Biden admin proposes 2030 Census changes: MENA category, combined race-ethnicity question

[Gracile]

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151608403/mena-race-categories-us-census-middle-eastern-latino-hispanic

A new checkbox for "Middle Eastern or North African" and a "Hispanic or Latino" box that appears under a reformatted question asking for a person's race or ethnicity are among the early recommendations announced in a Federal Register notice, which was made available Thursday for public inspection ahead of its official publication.

If approved, the changes would address longstanding difficulties many Latinos have had in answering a question about race that does not include a response option for Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government recognizes only as an ethnicity that can be of any race.

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.

These changes are long overdue IMO.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

[Skill and Chance]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

I would be inclined to just say it's unconstitutional for the government to ask people this question at all. 

[TML]

Remember that the Trump administration put this move on hold for the 2020 census. Thus, if a Republican were to win the presidency in either 2024 or 2028, could that individual also revoke this move for the 2030 census?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This should be done alongside White, Black, etc...
MENA is not a race, it's a broader regional identity that transcends race. Just like Latino.
I favor its inclusion on Census forms, but only as an additional thing separate from baseline racial categories.

[Green Line]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

[It’s so Joever]

Freedom move. More DRA data is always fun.

[It’s so Joever]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

White isn’t a thing nor is black. All race is subjective and having more options for different people who identify differently is good since it means we get better data. The census having good data is a good thing.

[It’s so Joever]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

Assimilation into what? American is not an ethnicity. American is the diversity of ethnicity. The most American place in the country is Queens because you have all different peoples living under one common glorious flag. Forced assimilation is the destruction of America.

[Green Line]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

Assimilation into what? American is not an ethnicity. American is the diversity of ethnicity. The most American place in the country is Queens because you have all different peoples living under one common glorious flag. Forced assimilation is the destruction of America.

Ethnicity and race are not the same thing.

[It’s so Joever]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

Assimilation into what? American is not an ethnicity. American is the diversity of ethnicity. The most American place in the country is Queens because you have all different peoples living under one common glorious flag. Forced assimilation is the destruction of America.

Ethnicity and race are not the same thing.

Race isn’t a thing. The categories of race we have are completly subjective and “biology” is a poor excuse when our categories lump in very biologically distinct groups and separate ones that genetically are “closer” because of a single phenotype.

Minor phenotype differences exist but they honestly are very minor. Race is largely a social construct, at least how we categorize it.

[Gass3268]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

I would be inclined to just say it's unconstitutional for the government to ask people this question at all. 

Then how do you enforce the VRA?

[Green Line]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

Assimilation into what? American is not an ethnicity. American is the diversity of ethnicity. The most American place in the country is Queens because you have all different peoples living under one common glorious flag. Forced assimilation is the destruction of America.

Ethnicity and race are not the same thing.

Race isn’t a thing. The categories of race we have are completly subjective and “biology” is a poor excuse when our categories lump in very biologically distinct groups and separate ones that genetically are “closer” because of a single phenotype.

Minor phenotype differences exist but they honestly are very minor. Race is largely a social construct, at least how we categorize it.

Be that as it may, race is a thing in the United States- or at least most people think it is, which is really all that matters.

And Queens being “the most American” is lol worthy.  Sounds like something straight out of a DEI flyer.  What makes America great is not diversity.  Our values that make us great.  Assimilation into those values is absolutely part of that.  You don’t have to be white to be American, but America was never meant to be a balkanized group of separate tribes which is exactly what the left would like it to be.

I don’t even disagree with you.  Race is fake, we should stop using it all together.  Its a terrible, divisive social construct.  So the absolute worst way to go about dealing with that is to continue create more and more racial groups, further dividing people.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

I would be inclined to just say it's unconstitutional for the government to ask people this question at all. 

Then how do you enforce the VRA?

