The MENA Checkbox is here and it will be on the 2030 Census!
We deserve to be fairly and accurately
Counted.
In 2022, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced they would begin a formal review to revise OMB’s standards for federal data on race and ethnicity. Shortly after, an Interagency Technical Working Group (Working Group) was formed to aid in the process. The Working Group, made up of government career staff representing more than 20 federal agencies across the government, began their work, including engaging the American pubic directly as they deliberated their recommendations. On January 27, 2023, OMB published a Federal Register Notice seeking the public’s comments on the Working Group’s initial proposal for updating OMB’s Race and Ethnicity Standards, which included a call for adding a Middle East or North Africa (MENA) category. On March 28, 2024, OMB revised the Race and Ethnicity Standards to include a new MENA checkbox! See our statement below about the new standards and keep checking this website for ways you can support the empowerment, well-being and representation of the Arab American community by supporting accurate data collection.
resources
Learn More About the MENA Ethnic Category and the Decades-Long Effort to Collect Data on Arab Americans
Use these resources to learn more about the MENA ethnic category and to educate others on why a MENA category is so important for Arab American representation.
The Office of Management and Budget’s 2024 Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity
AAI’s statement on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity Data. AAI Welcomes New MENA Category & Revision of Race and Ethnicity Standards: Hailed Historic Category Fails to Capture Full Diversity of Arab American Community.
بقلم الدكتورة كارين أورفيس، رئيسة الإحصائيي بالولايات المتحدة
يف وقت سابق اليوم، ن رش مكتب الإدارة والميانية مجموعة من التنقيحات للتوجيه رقم 15 المتعلق بالسياسة الإحصائية (التوجيه رقم 15): معايي الحفاظ على البيانات الفيدرالية المتعلقة بالانتماء العر يف وجمعهاوعرضها،ويهالأولىمنذعام1997.وقدبدأتهذهالعملية يفحزيران/يونيو2022،معأول اجتماع لمجموعة العمل الف ين المشيكة بي الوكالات المكونة من الموظفي المهنيي يف الحكومة الفيدرالية الذين يمثلون ال ريامج ال ين تجمع أو تستخدم بيانات الانتماء العر يف.ومنذ ذلك الاجتماع الأول، قمنا بمراجعة 20 ألف تعليق وعقدنا ما يقرب من 100 جلسة استماع لوضع اللمسات الأخية على المعايي المهمة ال ين نعلن عنها اليوم.
By Dr. Karin Orvis, Chief Statistician of the United States: Earlier today, OMB published a set of revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (Directive No. 15): Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, the first since 1997. This process started in June 2022, with the first convening of the Interagency Technical Working Group of Federal Government career staff who represent programs that collect or use race and ethnicity data. Since that first convening, we’ve reviewed 20,000 comments and held almost 100 listening sessions to finalize the important standards we are announcing today.
AAI’s comment in response to the Federal Register Notice supports the revision of the race and ethnicity standards, including updating Directive 15 to include the addition of “Middle Eastern or North African (MENA)” as a new minimum reporting ethnic category, supporting a combined question format on race and ethnicity, and the mandatory collection of detailed race and ethnicity by default.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ coalition comment in support of revising OMB’s race and ethnicity standards.
This draft community comment in support of the MENA category was submitted by hundreds of you during the Federal Register Notice open comment period regarding the Office of Management and Budget’s revision of the race and ethnicity standards.
The Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) checkbox would be a new minimum reporting ethnic category on the decennial census and other federal surveys. MENA populations, including Arab Americans, would get their own box for their ethnicity, while having the option to also check any other category, including another ethnic category or one of the racial categories.
Current federal standards are inadequate. Right now, we have a unique opportunity to impact how the federal government sees people and populations. OMB’s proposed revisions to the federal race and ethnicity standards include the addition of the MENA category to the classification system. AAI’s Claudia Youakim shares why this critically important update will bring visibility to Arab Americans, their contributions, and their particular needs.
A Fact Sheet and FAQ from the Leadership Conference Education Fund on why adopting a combined question would be a critical step forward in allowing more people to see themselves accurately reflected in federal data.
From the archive, a fact sheet from the first national Arab American get-out-the-count campaign. It was organized in the lead up to the 1990 Census: “Arab Americans are a growing ethnic constituency and contribute to every part of American society. The 1990 Census is our chance to get an accurate count of how many persons of Arabic-Speaking descent live in the United States and an understanding of their diversity.”
During a recent roundtable conversation, Meeta Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, joined Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, and Professor Neda Maghbouleh to discuss Maghbouleh’s book “The Limits of Whiteness” and why adding a MENA category matters.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) undertakes periodic reviews of its Federal statistical standards to ensure that they are keeping pace with changes in the population and evolving needs and uses for data. In 2022, OMB convened the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards (Working Group).
The Leadership Conference Education Fund’s Fact Sheet on Collecting and Publishing Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity: Understanding OMB Directive 15.
Coalition letter to OMB in support of a combined question and a MENA category signed by 160 national and community-based NGOs.
