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

[TheReckoning]

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.

Lmao. A German person being called a Nazi derogatorily doesn’t make Germans not white.

[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.

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.

Racism and anti-semitism can occur without making someone non-white. Black people can hate black people, white people can hate white people, etc, without changing them from black to non-black or white to non-white.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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.

Racism and anti-semitism can occur without making someone non-white. Black people can hate black people, white people can hate white people, etc, without changing them from black to non-black or white to non-white.

Precisely.
Denial of this is just hysterical and historically ignorant, regardless of whatever quarters it comes from, and this push to narrow the scope of "White" is proven plainly silly the moment one ponders seriously the mere existence of the term "white ethnic".
If we're getting personal here:
Most of my blood comes from the Arab World, with most of the rest coming from Latin parts of Europe. On both ends, you have people on both sides of my family tree who have at some point or another have been "other-ized" by some segment of American society. Yet, most of them were pretty light-skinned, and I'm pretty light-skinned. In what world am I not White? I get that a large chunk of the modern intellectual class have a deconstructing fetish of sorts. Hands off my racial identity. Please keep your grubby hands away - this is where they don't belong.
P.S. You don't speak for me and you never will.

[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.

Racism and anti-semitism can occur without making someone non-white. Black people can hate black people, white people can hate white people, etc, without changing them from black to non-black or white to non-white.

But that is actually how Race in america works. In the most simpliest since you have "White" and "Not white". With the definitions basically being what ever cultural groups are in acceptance being "white" and everyone else being "not white".

But arabic people have been othered. Historically, culturally, religiously, culinarally, every other -ly arabic people are not white. They are only considered white by people who are ignorant. There is little shared history, there is little shared culturally. The only whites that are somewhat close are the greeks and thats only from proximity. The assertation of skin color as the only marker of race does not hold water. If it is pale skin that makes a person white then why aren't the Japanese considered white.

This also isn't a modern thing. This exact thing as I mentioned about the Japanese was brought before the supreme court in 1922. Also if you want to go by "Caucasian" that should also exclude Arabs as they migrated from central Asia and north Africa.

Even linguisitcally Arabic shows my former point to be true. There is literally no metric I know of that makes sense to group Arabic people into "White". The only reason I can think of is if you want to say all the lands that were once ruled by Rome are now "white" but that still doesn't make sense as the people who lived in the Middle East then were mostly Copts.

Also you can be white and arabic at the same time. I always dread have to only check white on forms cause that is not all who I am. I look forward to the day where I can check both white for my dad's side and arabic for my mom.

[Biden his time]

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.

Respectfully, this is a bad idea.

The only thing more annoying and complicated than our two questions for Hispanic or Latino and race would be three questions, and this would just increase confusion and cause the number of people selecting "Some other race" to increase further.

I don't care so much whether or not the MENA category is added or not (though I'd welcome it), but what I'm really looking forward to is the merger of the contrived Race and Ethnicity questions


jimrtex explains the best way to do this:

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.

[TheReckoning]

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.

No, I would take your money for not knowing it was Barry Goldwater.

[Bismarck]

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.

Erase her identity? Giving her a new category is permanently separating her and perpetuating the imaginary distinctions that led to that disgusting discrimination in the first place.

[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.

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.

Racism and anti-semitism can occur without making someone non-white. Black people can hate black people, white people can hate white people, etc, without changing them from black to non-black or white to non-white.

But that is actually how Race in america works. In the most simpliest since you have "White" and "Not white". With the definitions basically being what ever cultural groups are in acceptance being "white" and everyone else being "not white".

But arabic people have been othered. Historically, culturally, religiously, culinarally, every other -ly arabic people are not white. They are only considered white by people who are ignorant. There is little shared history, there is little shared culturally. The only whites that are somewhat close are the greeks and thats only from proximity. The assertation of skin color as the only marker of race does not hold water. If it is pale skin that makes a person white then why aren't the Japanese considered white.

This also isn't a modern thing. This exact thing as I mentioned about the Japanese was brought before the supreme court in 1922. Also if you want to go by "Caucasian" that should also exclude Arabs as they migrated from central Asia and north Africa.

Even linguisitcally Arabic shows my former point to be true. There is literally no metric I know of that makes sense to group Arabic people into "White". The only reason I can think of is if you want to say all the lands that were once ruled by Rome are now "white" but that still doesn't make sense as the people who lived in the Middle East then were mostly Copts.

Also you can be white and arabic at the same time. I always dread have to only check white on forms cause that is not all who I am. I look forward to the day where I can check both white for my dad's side and arabic for my mom.

With the definitions basically being what ever cultural groups are in acceptance being "white" and everyone else being "not white".

This is simply not true: the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization only to whites, the Census has always asked about race, and many historical laws discriminated on the basis of race, yet in every instance certain cultural groups not accepted (at least, in the sense that you have described of facing discrimination) have been counted as white. For instance, Irish immigrants obviously faced at least some level of discrimination historically, but they were still clearly white, as evidenced by their being able to naturalize in the first place, being counted as white by the Census, and being able to vote and have equal rights even in times/places with discriminatory laws.

By those same standards, Arabs have also historically been considered white. For instance, although during the 1910s naturalization was still restricted to those of African or European descent, the 1920 census found 51,900 "Syrians" living in the United States. Now, in fairness, it must be noted that most of these "Syrians" (in quotes because the Syria referred to here was the Ottoman province of Syria, which was larger than modern day Syria), were mostly Christian, but there were also Muslim and Druze immigrants.

I won't argue with you about the merits of this characterization: I certainly think it accurate to call Arabs white, and I'd note that you forgot Jews as another group from the Near East (other than Copts and Arabs) to also be considered white, but your broader point is regardless wrong. Being white in the United States is not synonymous with being accepted or not accepted, and at least some Arabs have historically been considered white.

[Хahar 🤔]

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.).

Of course it's a category for Muslims. The vast majority of Arab migrants to this country have been Christian, and they have always assimilated to whiteness, and so their descendants who make up the vast majority of this country's Arab population have always been white. I already brought up the example of Ralph Nader, who is very obviously white despite his Arabic name. I could bring up Johnny Manziel, a similarly white American with an Arabic name; his Arab ancestors lived in the segregated South and were never regarded as anything other than white. Looking at the Wikipedia page "List of Lebanese Americans" gives us such luminaries as Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka and Doug Flutie, and I haven't even brought up white Americans whose partial Arab ancestry doesn't show up in their surnames.

So Christian Arabs in this country have always been white. (I also haven't mentioned Jews, who have likewise always been white in this country.) The only Arabs who are regularly identified as something distinct from the white American majority are Muslim Arabs. When the NFL recognizes Robert Saleh as a minority coach even though nobody ever thought to do the same for Rich Kotite, that's because Saleh is Muslim and Kotite is not. This is an attempt to racialize the otherness felt by Muslim Arabs, and because Census guidelines can't make explicit reference to religion it also catches the vast majority of Arabs in this country: those not of Muslim ancestry. This would be a category that obscures (the observed whiteness of the enormous population of Americans of Christian Arab descent) far more than it illuminates (the observed non-whiteness of the smaller population of Americans of Muslim Arab descent).

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.

No, I would take your money for not knowing it was Barry Goldwater.

My apologies! I stand corrected. This is exactly what I mean: it's no longer obvious who's white and who isn't.

[King of Kensington]

You can see this in Canadian census data.  Arab Christians often do not tick the Visible Minority box or identify as white.  The "Arab Visible Minority" group is mostly Muslim.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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.).

Of course it's a category for Muslims. The vast majority of Arab migrants to this country have been Christian, and they have always assimilated to whiteness, and so their descendants who make up the vast majority of this country's Arab population have always been white. I already brought up the example of Ralph Nader, who is very obviously white despite his Arabic name. I could bring up Johnny Manziel, a similarly white American with an Arabic name; his Arab ancestors lived in the segregated South and were never regarded as anything other than white. Looking at the Wikipedia page "List of Lebanese Americans" gives us such luminaries as Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka and Doug Flutie, and I haven't even brought up white Americans whose partial Arab ancestry doesn't show up in their surnames.