I don't agree with Skill and Chance that it's unconstitutional for the government to ask respondents about race, but there's a fair argument to be made that race based redistricting is a violation of the 14th amendment (particularly against whites, but also other groups.)

[Bismarck]

Why MENA but not south Asians? I cant help but think Justin Amash being in the same grouping as me is much less weird than Chinese and Indians somehow being the same race.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

Why MENA but not south Asians? I cant help but think Justin Amash being in the same grouping as me is much less weird than Chinese and Indians somehow being the same race.

I agree that South Asians should be split off from the broader Asian category (the word is used to mean East and Southeast in Colloquial American English) before MENA is split off from White/Caucasian. Race really is a social construct…

[Хahar 🤔]

Claiming that Jews and Arabs are not white is blatantly contradicted by the history of race in this country, but if you're going to create an ethnic category for some Muslims then I guess you really do need to fold together race and ethnicity.

In the future, you can bet people they don't know the first non-white candidate to get more than 1% of the vote for president and take their money every time when you reveal that the answer is Ralph Nader.

[Beet]

Race is a social construct. It is always creepy when people say "X is [or is not] a race" as if it is some higher truth disembodied from government decisions. This is one way in which "race realism" still underlies our dialogue, even though it has long been debunked scientifically. It's long overdue for it to be merged with ethnicity.

For people who recognize the need to keep counting race for VRA reasons, it's only divisive to recognize more categories if your notion of unity depends on the majority identifying as the same race, rather than as citizens of the US. And that notion is itself deeply divisive. We need to stop implicity basing our national identity on whiteness and instead ground ourselves on universal principles arising from 1776.

It's true that many Arabs and Hispanics look the same as white people. But then again many others neither look white or identify as such, so simply relegating the entire category to white, especially when there is no mestizo category, does not make much sense either. Giving people a choice and allowing them to self identify, especially when more than one box can be checked, makes more sense.

In any case, one can hardly object to collecting more data.

[It’s so Joever]

The left's ultimate goal is to stop and reverse assimilation, and this is a major step towards that.

Assimilation into what? American is not an ethnicity. American is the diversity of ethnicity. The most American place in the country is Queens because you have all different peoples living under one common glorious flag. Forced assimilation is the destruction of America.

Ethnicity and race are not the same thing.

Race isn’t a thing. The categories of race we have are completly subjective and “biology” is a poor excuse when our categories lump in very biologically distinct groups and separate ones that genetically are “closer” because of a single phenotype.

Minor phenotype differences exist but they honestly are very minor. Race is largely a social construct, at least how we categorize it.

Be that as it may, race is a thing in the United States- or at least most people think it is, which is really all that matters.

And Queens being “the most American” is lol worthy.  Sounds like something straight out of a DEI flyer.  What makes America great is not diversity.  Our values that make us great.  Assimilation into those values is absolutely part of that.  You don’t have to be white to be American, but America was never meant to be a balkanized group of separate tribes which is exactly what the left would like it to be.

I don’t even disagree with you.  Race is fake, we should stop using it all together.  Its a terrible, divisive social construct.  So the absolute worst way to go about dealing with that is to continue create more and more racial groups, further dividing people.

No I agree with your assessment that race doesn't physically exist exactly but does matter due to perception. I just don't think it is a bad thing to have people identifying as different so long as they stand under the flag. America is a multiethnic society, and that is what makes us better than everywhere else. Really I think we should just combine race and ethnicity into one question and provide a blank "other" one can fill in as they want.

And yes me saying Queens is super American is a DEI poster thing, so what? I don't attach my identity to being a DEI contrarian, I have my own beliefs that sometimes do and don't sound "woke".

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

@ the posters who oppose the implication that certain people aren’t “white”

Europeans have not integrated their refugees well, and refugees in Europe have done little on their own to become integrated.  You're both assholes.  Are there still countries that won't let their refugees get proper jobs?  Creating a permanent underclass, reliant on the dole is not a good way to get the refugees and the natives to play well together.

