US Census - Are Middle Easterners White?

[Cetacea]

In the past US citizens of Egyptian heritage have faced rejection for identifying themselves as "African Americans" and the default for many Palestinian Americans has been to tick the 'White" category. This has been a demographic limbo where people have never quite been quite the right fit for the categories presented.

The census bureau has considered these issues and thus proposed to include a new category in the 2020 US Census for "Middle Easterners and North Africans" (MENA) which is a very broad category in itself, which brings it's own issues as to usefulness.

Is it actually useful to identify such a diverse populations as a distinctive group? and indeed is there really any connection at all between an Algerian and an Iranian?

The other major point is also the current political climate - identifying as Middle Eastern isn't a great thing in the USA at the moment and many might hold that the chance to slip into White obscurity is somewhat more comforting than exposing yourself. Afterall in WW2 Japanese citizens were interred on the basis of Census data.

Which raises two other questions - If we are all human then Why do we identify Ethnic groups io the Census at all?
whats wrong with Middle Easterners identifying as White or with Egyptians being African-Americans?

[Utceforp]

Personally I think the Middle East is where the concept of "race" breaks down and the arbitrariness of it all becomes apparent.

[Gim]

If you just look at their faces...

[The first Galactic Republic]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

[Gim]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

Perhaps they can be classified in the "Indian" option?

[Cetacea]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

Helpful in what way?
Currently the US Census Bureau uses the definition of "White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." - why would seperating the categories further be of use from a Census perspective?

[Luziyca]

1) No, but it could be useful to collect some sort of demographic data
2) Because most humans instinctively sort others by race
3) Egyptians don't really look like a typical African-American, to be frank

[Neanderthaland]

If you just look at their faces...

What parts of them should I be looking at?

Do you determine ethnicity via gonads, or something?

[The Empire of Pretantia]

If you just look at their faces...

*Squints closely*

Eh, it's passable. I mean, I'm not going to carefully measure his skull and compare his skin to one of those little color thingies from Home Depot to determine if he's Middle Eastern. If he's kinda pale, he's white.

[The Serbian Empire]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

The Bosnian occasionally looks more similar to someone from Turkey or Lebanon than to a Swede. Where does white end and brown begin?

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

Perhaps they can be classified in the "Indian" option?

In the US, that's reserved for Native Americans.

[Jamilkhuze]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

Perhaps they can be classified in the "Indian" option?

1. Middle Easterners and South Asians don't look that similar... like at all. Your average MENA person (Arab, Persian, Jewish, Armenian, etc.) is noticeably lighter skinned and has less "exotic" features than your average person from the Indian subcontinent. Maybe it's easier for me to tell the difference because I grew up around a large Indian American community.

2. There is no "Indian" or "South Asian" option on the census, that would fall under "Asian/Pacific Islander". Of course South Asians, SE Asians, East Asians, and Pacific Islanders are only grouped together because of the shared experience of being relatively recent immigrant communities, and of not being white, black, Latino, or indigenous.

[The first Galactic Republic]

Is there much similarity between someone from France and someone from Bosnia? Is there much similarity between someone from Nigeria and someone from Tanzania? Race on the census has always put people in broad categories and having a middle eastern option would be very helpful.

Helpful in what way?
Current the US Census Bureau uses the definition of "White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." - why would seperating the categories further be of use from a Census perspective?

For the reasons why the census counts race at all. Just because it isn't as accurate as possible doesn't mean it can't be more accurate.

[Major-Tom]

According to the US Census, yes. Do they look 'white?' Sometimes. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. So long as they consider themselves American first and foremost.

[The Portland Territory]

One would consider them to be White, yes. Though perhaps a different class of White, like how there's Eastern Europeans and such

[The Serbian Empire]

Perhaps they can be classified in the "Indian" option?

1. Middle Easterners and South Asians don't look that similar... like at all. Your average MENA person (Arab, Persian, Jewish, Armenian, etc.) is noticeably lighter skinned and has less "exotic" features than your average person from the Indian subcontinent. Maybe it's easier for me to tell the difference because I grew up around a large Indian American community.

2. There is no "Indian" or "South Asian" option on the census, that would fall under "Asian/Pacific Islander". Of course South Asians, SE Asians, East Asians, and Pacific Islanders are only grouped together because of the shared experience of being relatively recent immigrant communities, and of not being white, black, Latino, or indigenous.

Secondly, the Armenians are often pale enough to be mistaken for Chechens. Chechens are what "Caucasian" is based on.

[Gim]

In the US, that's reserved for Native Americans.

Ah, okay. Forgot about that for a moment.

[Khalisako]

People from the levant look white enough to me. East of there tho is big no no.

[Novus Maryland]

White, no. Caucasian, yes.

[Union of Despotistan]

No. No, they are not.

[Forsher]

In the past US citizens of Egyptian heritage have faced rejection for identifying themselves as "African Americans" and the default for many Palestinian Americans has been to tick the 'White" category. This has been a demographic limbo where people have never quite been quite the right fit for the categories presented.

The census bureau has considered these issues and thus proposed to include a new category in the 2020 US Census for "Middle Easterners and North Africans" (MENA) which is a very broad category in itself, which brings it's own issues as to usefulness.

Is it actually useful to identify such a diverse populations as a distinctive group? and indeed is there really any connection at all between an Algerian and an Iranian?

Here's an interesting question... is a person born and raised in Britain but who now lives in NZ with NZ citizenship, NZ European? Not really. The point of being NZ European is that one is from an NZ European milieu rather than being from a European one but being physically located in NZ. It gets a bit tricky because what happens after our example person has been living in NZ for, say, 60 years? Culturally they're realistically both... which is why one should design census questions that allow for multiple identities.

