{"id":63084,"date":"2022-02-14T16:58:55","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T16:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63084"},"modified":"2022-02-14T17:00:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:00:04","slug":"middle-eastern-and-north-african-americans-may-not-be-perceived-nor-perceive-themselves-to-be-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63084","title":{"rendered":"Middle Eastern and North African Americans may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves, to be White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Middle Eastern and North African Americans may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves, to be White<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States<\/a>
\nVolume 119, Number 7, e2117940119<\/a>
\n2022-02-15
\n9 pages
\nDOI: 10.1073\/pnas.2117940119<\/a><\/p>\n

Neda Maghbouleh<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of Toronto<\/em><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 D. Flores<\/strong><\/a>, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of Chicago<\/em><\/p>\n

Ariela Schachter<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Sociology\u200b; Faculty Affiliate in Asian American Studies
\nWashington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Significance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The US government\u2019s classification of Middle Eastern and North African<\/a> (MENA) Americans as White means there is no direct way to numerically count members of this group in official statistics. Therefore, any potential disparities and inequalities faced by MENA Americans remain hidden. Nevertheless, we find that MENA Americans may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves, to be White. These findings underscore the minoritized status of MENA Americans and support the inclusion of a new MENA identity category in the US Census<\/a>. This would allow researchers to examine the social, economic, and health status of this growing population and empower community advocates to ameliorate existing inequalities.<\/p>\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n

People of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent are categorized as non-White in many Western countries but counted as White on the US Census. Yet, it is not clear that MENA people see themselves or are seen by others as White. We examine both sides of this ethnoracial boundary in two experiments. First, we examined how non-MENA White and MENA individuals perceive the racial status of MENA traits (external categorization), and then, how MENA individuals identify themselves (self-identification). We found non-MENA Whites and MENAs consider MENA-related traits\u2014including ancestry, names, and religion\u2014to be MENA rather than White. Furthermore, when given the option, most MENA individuals self-identify as MENA or as MENA and White, particularly second-generation individuals and those who identify as Muslim. In addition, MENAs who perceive more anti-MENA discrimination are more likely to embrace a MENA identity, which suggests that perceived racial hostility may be activating a stronger group identity. Our findings provide evidence about the suitability of adding a separate MENA label to the race\/ethnicity identification question in the US Census, and suggest MENAs\u2019 official designation as White may not correspond to their lived experiences nor to others\u2019 perceptions. As long as MENA Americans remain aggregated with Whites, potential inequalities they face will remain hidden.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in HTML<\/a> or PDF<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our findings provide evidence about the suitability of adding a separate MENA label to the race\/ethnicity identification question in the US Census, and suggest MENAs\u2019 official designation as White may not correspond to their lived experiences nor to others\u2019 perceptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,26,394,20],"tags":[33024,26413,26982,738,33026,33023,2546,5367],"class_list":["post-63084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-ariela-schachter","tag-mena","tag-neda-maghbouleh","tag-pnas","tag-pnas-proceedings-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences-of-the-united-states","tag-rene-d-flores","tag-u-s-census-bureau","tag-united-states-census-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63084","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=63084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63086,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63084\/revisions\/63086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}