Op-Ed: New ethnicity marker polarizes Arab American community

posted on: Apr 17, 2017

By Karim Eltawansy, Virginia Tech Class of 2018
VT Collegiate Times

The U.S. Census Bureau is poised to add a Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) option to census surveys. The initiative is likely to be approved by Congress later this year, and thereby be enacted in the year 2020, according to Time magazine.

“I’m a huge fan of that being added. I’ve always been conflicted when it came to identifying on documents of other applications and things like that. Especially being Coptic Egyptian, and that’s an indigenous group … I know that it’s inaccurate for me to put ‘white’ or ‘Caucasian,’” said Jennifer Reskallah, a senior of Egyptian descent at Virginia Tech.

Hanna Soliman, Reskallah’s friend, is a Muslim student at Virginia Tech with Egyptian heritage, and she stood in support of the MENA proposal. When people don’t select their proper ethnicity marker, “they can miss out on a lot of cultural opportunities,” she said. And yet, not everyone at Tech held a positive position with regard to the new initiative.

“The intent of this is racism,” stated Ahmad Azzam in Arabic; he is currently an Arabic instructor at Virginia Tech. “They want to know about the Arabs coming here from the Middle East and North Africa.” Azzam himself migrated here 27 years ago from Jordan and noted that he wishes that Middle-Eastern states could be free and democratic like the U.S. But then he continued his criticism of the bureau’s proposal, stating, “This law is against Arabs if they vote on it and it becomes law … there’s definitely a danger.”

This dichotomy, a part of the Arab-American community feeling empowered by having its own ethnicity marker and another part feeling repressed, has been reported on by the press. It remains to be seen how exactly this will be implemented, but in the Census Bureau’s trial run of the MENA option, many Arab Americans filled out MENA when available, according to NPR. The general trend is toward integration, and Arab-American activist groups have pushed this for years.

The Washington Post noted that Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, has supported this initiative. “To be a community that’s invisible has been a real problem for us,” Berry said. No one really knows how many people of Middle Eastern descent are currently residing in the U.S. The Arab American Institute claims the number to be 3.7 million according to survey data. According to Berry’s own statements with the Washington Post, data is important in order to ensure these communities are granted their rights by government officials, regarding second language classes, voting rights and health.

Furthermore, many Arabs noted that they did not feel “white,” a broad ethnicity option that covers Europeans, North Africans and Middle Easterners, according to the Census Bureau’s website. Bassem Khalil, a student at Virginia Tech, who arrived in the states four years ago, is apathetic about the new proposal. “I definitely feel weird when I put ‘white’ as my ethnicity,” he said. Khalil acknowledged an awkwardness that many people in the U.S. feel when they do not find the appropriate ethnicity available.

Soliman said that she does not fill out “white” despite it being the standard designation for Arabs in the U.S. “We’re not white,” she said brazenly. She also noted that as an Egyptian, if the option of “other” was not available, she would select African American as her ethnicity of choice. “Our struggles with African Americans and Muslims and Arabs are much more similar. From struggles, I can mean like from political to … school stuff,” she said.

However, some Middle Easterners and Muslims hold real skepticism, like Azzam. “Arabs will not do anything against this government, but they will be watched. And that will take away from their freedom,” he said.

Berry was interviewed about the issue with NPR. “The elements of our government that have wanted to do heightened surveillance in our community, they’ve done so without requiring this category,” Berry said. She concludes that if the government wants to monitor Muslims, or Americans of Middle-Eastern or North-African descent, which it has done in the past, it will find a way.