Now, this is relevant to the question here because it is unrealistic to presuppose much meaningful sameness between Algerian and Iranian nationals from the respective cultural milieux (I'm using this word now, I've been reading it lately, see?) who live in those countries. On the other hand, an Iranian American and an Algerian American are pretty much equivalent to how, say, a Dutch and British tradition might flavour two NZ Europeans whose grandparents moved to NZ in the 1950s. It becomes a lot more meaningful in this situation talk about a Middle Eastern American identity... even if we assume there is no over-arching similarities between "broadly proximate" cultures (e.g. Western Europe, Middle East, East Asia; quote marks because there are all sorts of problems with this terminology) these individuals experiences would almost certainly have had very similar interactions with people in their society (i.e. the US). Regrettably, the easiest way of explaining this point to me means mentioning the wildly distracting issue of genocide. There is a reason why the oppressive group does the identifying in the definition of genocide, but the mere fact that you're identified as being, for example, Venusian (even if you're not) indicates that you're subjected to the same policies... and therefore that one's experiences depend on not just how one identifies but also how one is identified. It's a nasty complicated world out there.

This genocide distraction is also useful for explaining why lumping Algerian and Iranian immigrants into the same ethnic category makes sense even if you presuppose no meaningful sameness... it helps capture, for instance, discriminatory impacts of being identified as rather than identifying as.

Note:

It's important to talk about how coming to realise that one views oneself as an Iranian American might be a big moment for an Iranian immigrant... they've come to consider America home at this point. Which is to say, I've played very loosely with terms above so I've basically pretended this sort of thing doesn't exist.

The other major point is also the current political climate - identifying as Middle Eastern isn't a great thing in the USA at the moment and many might hold that the chance to slip into White obscurity is somewhat more comforting than exposing yourself. Afterall in WW2 Japanese citizens were interred on the basis of Census data.

While I am inclined to view such as paranoia, really this is about America now, not censuses or ethnicity, which allows us to move in to the much angrier second half of my post quite naturally.

Which raises two other questions - If we are all human then Why do we identify Ethnic groups io the Census at all?

Three problems with this question:

Your case follows from a screw-ball country with weird practices. White is not and never has been an ethnicity as such. Americans don't think about it as an ethnicity (see: their obsession with race) and historically "white" has been defined as the state of not being Other. It is, therefore, in some sense, not "real". White belongs no-where a census. Black is a bit different because insofar as it was an Othered category and insofar as being a member of a realised class forges a class identity (again, I have just said white was never a realised group), you can argue that it is an ethnicity as such as well as being a "race".

All squares are rectangles. To start talking about "we're all human" is the same uneducated twaddle that leads to people talking about "accidents of history" (as if anything isn't) or the "right side of history" (teleology is bad and you should feel bad). It simply remains that case that shared broad identity doesn't preclude narrow identities (clades within clades, for instance) or that several flavours of a macro-identity may be expressed. Unless, for instance, you truly believe it is experientially equivalent to be an Aborigine or non-Aborigine in Australia? I use this specific example because there is literature about the distinction between Australian Aborigine and Aboriginal Australian, which generates much the same conclusion for our purposes here.

Finally, the answer is completely obvious so I have to conclude that asking the question is an attempt to mislead: different groups have different experiences and the modern state needs to be aware of these. Whether the state cares for the purposes of assistance or whatever is beside the point: brutal dictatorships need to know where their Others are and what they're doing, and "moral" democracies give themselves a duty to help out their citizens (although, again, the US doesn't seem to fall in either category... indeed, having 10 year censuses is terrible practice so I guess they're an apathetic state which does it so it knows if it's not being lazy enough????). It should be immediately obvious from the state of having at least 13 years of life that one's experiences depend on one views oneself and how one is identified by others.

whats wrong with Middle Easterners identifying as White or with Egyptians being African-Americans?

America. I'm not kidding. This is the answer.

In NZ, this would not be an issue... at all... because, you know, we actually use ethnicities in our censuses,.

[Salus Maior]

In NZ, this would not be an issue... at all... because, you know, we actually use ethnicities in our censuses,.

How would that be any different?

[The Sauganash Union]

White, no. Caucasian, yes.

[San Marlindo]

Let me share this little tidbit with you - when I was in Bahrain, I saw a group of people who looked like Northern Europeans - they were what a lot of people would call "Nordic", okay they looked like your typical white American.

They had really fair skin, light brown or dirty blond hair and blue eyes, and were dressed in loose-fitting roughspun garments. I know this because I actually walked close enough to stand next to them.

If it weren't for the clothes I would've totally mistook them for Westerners.

Anyway, they were being supervised by a guy who looked like a typical local Arab from Bahrain, so I engaged the dude and asked him who they were.

He said they were migrant workers from a dirt poor village in the mountains of some region, forgot where, somehow I got the idea it may have even been eastern China (they were definitely not Chinese though). Anyway, this Arab talked about these people as if they were literally lower than dirt: they were just poor workers, totally illiterate, could barely even speak Arabic, he spoke so dismissively of them - like they were trash. You would never have heard anybody in the Gulf talk about an American or European or Australian expatriate this way.

I was reminded of how arbitrary race classifications can be then and there. It was a white supremacist's worst nightmare: poverty stricken, ragged white people working for peanuts and being treated with an air of superiority by the Arabs.

But then I realized your average white supremacist probably wouldn't even regard these people as white - I mean, appearances aside they had nothing in common.

[USS Monitor]

If they want to identify as "white," I don't mind. They're similar to Europeans genetically, and some of them look white anyway.

[New haven america]

According to the US census, yes.