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.

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.”

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.