The New Census Racial Group May Hurt Those It Is Supposed To Help | Opinion

The 2030 U.S. Census, other government surveys, and future federal forms will now include a new government-created Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) racial category. But the new MENA category will spread beyond just government surveys and forms; private organizations like colleges and universities, standardized test providers, pollsters, and others will now follow suit by incorporating this concocted racial category on all their products.

As an American with ancestry that would be included in the new MENA race, I see many downsides for myself, my family, and my country from creating this monstrosity. I see no benefits.

The government engaging in central planning to create new racial categories is bad enough, as Americans who are most likely to check the new box won't even benefit. And the reasons for making this categorical change are remarkably silly.

Arab American organizations began lobbying the U.S. Census Bureau in the 1980s to create a new racial category for Arab or Middle Eastern Americans. The goal was to increase their political influence, and perhaps, eventually benefit from affirmative action. After decades of lobbying and intra-government wrangling, the Biden administration approved the new wider MENA racial category along with a slew of additional race changes.

Activists who want affirmative action for MENAs are correct that they'd have to create a new racial category before being able to get those other racial benefits, but they radically miscalculated in another way. In practice, affirmative action is for Americans of ethnic or racial groups that are less successful than white people on average. However, Americans who would be in the new MENA category have higher incomes and education than white Americans. In other words, MENA Americans will be punished under affirmative action.

The recent controversy around Asian Americans shows how racial classifications can go wrong. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard exposed how some universities raised admissions standards for Asians to free up slots for students from other racial groups with lower grades and test scores. The Court ruled that discriminatory admissions policies violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment—well done!

But some universities committed to affirmative action will likely find ways to give preference to applicants from certain racial groups, which will require discriminating against others like Americans in the new MENA category. And that doesn't even consider that a future SCOTUS could overturn Students for Fair Admissions.

Why would MENA activists want to hurt the prospects of MENA Americans in this way? They have underestimated the success of Americans who would end up checking that box. It's sad that MENA activists have such a low opinion of themselves, their families, and people with similar backgrounds.

Another argument made by advocates in favor of creating a MENA category is "data accuracy." They claim lawmakers don't know much about Americans from a Middle Eastern or North African background because the government doesn't ask them.

Balderdash. The American Community Survey (ACS), an annual "mini-Census," asks Americans about their ancestries, including all Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Using existing ACS data, it was trivially easy for my colleague and I to estimate the education and incomes of Americans with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. It took us about six hours, and we're willing to share our statistical code with anyone who wants to use our methods to answer different questions about this population.

The fact that few, if anyone, have ever used ACS data to look at the socioeconomic status of MENA Americans before us indicates that there is roughly zero demand for this data. If there were, activist organizations or others would have pulled the existing data to answer their questions.

One point that advocates make in favor of a government-created MENA racial category is that many of them don't feel "white," so they need a new racial category to represent their identity. The white category in the Census is broad and currently includes people of Icelandic and Afghan descent and everyone in between. However, a MENA category would be only slightly narrower and open to the same criticism by including widely different ancestries.

People from the Middle East and North Africa are religiously diverse, with Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others. They are ethnically diverse, with Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and others. They are even linguistically diverse, with languages in the Altaic language group (Turkish), Afroasiatic language group (Arabic and Hebrew), and Indo-European language group (Farsi and Pashto). There is no current "MENA" identity independent of the government-created racial category.

Americans whose ancestors came from the MENA region don't need a new government-designed race to validate their ethnicities, cultures, or ancestry any more than they need a special religious category in a government survey to validate their Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Yazidi, or other religious beliefs. The federal government can't validate identity, and it shouldn't attempt to do so. Other survey questions about ancestry capture that well, and freedom to determine one's own identity will lead to better results that are more consistent with people's actual beliefs than a new government-created MENA race.

The government already collects too much data on race and ethnicity that it uses for dubious purposes like affirmative action, DEI, and other unethical schemes. Ideally, the government should stop collecting racial data in the Census and other major surveys. But at a minimum, the government should not create new racial groups like MENA.

Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.