Why U.S. Census plan to add Middle Eastern, North African categories matters to these Long Islanders

For Hany Mostafa and Mustafa AbuSaab, it's welcome news that the Biden administration has announced plans to change how the government collects information on race and ethnicity.

The U.S. Census Bureau is making plans to add a category for people of Middle Eastern or North African heritage, a change advocacy groups have long sought. It's about representation, the two Long Islanders say.

"Since I came to this country, I feel like there's a lack of representation for the Middle Eastern group specifically," said Mostafa, 49, in reference to government forms. He said he has lived in the United States for 26 years, arriving from Egypt to pursue a master's degree in finance at Sacramento State University in California. The certified public accountant, who lives in Westbury, established his own firm.

Mostafa said the choices he was given on census forms and other documents, such as his children's college application forms, did not accurately reflect his and his family's racial or cultural identity. "There's really no option for that group or ethnicity to be presented," he said.

Policymakers at the federal level and in New York State have taken notice and set into motion plans for a separate Middle Eastern or North African demographic category, commonly referred to as MENA, on census forms and other government documents. At the federal level, however, those plans may be dependent on the outcome of the November election, as the prior Trump administration had rejected a similar proposal.

Key toward identifying community needs

Advocates say having a category for individuals in the MENA group enables greater accuracy on their population statistics and can direct policymakers to pinpoint needs this community may have and any disparities they may experience.

Collecting such data also gives policymakers crucial information, officials said. The Census Bureau said in an April report that advocates for Middle Eastern or North African populations have "shown strong support for a MENA category and the need for demographic and socioeconomic statistics about its population to inform policy decisions, health research, civil rights monitoring and enforcement and many other needs."

Taina Wagnac, senior manager of state and local policy for the New York Immigration Coalition, said, "The revision in the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] standards came after years of advocacy."

She supported another major change in the revisions approved by OMB earlier this year that would combine the race and ethnicity questions. Those questions currently are asked separately on census forms, but has been confusing for many Latino respondents, many of whom end up checking the "Some other race" box on the census, officials said.

AbuSaab, 45, of Syosset, who owns a small supermarket, noted that census forms actually direct him to check white.

Question 9 on the 2020 Census asks: "What is your race?" and gives the following prompts for the white category: "White — Print, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.," with an arrow pointing to a write-in section below for any other national origin the respondent might want to indicate.

"My skin color is white," AbuSaab said, but added, "It's not my race," nor does it reflect his heritage. He added he was not aware of this proposed change for federal data collection until Newsday asked him about it, but said the issue "does mean something to me."

"I was born and raised in Syosset" to parents of Palestinian heritage, AbuSaab said. "My whole life, as an American taxpayer, I read white, Alaskan, Eskimo, American Indian and Other" on documents asking for race information. "I always feel I'm not counted every time I fill out a federal form."

Having a separate MENA category, Wagnac said, would more accurately reflect the population rather than tabulating them within the white racial category, as was done in the 2020 census. "A lot of Middle Eastern or North Africans didn't see themselves as white, so it's not accurate or fair for them to check white and they're not perceived as white," she said. "They face a lot of police oversight and anti-immigration measures that white populations are not facing."

The Census Bureau said 3.5 million people reported Middle Eastern or North African descent in the 2020 census, which was the first to solicit MENA responses.

The Census Bureau says the MENA category is "geographically based and includes Arabic-speaking groups, such as Egyptian and Jordanian, and non-Arabic speaking groups, such as Iranian and Israeli," as well as "ethnic and transnational groups from the region, including Assyrian and Kurdish."

Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., said adding a MENA category would merely commingle dissimilar groups of people.

"It's misguided because it's done for political purposes," said Gonzalez, who also was critical of other racial and ethnic categories as divisive, saying, "This is divide and conquer [and] Balkanizing America."

NY effort for MENA population

New York State legislators also have focused on collecting demographic information on the MENA population, passing legislation in June, saying: "Every state agency, department, or commission that directly collects demographic data as to the ethnic origin of residents of the state of New York shall use separate collection categories ... for the white group ... including the following Middle Eastern or North African groups in New York state," citing a long list of nations and indigenous groups in the regions.

It calls for the data to be published or released for most departments on or before Dec. 1, 2025, and for a few others by July 1, 2026.

Getting information about a population whose visibility is increasing but is not necessarily reflected in government data was the impetus for the New York legislation to collect demographic data on the Middle Eastern and North African population, said Assemb. Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas (D-Queens), who introduced the measure in the Assembly. The state Senate sponsor was Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria). She said there were estimates that the MENA population in the state numbered between 300,000 and 500,000, "but it's difficult to pull out by community," she said.

"As a legislator, it's important for me to know what the needs are in my district," Gonzalez-Rojas said in an interview. "The first step is to get the data and make sure the state is pulling out the information about who lives in New York State." 

And, pointing to the census form that prompted people from the Middle East or North African region to select their race as white, Gonzalez-Rojas said that as a group, "These people have not benefited from white privilege by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they have been targeted ... Race is about social status in society and the reality is that Middle Eastern and North African people have very different experiences from white people."

The legislator said she hoped Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign the measure into law "sooner rather than later." Hochul has until Dec. 31 to decide whether to sign the measure. A spokeswoman for Hochul said in an email that the governor was reviewing the bill.

The Census Bureau revealed in a July 12 notice in the Federal Register its proposed timeline on implementing the new revisions, saying they were looking at collecting race and ethnicity standards through its American Community Survey in 2026 for distribution the following year, or by 2027 for distribution in 2028. The revised standards also would be applied to the next decennial census in 2030.

Gonzalez-Rojas said they moved to have the MENA category in New York because of the time lag it would take the Census Bureau to make the revision, as well as the uncertainty on who will win the presidential election in November. The Obama administration considered a similar proposal in 2016 that was rejected by the Trump administration in 2017.

"We are hopeful for a Harris administration, but given that the Trump administration would be hostile to these changes, we feel first off it's too long to wait for this change," Gonzalez-Rojas said.

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie