Nyhiem Way is tired of people confusing African Americans with blacks. Shalini Parekh wants a way for South Asians to identify differently from East Asians with roots in places like China or Japan. And Byron Haskins wants the United States to throw away racial and ethnic labels.
“When you create categories that are used to put people in boxes, sometimes you miss the truth about them,” said Haskins, who describes himself as African American.
The voices of Way, Parekh and Haskins are among more than 4,600 comments pending before the Biden administration as it considers updating the nation’s racial and ethnic categories for the first time since 1997.
There is a lot to consider.
Some black Americans want their ancestors’ slavery to be recognized in how they identify. Some Jews believe that their identity should be seen as its own ethnic category and not just a religion. The idea of revising the categories for racial and ethnic identities, both in the census and in the collection of demographic information among the labor force, has fueled op-eds and think-tank essays, as well as thousands of written comments from individuals about what which is almost a Rorschach Test for how Americans identify themselves.
The White House Office of Management and Budget will decide the new classifications next year and this week is hosting three virtual town halls on the topic.
Some conservatives question the process itself, saying the general premise that Americans need more ethnicities will only accelerate balkanization.
“By creating and deepening subnational identities, the government continues to contribute to the decline of an American national identity,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in his personal commentary posted on the OMB webpage, urging the public to enter. .
This view contrasts sharply with those who argue that earlier categories overlooked nuance.
“This is certainly a unique moment and opportunity to dramatically improve and increase the accuracy and completeness of data,” said Mario Beovides, director of policy and legislative affairs for the NALEO Education Fund, at a recent forum .
The proposed changes would create a new category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent, also known by the acronym MENA, who are now classified as white but who say they have been systematically underreported.
The process would also combine race and ethnicity questions into one survey, as some advocates say the current method of asking race and ethnicity questions separately often confuses Hispanic respondents. With reviews, the government would seek to get more detailed answers about race and ethnicity by asking for country of origin information.
Another proposal calls for the federal government to remove the words “black” and “far east,” now considered pejorative. The terms “majority” and “minority” would also be dropped because some officials say they do not reflect the nation’s complex racial and ethnic diversity.
Several black Americans, such as Way, whose ancestors were enslaved, said in public comments to OMB that they would like to be identified under a category such as American Freedmen, Foundational Black Americans, or American Descendants of Slavery in order to distinguish from blacks. or even black immigrants.white people born in Africa as well as reflecting the history of their ancestors in the United States.
Way, who is president of the United Sons & Daughters of Freedmen, which describes itself as dedicated to restoring the broken promises of Reconstruction, also recommended replacing the word “population group” with “race.”
The conflation of “African-American” with “black” has “blurred what it means to be African-American in this country,” Way, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Athens, Ga., said in a telephone interview.
Haskins, a retired government employee from Lansing, Michigan, suggested eliminating racial categories like “white” and “black” because they perpetuate “deeply ingrained unjust socio-political constructs.”
Instead, he said people should be able to identify themselves however they want. When her sociologist daughter points out the difficulty of aggregating such data into something useful for addressing inequalities in housing or voting, or for tailoring health or education programs to the needs of communities, she says, “It’s crazy. That’s what you get paid for.”
“You have to look for the truth and not stick to old categories because somebody decided, ‘This is what we decided,'” Haskins said.
Parekh calls on the government to distinguish South Asians from East Asians.
“When these groups are assessed together, an important granularity is lost that can help differentiate specific problems of one group and not another,” Parekh said.
The MENA community appears to have a related problem, based on several comments to OMB. Without a category of its own, the group’s political power is diluted. People could benefit from consistent representation, especially if identities were factored into drawing political districts, advocates said.
This is even more personal for Houda Meroueh, who described herself to the Biden administration as a 73-year-old Arab-American woman.
“When I walk into the doctor’s office, it doesn’t feel like they have the information to understand my medical history or my culture,” she said. “For all these reasons I want to be seen as I am. Not so white.
Jordan Steiner said that the ethnic categories should be expanded to include not only MENA, but also other groups, such as Jews, who often see themselves not only as members of a religious group, but also as an ethnic one.
Jessica Aksoy praised the proposals to expand the categories, saying she often feels limited in the boxes she has to tick as a person of Turkish, European and Jewish descent.
“Recognizing our differences is honoring and celebrating America’s rich man,” Aksoy said. “The face of America is changing, and this initiative is for progress in recognizing that fact.” ___
Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP
I’m a passionate and motivated journalist with a focus on world news. My experience spans across various media outlets, including Buna Times where I serve as an author. Over the years, I have become well-versed in researching and reporting on global topics, ranging from international politics to current events.