I'm not suggesting America is perfect at it, but we integrate ours far better and the refugees seem to take to it better.

Here in America, as long as you speak English, can work, and follow the laws you are welcome here. In Europe there is far more pressure to “assimilate” into a culture that is not anywhere near as “pure” as the edgelord ethnicity realist in here wants to believe, but really it’s just thinly disguised racism along with a desire for a permanent immigrant underclass.

TLDR: Europe is more racist than America, by a landslide

[Damocles]

So, Arabs and other Muslims can't be white?

Explain Bosniaks, then. European, Slavic, but also majority Muslim. Are they white or are they not?

Race is a stupid social construct that is totally meaningless and not helpful.

[jimrtex]

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151608403/mena-race-categories-us-census-middle-eastern-latino-hispanic

A new checkbox for "Middle Eastern or North African" and a "Hispanic or Latino" box that appears under a reformatted question asking for a person's race or ethnicity are among the early recommendations announced in a Federal Register notice, which was made available Thursday for public inspection ahead of its official publication.

If approved, the changes would address longstanding difficulties many Latinos have had in answering a question about race that does not include a response option for Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government recognizes only as an ethnicity that can be of any race.

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.

These changes are long overdue IMO.

The proposed changes are by the OMB. The minimal set is for all government agencies, including those who collect data by observation. This includes the Census Bureau when they use a neighbor for a proxy. The current minimal set treats Hispanic and Black as equivalent categories, instead of orthogonal. The proposed change would treat them the same for detailed responses, add MENA, and allow more detailed responses for each category.

Initial Proposals For Updating OMB's Race and Ethnicity Statistical Standards

During testing for the 2020 Census, the question that gave the best response was: Is Emily ...

Check all that apply.

[ ] White
[ ] Hispanic
[ ] Black
[ ] Asian*
[ ] MENA
[ ] AIAN
[ ] NHOPI
[ ] Something Else

*The Census Bureau does not actually have an Asian response. They have a grouping of check boxes for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Asian India, or some other group with a write-in space.

If someone wants to aggregate data for Asian Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, and Sri Lankans, they can do so.

The smaller the group is, the less the Census Bureau can report because of differential privacy.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Terrible move. Jews and Arabs are white, and the move to separate them comes from a desire to further fractionalize and divide the US. Hispanic and Latino shouldn't be a category at all.

This forum will not allow me to use the words I want to describe my rage at this. My mother didn’t get called sand n***** in school for people like you to erase her identity.

[Gracile]

So, Arabs and other Muslims can't be white?

Explain Bosniaks, then. European, Slavic, but also majority Muslim. Are they white or are they not?

Race is a stupid social construct that is totally meaningless and not helpful.

Bosniaks would still be considered white under these standards, as they are a European ethnic group. MENA is also not synonymous with Muslim or Arab, as there are multiple ethnic and religious groups in that region (i.e. Arab Christian groups like Maronites, Coptic Egyptians, various Orthodox denominations, etc., who make up a large part of the MENA diaspora in the US).

Not sure how this got interpreted as the Census Bureau adding a "Muslim category" instead of what it actually is as an added regional identity category for people from the Middle East and North Africa.

Edit: And not that it needs to be said, but anyone of any race/national origin can be Muslim (MENA, White, Black, Asian, etc.).

[Tintrlvr]

Why MENA but not south Asians? I cant help but think Justin Amash being in the same grouping as me is much less weird than Chinese and Indians somehow being the same race.

I agree that South Asians should be split off from the broader Asian category (the word is used to mean East and Southeast in Colloquial American English) before MENA is split off from White/Caucasian. Race really is a social construct…

I do agree in the US context separate South Asian and East Asian categories (maybe with also a separate Southeast Asian category or East/Southeast Asian as one category) would probably make some sense, but I bet there is political pressure behind the scenes to keep a single Asian category to promote Asian influence and reduce pillarization.