Loading ...Census Bureau Weighs Mideast Category
By JANET ADAMY and PAUL OVERBERG
The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. Census Bureau has opened the door to counting people of Middle Eastern descent for the first time, setting off an intense debate about who fits in the category and whether they will also divulge their ethnicity to the government.
Some 1.2 million households received pilot questionnaires containing the new category starting in August. If adopted, the changes would rework how the federal government tracks race and ethnicity by allowing millions of Americans to identify themselves as Middle Eastern or North African. Most have previously marked themselves as “white.”
Debate over the change has intensified after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris, which prompted GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to call for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.
Some Arab Americans who pushed for the new category now worry respondents won’t share their Middle Eastern heritage for fear the federal government could use the data to spy on them despite being prevented by law from doing so.
The Census Bureau tested several versions of a form that asks people to check one or more of as many as eight boxes to identify their race or ethnicity. In versions that included a checkbox marked “Middle Eastern or North African,” instructions suggest they write in details on a blank line, offering such examples as “Lebanese,” “Iranian” or “Egyptian.”
“The fear of telling the government, ‘Hey I am Middle Eastern, I am North African,’ a lot of people aren’t going to want to do that because of heightened fear of surveillance,” said Khaled Beydoun, an assistant professor of law at Barry University’s law school in Orlando, Fla., who consulted with the bureau and supported adding the category.
Census officials say they have received no indication that recent events have dissuaded Americans from identifying as Middle Eastern. “We take pride in ensuring that we’re tabulating data that will not reveal any individual information,” said Nicholas Jones, director of race and ethnic research and outreach at the Census. “This is not shared with other agencies.”
Test results, due next summer, will influence whether the federal government decides to add the category to the 2020 Census. A decision must be made by early 2018.
According to the 2014 American Community Survey, about 2.7 million Americans reported that they trace their ancestry to the Middle East or North Africa. But unlike the every-10-year census, that survey doesn’t track everyone and offers limited results for neighborhoods, small towns and rural areas.
Middle Eastern Americans have for decades pushed for being counted on the Census. In 1997, the federal government decided against giving them a Census category because advocates couldn’t agree on who fit into the group. The federal government defines “white” as anyone having origins in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.
That classification felt particularly inaccurate to many Middle Eastern Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when increased scrutiny made them feel decidedly not white, advocates say.
This year, the National Network for Arab American Communities helped encourage more than 4,000 people to write to the Census Bureau to urge the change. Arab American groups say it would bolster political power and might yield affirmative-action benefits and minority business contracts from the federal government. They contend it would enhance civil-rights protections, as well.
But some Middle Eastern Americans say the change could do the opposite by giving the government more data to track them. In 2000, the Census Bureau apologized for supplying unpublished data that facilitated internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The parameters of the test category have angered leaders representing Amazigh Americans, a diaspora of the pre-Arabic peoples of North Africa more commonly known as Berbers. Soumia Aitelhaj, a Massachusetts-based activist who talked to Census officials about the change, said that grouping her people with Middle Easterners misrepresents their cultural identity and could fuel discrimination.
“It’s like a war of identities,” said Ms. Aitelhaj.
Indeed, exactly who is in and who isn’t has been hotly debated. The bureau’s working list of groups it would tally doesn’t include Turkey, despite numerous requests. But Kurds, an ethnic group with thousands of members living in Turkey, were included.
Census officials said they developed the tentative list of 19 nations and nine ethnicities by consulting Middle Eastern scholars and advocacy groups, and are continuing to seek their feedback on the proposed changes.
Source: www.wsj.com