User:Ostromboli2/sandbox

Race and ethnicity in the United States census

As of 2023, the OMB built on the 1997 guidelines and suggested the addition of a Middle Eastern North African racial category and considered combining racial and ethnic categories into one question.

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The 2020 census was also "the first to specifically solicit Middle Eastern North African (MENA) responses" through the write-in response for the White racial category. The term MENA includes the Arab American population, which is growing quickly as of 2023. This allowed the 2020 census to include dis-aggregated data on MENA populations, which made up over 3.5 million Americans. California, New York, and Michigan have the largest MENA populations, and Lebanese, Iranian, and Egyptian populations made up nearly half of them. This was almost triple the 2000 Census’ estimate of a population of 1.2 million Arab Americans, based on the “Ancestry” question rather than the racial category question. That number may have been an under count however, as 19% of the American population provided no answer for the “Ancestry” question.

This is significant because MENA identities were previously only tracked through the "Ancestry" write-in question on the American Community Survey in 2010. The Arab American population was then estimated through the number of responses that included one or more Arab ancestries. The 2020 census changed this by explicitly prompting write-in responses with Arab American examples listed as "Print, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc".

The improvements are part of a larger effort reviewing the 1997 OMB guidelines, specifically to move MENA from under the White racial category into a new label. An OMB working group officially recommended a new MENA category in 2023 based on public feedback going back to 2015 and "plans to make final decisions on revisions by Summer 2024". Many people in the community "may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves, to be White". The added category could allow for more targeted funding, social programs, and political representation. A 2015 study from Rutgers University found significant inequalities in household income, citizenship rates, and English-speaking rates between New Jersey’s White population and Arab population, concluding that America’s White and Arab populations might be different enough both culturally and economically to justify a separate category.