Local Arab-Americans are cautiously optimistic about a change in how the U.S. Census Bureau categorizes people by race and ethnicity.
For decades, the Arab-American community advocated for a choice other than “white” or “other” on census questionnaires.
The federal government announced last month that, for the first time, Middle Eastern and North African people, commonly abbreviated as MENA, will be separated from the “white” category on census questionnaires.
The changes will be reflected in data collection, forms, surveys and the once-a-decade census questionnaires put out by the federal government, as well as in state governments and the private sector, because businesses, universities and other groups usually follow Washington’s lead. Federal agencies have 18 months to submit a plan on how they will put the changes in place.
The changes will allow Arab-Americans to create and expand data-driven programs to address their needs in health care, education, civil rights and more, said Rima Meroueh, director of the Dearborn-based National Network for Arab-American communities.
Even though the census did not have a means for Arab-Americans to identify themselves, the bureau did conduct periodic smaller surveys that asked about ethnicity.
Those surveys show that an average of 34,351 people who identified as Arab-American lived in Oakland County from 2017-2021.
More than half came to Oakland County after 2000.
Of the total, more than 19,000 were born in the United States, leaving almost 15,000 who were foreign-born.
The vast majority of those who were foreign-born had become U.S. citizens.
The bureau estimates that about 3,700 were not citizens, but that does not mean they were undocumented. They could have been in the United States on several different kinds of visas.
The census doesn’t ask about immigration status.
“We’re a data agency. We’re not an enforcement agency,” said spokeswoman Kristina Barrett.
The risk of being discovered as undocumented could prompt some Arab-Americans to neglect the opportunity to identify themselves as such, said Imad Hamad, executive director of the American Human Right Council in Dearborn.
“Overall, it’s welcome news,” he said of the recent census change. “It’s a good step in the right direction.”
He said some Arab-Americans may reject the new option on the census simply because they don’t want to be labeled as a minority.
Others, he said, “are concerned that the data will be used for other purposes,” such as immigration enforcement.
He said Arab-American organizations will have to work to spread the word that the census’ only purpose is to count people. He said the census changes are “not going to provide a magic solution” to the question of how many Arab-Americans live in a particular city, county or state.
Hamad said there aren’t reliable numbers for the Detroit area.
More than 300,000 Middle Eastern and North African people lived in Michigan as of 2020, according to Census Bureau data, but experts say that may be low by as much as 200,000 people.
Nearly half of Michigan’s MENA population, or about 140,000 people, live in Wayne County, and most of those live in Dearborn, where the MENA residents hold a majority.
