{"id":35066,"date":"2013-12-18T14:14:22","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T14:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35066"},"modified":"2013-12-18T14:17:39","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T14:17:39","slug":"arabs-hispanics-seeking-better-us-census-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35066","title":{"rendered":"Arabs, Hispanics seeking better US Census recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2013\/12\/17\/arabs-hispanics-seekingbetteruscensusrecognition.html\" target=\"_blank\">Arabs, Hispanics seeking better US Census recognition<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\" target=\"_blank\">Aljazeera America<\/a><br \/>\n2013-12-17<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/hayaelna\" target=\"_blank\">Haya El Nasser<\/a><\/strong>, Los Angeles Digital Reporter<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<em>Many community organizations hope for a new Middle East and North Africa category in the next Census.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When Hassan Jaber, a Lebanese-American, fills out his Census questionnaire, the race question gives him pause. White? No. Black? No. Asian? American Indian? Native Hawaiian? No, no, no.<\/p>\n<p>So he checks off the only other option: \u201csome other race.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe categories really don\u2019t represent us,\u201d said Jaber, executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) in Dearborn, Mich. \u201cEven putting it under \u2018other\u2019 makes the reliability of the information very questionable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But all this could soon change.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic population that no longer fits neatly into traditional classifications set by the government, the Census Bureau has been testing major changes in how it asks people to identify their race and ethnicity.<\/p>\n<p>Hispanic, an ethnicity, not a race, may soon be lumped into a broader \u201crace and origin\u201d category, effectively treating it as a race for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The line between race and ethnicity has become artificial, said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/experts\/freyw\" target=\"_blank\">William Frey<\/a>, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and the author of an upcoming book on the nation\u2019s diversity. \u201cWhat\u2019s the definition of race? It\u2019s not nationality. It\u2019s not skin color, necessarily,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of a mishmash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last summer, the Arab American Institute sent a letter signed by 30 advocacy groups asking the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which sets race standards, to create a MENA (Middle East and North Africa) category.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/newsroom\/releases\/archives\/bios\/nicholas_jones_bio.html\" target=\"_blank\">Nicholas Jones<\/a>, chief of the Census racial-statistics branch, calls the letter \u201chistoric.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Several populations are clamoring for their own categories, but, Jones said, \u201cit\u2019s the only group we\u2019ve received a letter from requesting a separate ethnicity box.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2013\/12\/17\/arabs-hispanics-seekingbetteruscensusrecognition.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arabs, Hispanics seeking better US Census recognition Aljazeera America 2013-12-17 Haya El Nasser, Los Angeles Digital Reporter \u00a0Many community organizations hope for a new Middle East and North Africa category in the next Census. When Hassan Jaber, a Lebanese-American, fills out his Census questionnaire, the race question gives him pause. White? No. Black? No. Asian? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,14646,8,20],"tags":[16571,16572,16570,2345,5744,974],"class_list":["post-35066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-aljazeera-america","tag-arab-american-institute","tag-hassan-jaber","tag-haya-el-nasser","tag-nicholas-jones","tag-william-frey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}