In March, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced a major change in how the federal government collects data about race and ethnicity. These updates will affect how federal agencies count people of Hispanic/Latino and Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) descent.
The addition of a “MENA” category is a welcome change that will allow millions of MENA Americans to have formal representation in the American system. And this update means the federal government will now categorize their racial and ethnic identity in meaningful ways. But these recent changes introduce some caveats that are important to acknowledge – particularly related to the erasure of Black ethnic identity.
The OMB did what, exactly?
The government uses data about the U.S. population to allocate resources, including federal funding to schools and the number of representatives for each state. Every 10 years, the U.S. census collects a variety of information from people such as the number of members in the household, their ages, employment status, and income. Racial and ethnic identity queries are part of the census questionnaire. Government surveys and questionnaires in the intervening years also track data on race and ethnicity.
Scholars have long noted the differences and shifts through the history of the racial and ethnic categories available on the U.S. census. These racial and ethnic categories have changed many times since the first census in 1790. In 2000, for example the census began allowing multiracial individuals to select more than one racial category.
With the 2030 census on the horizon, the OMB approved two significant changes to how federal agencies collect data regarding race and ethnicity. First, individuals who are of Latin American or Hispanic descent are no longer considered part of a different ethnic group. Instead, this option will appear alongside other racial categories. Second, people of Middle Eastern and North African descent are no longer racially categorized as “White.”
I am among the many MENA Americans who support this decision. However, I believe there are some important reasons to still think critically about the new category of “MENA,” and how it connects to the changes in the Hispanic and Latino category.
What might we want to think a bit more carefully about it?
Starting with the 1970 census, questionnaires asked individuals of Hispanic/Latino descent to identify themselves as an ethnicity and then answer a question about their race. The challenge was that many did not know how to answer the question about their race, because they did not see themselves as any race other than Hispanic/Latino. As a result, many selected “some other race.”
However, for some people, specifically Afro Latinos (e.g., Black Haitians, Dominicans, Brazilians), the division between race and ethnicity allowed them to self-categorize their race and ethnicity in a meaningful way. Individuals who are Afro Latino were able to describe their ethnic identity as Hispanic/Latino and their race as Black. Thus, the 2024 change to include Hispanic/Latino alongside all other racial categories might now force Afro Latinos, in particular, to select both racial boxes: “Black or African American” and “Hispanic/Latino.”
That introduces a new challenge, as selecting multiple boxes is open to different interpretations. Selecting both “Black or African American” and “Hispanic/Latino” could indicate someone is multiracially mixed between African American and Hispanic/Latino, rather than Afro Latino. This distinction is important because, first, the categories of “Black” and “African American” are not necessarily interchangeable. Whereas “African American” in the U.S. context is commonly understood to refer to descendants of slavery, “Black” can refer to a broader group, which includes Black ethnic groups and immigrants.
Second, removing the opportunity for Afro Latinos to self-categorize both their race and their ethnicity makes it harder to accurately count the estimated 6 million Afro Latinos in the United States. This has significant consequences, given that Afro Latino identity shapes their lived experiences in ways that are qualitatively different from both the Black African American experience and non-Black Hispanic/Latino experience.
MENA individuals now have their own category
Unlike Hispanic/Latino Americans, MENA individuals had never had a state-sanctioned category in the U.S. – racial or ethnic. This is because as far back as 1909, the U.S. government legally categorized MENA individuals as “White.”
The Naturalization Act of 1870 stated that the only immigrants eligible for naturalization were those who were racially White or Black. This meant that immigrants who were neither Black nor White were unable to petition for naturalization. To overcome this, East, South, and Southeast Asian immigrants petitioned U.S. courts, arguing that they were racially White and should be eligible for naturalization. (It is important to note that none of these petitioners argued for eligibility based on being Black; nor did lawmakers believe African immigrants would petition for naturalization.)
MENA immigrants were also among those who petitioned the courts to claim eligibility for naturalization by claiming they were White. U.S. courts heard 10 naturalization cases involving MENA petitioners. In seven of these cases, the judges ruled that MENA individuals were White, mainly due to the fact that many of the petitioners were light-skinned and Christian. Drawing from the court cases, the OMB officially categorized MENA individuals as “White” in 1977.
With the new changes, however, the OMB has now categorized MENA individuals as a stand-alone racial group. But many MENA individuals might also see “MENA” as an ethnic identity with a racial component. For Afro MENA individuals (e.g., Black Sudanese, Tunisians, Iranians), for instance, “MENA” as a new racial category still does not capture their identity. They are now in a space similar to Afro Latinos. While they may select both “Black or African American” and “MENA,” the two racial categories do not necessarily reflect the experiences of Afro MENA individuals as distinct from non-Afro MENA individuals or non-MENA African Americans.
The erasure of Afro MENA identity existed before the MENA category. How were Afro Tunisians to self-categorize in 2020, for instance? The 2020 U.S. census directions listed North Africans (e.g., people of Egyptian descent) as “White” but East Africans (e.g., those of Somali descent) as “Black.” While the inclusion of a “MENA” category now allows for an option for those who are between the old definition of “White” and the phenotypical understanding of “Black,” there’s reason to give thoughtful consideration to the drawbacks related to this change. A chief consideration: the continued erasure of Afro MENA identity.
A caveat to a caveat
So would it be better to have a separate race and ethnicity category? Wasn’t that already confusing for Hispanic/Latino Americans? The distinction I emphasize here between race and ethnicity is not to necessarily argue that the two categories should remain separate. Indeed, many individuals – both MENA and Hispanic/Latino – consider themselves neither White nor Black. They fall somewhere in the middle, phenotypically “brown.” Self-categorization as either White or Black would feel disingenuous to many. The answer perhaps, might be to think about the ways that Black as racial category can also be diverse, rather than exclusively focusing on the people who do not fit into the White racial category – as was the case with MENA individuals.
Ultimately, race and ethnic identities are socially and politically constructed. If they were biological truths, then the OMB would not be able to change the standards as they have. The goal is to move toward the least bad version of categorization that can represent people accurately, while still being simple enough for the mass public to self-categorize.
For now, through my research and the research of Amaney Jamal, Youssuf Chouhoud, Sarah Gualtieri, Germine Awad, Nadine Naber, Neda Maghbouleh, John Tehranian, Nura Sedique, and other scholars, it seems a “MENA” racial category is the least bad version. But that’s with keeping our eye on an even less bad category in the future – one that can acknowledge the diversity of Black identity in the United States and how this identity affects those who are racialized as such.
Amanda Sahar d’Urso is an assistant professor and Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Georgetown University in the Department of Government. Her research details how Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA) have been racialized throughout the 20th and 21st century, despite being legally classified as “White.“