Offering a MENA category drastically changes how Middle Easterners self-identify racially

Evidence

As part of its 2015 National Content Test (NCT), the Census Bureau conducted a formal test of a MENA category, offering to respondents “Iranian” as one of six “example” ancestry groups listed under MENA. When no MENA category was offered, respondents with ancestry from the Middle East, including Iranians, predominantly self-identified as “white” or “some other race.” But when offered the MENA category as a racial option, an overwhelming majority of respondents with ancestry in Iran and the Arab world shifted their self-identification to MENA. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 591

Categorization

• QUESTION: What would the 2020 census results show had a MENA category been included, and who pushed against it?
• SEED: Angles for an essay on how census category options actively construct rather than merely measure race and identity.
• XREF: connects to: Offering a MENA option shifts Iranian Americans’ racial self-identification away from white — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1404

Related

• Offering a MENA option shifts Iranian Americans’ racial self-identification away from white (similarity 0.93)
• Census planning for a new MENA category drew overwhelming expert support (similarity 0.84)
• Iranian Americans equate being American with being white (similarity 0.81)
• Census officials forcibly recoded written-in Iranian identities as white (similarity 0.80)