Estebanico Azemmouri, a Moroccan man, landed in the United States of America in 1527, and Antonio Bishallany who immigrated from Lebanon became the first member of a community today known as “Arab Americans.” This is the story of Arab Americans’ beginning in America – and the origins of their quest for fair representation.
Without a MENA Category, the source for Arab American data has historically been the American Community Survey. While incomplete, we use 2017 ACS data and AAI research and surveys to produce this document to provide a snapshot of the origins, population, education, occupation, and income statistical estimates for Arab Americans.
From the 2020 Census Get-Out-the-Count campaign, this fact sheet explains the difficulties in detecting disinformation. In the age of social media, there is a huge amount of information out there, and it can be hard to sort through it all. However, here are some generalizations about what disinformation looks like and some tools to let you dig deeper into disinformation online.
From the 2020 Census Get-Out-the-Count campaign, this document explains the many ways the Census impacts all of us, especially as Arab Americans.
From the 2020 Census Get-Out-the-Count campaign, this issue brief explains the importance of the census to our democracy and the recommendations we proposed for ensuring a fair and accurate count of Arab Americans in 2020.
Brief for the Arab American Institute as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Brief focuses on the MENA category.
The Census Bureau’s Overview of the 2015 National Content Test presented at the Census Information Centers (CIC) Annual Conference in 2017.
The Office of Management and Budget’s 1997 Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity
MENA in the Media
The addition of this category to the OMB’s standards for race and ethnicity for the first time in U.S. history means that an estimated 8 million Americans who trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa will no longer have to choose “white” or “other” on federal forms, including the U.S. census. Read More →
On the 2030 U.S. Census, Arab Americans will have their own box to check for the first time ever. And starting on Friday, agencies across the federal government are being instructed to add a “Middle Eastern or North African” option to race and ethnicity questions on all data collection forms. Read More →
New checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" are coming to the U.S. census and federal forms. Advocates say these changes will help enforce civil rights protections. Read More →
A new rule announced Thursday is intended to yield a more accurate census of people with Hispanic, Middle Eastern and North African heritage. Why it matters: Critics have long said the government's approach to asking about people's race or ethnicity is confusing or misrepresentative — and the stakes are huge when it comes to the distribution of billions in federal funds. Read More →
On the next U.S. census and future federal government forms, the list of checkboxes for a person's race and ethnicity is officially getting longer. Read More →
Advocates have long said census count has left communities invisible, but say change is only a ‘first step’. Read More →
The Office of Management and Budget on Thursday announced changes to how the federal government asks about people’s race and ethnicity, including in the US census. Under the new standards, scheduled to publish Friday, the government will collect race and ethnicity information using a single question and will include a new Middle Eastern and North African category as a choice, the Office of Management and Budget said. Read More →
The federal government updated how it classifies people by race and ethnicity for the first time in over a quarter-century, aiming to better capture an increasingly diverse country and give policymakers a fuller view of the Americans their work impacts. Read More →
For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity, an effort that federal officials believe will more accurately count residents who identify as Hispanic and of Middle Eastern and North African heritage. Read More →
The U.S. Census Bureau recently published the Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A), which included information about people from the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) for the very first time. Read More →
Robert Santos, the first person of color to permanently helm the bureau, said he is supportive of changes to the 2030 census that would paint a more multicultural picture of America’s population. Read More →
“I can’t stress enough how much it will change everything,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, which has been advocating for Middle Eastern and North African people to have their own ethnic category on the census for more than four decades. Read More →
"The thing about data is it sets policies. It's impossible to think of any aspect of life that isn't touched by the way we use census data," said Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute. "It decides where trillions of dollars of federal spending goes. It affects the protection of our communities, our political representation — everything." Read More →
This new development is a long time in the making. The Arab American Institute first partnered with the census in 1990 with community surveys, and in 2015 they tested the MENA category, combining race and ethnicity. Read More →
A Middle Eastern and North African category could be added to U.S. federal surveys and censuses, and changes could be made to how Hispanics are able to self-identify, under preliminary recommendations released Thursday by the Biden administration in what would be the first update to race and ethnicity standards in a quarter century. Read More →
The reforms would also mark a major achievement for advocates for Arab Americans and other MENA groups who have long campaigned for their own checkbox. Read More →
In preliminary recommendations released on Thursday, a working group of representatives of various government agencies called for adding “a response category for Middle Eastern and North African, separate and distinct from the ‘White’ category” on the Census. Read More →
The recommendations were made by a working group of civil servants at the request of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Among the proposals is a reformatted question of individuals’ ethnicity or race that would feature options for “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA) and “Hispanic or Latino.” Read More →
There's been a decades-long push for the U.S. Census Bureau to collect more detailed data on people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa, also known as MENA. Advocates of that campaign hit another roadblock Friday, when the Census Bureau announced it is not planning to add a MENA category to the 2020 census. Read More →
AJ’s The Stream hosts discussion on the importance of an accurate Census count with former U.S. Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt, AAI Executive Director Maya Berry, Senior Editor and Chief Economics Writer for FiveThirtyEight Ben Casselman, and Latino GLBT History Project President Jose Plaza. Watch Here →