For the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has prioritized racial equity, requiring federal agencies to create equity action plans and enacting policies to bridge gaps created by long-standing inequities. However, these actions are only as effective as the data they’re based on.

In March 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) took a step toward a more accurate and equitable future by revising its race and ethnicity standards to include Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) as a new category on all federal government documents. Before this change, difficulty collecting nationally representative data has led to the erasure of MENA Americans’ experiences.

By including this new category in federal surveys and documents, policymakers can better provide the public with a clear picture of the number, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic situations of MENA Americans. In addition, this change has implications for representation in major policies, the mapping of voting districts, and resource allocation.

Why does including MENA as a new category matter?

Race, although based on certain physical characteristics, is a socially constructed phenomenon. As a result, the definitions of racial categories have fluctuated over the years. The first census in 1790 included the racial categories “Whites,” “Other Free Peoples,” and “Slaves.” Since then, racial categories have changed substantially. Now, five racial categories are represented in the federal census: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

For decades, the OMB has classified the MENA American community as white. Early MENA immigrants originally were considered of Asian descent when they first immigrated to the US, which created issues for the MENA community because policies such as the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 barred people of Asian descent from obtaining citizenship. Early MENA Americans saw whiteness as a path to citizenship and advocated for the legal right to be “white.” In 1915, these people pooled together their resources for a lawsuit, which resulted in a historic ruling granting Levantine Arabs legal whiteness.

Since that initial categorization, many studies, including a 2021 study by Neda Maghbouleh and colleagues, have explored how the white racial category may not accurately describe the diversity and lived experiences of people in this community. Not only do many MENA Americans disagree with the white categorization, but they’re also confronted with a white America that excludes them from this category. This lack of consensus of racial identity has contributed to confusion with identity and complications for policymakers working on equity-focused programs.

What do the new OMB race categories mean for the MENA American Community?

By expanding the race and ethnicity categories included in federal surveys and other documentation, policymakers have already taken steps to a more equitable future. With these new data, policymakers at all levels, agencies, and community-based organizations will have a greater access to the following:

• a more accurate count of MENA Americans
• more granular demographic data
• differences in socioeconomic status among MENA communities

This new designation will allow these stakeholders to better ensure their work leads to more equitable and targeted support. MENA Americans’ recognition as a distinct marginalized identity grants them legal recognition for policies that were created to protect racial minorities. This category will also allow medical researchers and health care professionals to create a representative assessment of health needs to better tailor health care practices for this demographic. Finally, policymakers will be able to better assess how to allocate its trillions of dollars to meet the MENA community’s unique situations.

Ultimately, this change could lead to a more equitable future for MENA Americans because of the representative data available to policymakers. Previously, other groups that have experienced marginalization, especially Black Americans, have advocated that their communities fill out the census to ensure accurate representation and an equitable distribution of federal funding. Altogether, this new racial category could build on and further institutionalize policies focused on racial equity and economic mobility.