So Christian Arabs in this country have always been white. (I also haven't mentioned Jews, who have likewise always been white in this country.) The only Arabs who are regularly identified as something distinct from the white American majority are Muslim Arabs. When the NFL recognizes Robert Saleh as a minority coach even though nobody ever thought to do the same for Rich Kotite, that's because Saleh is Muslim and Kotite is not. This is an attempt to racialize the otherness felt by Muslim Arabs, and because Census guidelines can't make explicit reference to religion it also catches the vast majority of Arabs in this country: those not of Muslim ancestry. This would be a category that obscures (the observed whiteness of the enormous population of Americans of Christian Arab descent) far more than it illuminates (the observed non-whiteness of the smaller population of Americans of Muslim Arab descent).

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.

No, I would take your money for not knowing it was Barry Goldwater.

My apologies! I stand corrected. This is exactly what I mean: it's no longer obvious who's white and who isn't.

I never made the connection before. But yeah, Manziel is a name that at least sounds obviously Arab in origin.
Manziel=مانزيل. (To those who know how to read abjad, you will understand immediately)
Anka=أنكا.
Kotite is less clearly obvious how it's spelled, but I can see it.

I'll be frank here. We're so obsessed with "firsts", as a society at this point, that we're retroactively inventing them.

[they don't love you like i love you]

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.

It's not though. Hispanic is not a separate race on the Census.

[Torie]

I don't get the causation chain from what the array of boxes are on a census form and the impact on assimilation. And given so many mixed marriages, the data distortion in all events will over time reduce much of it to gigo. So from my standpoint, frankly my dear I don't give a damn about any of this. If the spirit moves me, I might lie anyway or refuse to answer, just to add to the chaos.

The VRA is on its last legs, so that has minimal salience as well.

[jimrtex]

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.

It's not though. Hispanic is not a separate race on the Census.

The proposal by the OMB is that "Hispanic" and "MENA" be classifications at the same level as "White", "Black", "AIAN", or "NHPI", or "Asian".  Asian is an aggregate of classifications such as "Japanese", "Chinese", "Korean", etc.

[TheReckoning]

“Latino” should be replaced with “mestizo” IMO

[ctherainbow]

I still don’t understand why we can’t just ask people to provide their ethnicity, with broad “racial” categories as a secondary classification option if people are unsure of their ethnicity.

[Kamala's side hoe]

“Latino” should be replaced with “mestizo” IMO

Why? Not all culturally Hispanophone Latin America diasporans in the US identify as mestizo, nor would their ancestors in the motherland (to say nothing of Tejanos or Hispanos). Judging from online discussion of 23andMe test results it seems most Latin Americans are a mix of three continental ancestries, not two.

So Christian Arabs in this country have always been white. (I also haven't mentioned Jews, who have likewise always been white in this country.) The only Arabs who are regularly identified as something distinct from the white American majority are Muslim Arabs. When the NFL recognizes Robert Saleh as a minority coach even though nobody ever thought to do the same for Rich Kotite, that's because Saleh is Muslim and Kotite is not. This is an attempt to racialize the otherness felt by Muslim Arabs, and because Census guidelines can't make explicit reference to religion it also catches the vast majority of Arabs in this country: those not of Muslim ancestry. This would be a category that obscures (the observed whiteness of the enormous population of Americans of Christian Arab descent) far more than it illuminates (the observed non-whiteness of the smaller population of Americans of Muslim Arab descent).

The idea that Muslim Arabs are somehow a different race from Christian Arabs is as absurd as saying Pakistanis are racially Middle Eastern and not South Asian just because they have a different religion from their fellow Indo-Aryan speaking Hindu North Indians. Yes- race is a social construct and not necessarily based on national borders, geography, DNA, or language- but your average person probably wouldn’t consider Maronite Catholic and Sunni Lebanese to be of different races lmao. And they probably wouldn’t say Person A from Lahore is as physically or culturally different from Person B from Mumbai as they are from Person C in Ho Chi Minh City either.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I have a bit of theory that a lot of people think of Christian Arabs as different ethnically than Muslim Arabs because they often do have a different appearance....men are often shaven and women don't wear hijabs.

Of course this applies to some Muslims too. For example if you showed most people a picture of Rashida Tlaib who didn't know who she was I doubt most would expect her to be Muslim. Frankly my first impression of her is that she looks more Hispanic than anything else.

Similarly when Americans think of Iranians they usually immediately think of bearded ayatollahs and women in hijabs. But Iranian-Americans almost never have long beards or hijabs and at most are considered to look slightly "ethnic".