory impact.

Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute told NPR she was “ecstatic.” It took decades to get here," Berry told NPR. "We've always said we're not looking to a government form to give us our identity. But when there is no aspect of anyone's life that is not touched by census data and your community is rendered invisible in the data when you cannot get an accurate count about it, I think it's pretty extraordinary to understand that this initial real estate on the census form is a big deal."

The recommendation, which remains preliminary at this stage, comes from an inter-agency working group convened by the OMB. The OMB will now solicit feedback on the proposal and expects to make a final decision in summer 2024, according to a statement by the US chief statistician. The next US census is scheduled for 2030.