Offering a MENA option shifts Iranian Americans’ racial self-identification away from white

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, 1404

Categorization

• XREF: Empirical anchor for the generational/bureaucratic shift the reader is tracking between inherited white essentialism and chosen non-white identity. — connects to: Social experience, not family ideology, determines second-generation Iranian racial identification — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 356; Iranian Americans equate being American with being white — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 715; Offering a MENA category drastically changes how Middle Easterners self-identify racially — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 591 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Iranian Americans equate being American with being white #corroborates (0.95) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 715
• Offering a MENA category drastically changes how Middle Easterners self-identify racially #expands (0.92) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 591
• Iranian Americans have been flexibly positioned inside and outside whiteness #qualifies (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 1256