Arab American community in Chicago says data from new racial category could help address disparities

It never felt right for Maya Atassi to check a box indicating she was white on government forms asking for her race.

Atassi, who identifies as Syrian American, considered choosing Asian, but the definitions on forms usually guided her to check white. Although she was born in the United States, Atassi often traveled to her parents’ native Syria. The ties to the country were an important part of her identity that weren’t captured in the questions about her race.

“It’s really just recently that I’ve been able to see the fabric of how the system works and how there’s power in the system in excluding people, but there’s also power in the system when you want to advocate for what your needs are,” said Atassi, the co-executive director of the Syrian Community Network, based in Chicago.

Soon, she and other Arab American community members will be recognized as a distinct racial category in government forms. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of the executive office of President Biden, recently announced the federal government will add Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) as a category for race and ethnicity.

The change means the 2030 census will collect data for the first time about how many Arab Americans live across the country. Middle Eastern or North African encompasses people who identify as Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Israeli or other groups such as Moroccan, Yemeni or Kurdish, according to the federal government.

The government is also changing how it asks about race and ethnicity. It will now use one question — instead of two — and allow people to select more than one category.

Leaders in the Arab American community in the Chicago area say the long-sought change could finally bring an accurate depiction of their community and highlight disparities, improve resources and eventually lead to more political power.

“For the first time, we begin to tell the actual real stories and real numbers,” said Nareman Taha, co-founder of the Arab American Family Services. “This is the beginning of really capturing the needs of our community.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file photo

Nadine Naber, a professor of gender and women’s studies and global Asian studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, described the change as transformative for the community. In 2023, Naber was the lead author of “Beyond Erasure and Profiling,” which recommended government agencies use Middle Eastern or North African to identify this population.

The lack of data collected on Arab Americans has meant that socioeconomic disparities have gone unaddressed. Naber said their research found in talking with Arab Americans that many had experienced racism at work, in interactions with police and with housing.

“Even if we had all this data about racism, we wouldn’t have evidence to show that these everyday experiences of racism can help explain the socioeconomic disparities,” Naber said.

Taha said the organization has long felt the implications of not being counted as a racial group. She recalled how the group years ago applied for a federal grant to do work around domestic violence, but they were told they weren’t eligible because the census counted the people they work with as white.

“We weren’t perceived as a community of color and a community that is a minority,” Taha said. “These are little things that come through the way of saying that they’ve always boxed us in, and that has limited our ability to pursue any type of grant, especially on the federal level.”

The lack of resources was also evident during the coronavirus pandemic, when it took months for the group to receive funding to do more outreach.

“When other communities were getting funding to help their community members get access to the vaccine, to life-saving benefits, our community was lacking that,” said Itedal Shalabi, co-founder of the Arab American Family Services. “By the time we got funding, we had so many people who had passed away.”

There’s been a push since at least the 1970s for the Arab American community to be counted as its own racial category, Shalabi said. The push regained steam after the 2020 census did not include Middle Eastern or North African as a racial category.

It’s one of the reasons the Arab American Family Services pushed for House Bill 3768 in the Illinois Legislature, which was signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2023. The measure added Middle Eastern or North African as a racial category to state forms, which should be adopted by all state agencies by next year.

State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Berwyn, who introduced the legislation, said he believes Illinois was the first state in the country to add Middle Eastern or North African as a racial category. Rashid said it was important for the state to begin collecting data about the community sooner than the next decennial census.

Rashid said he’s excited to see what insights can be gleaned from the data that will come from state forms. But he said the most substantive data will come after the 2030 census.

“The census checkbox is the holy grail for data collection,” he said.

Rashid, like other members of the community, recalled how he often wasn’t sure what racial category to select on government forms, sometimes leaving it blank while other times selecting another race.

“You see the list of racial classifications, and I felt completely invisible,” Rashid said. “I’d go down the list and not know what to check.”

Atassi, from the Syrian Community Network, said she hopes the data supports the need she sees for more translation services in social institutions ranging from schools to medical centers. She said oftentimes there aren’t materials or people available to provide translation for Arabic speakers because it hasn’t been identified as a core language.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

“Then the burden falls on the families or the individual seeking the services, be it education, health care, whatever the situation or circumstance may be,” Atassi said.

Community leaders said education will be needed ahead of the 2030 census to ensure people understand the importance of selecting Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) as a racial category. Naber said it will be important for Arab Americans who identify as more than one race — such as those who also identify as Black — to be able to select more than one category.

It will also take some explaining of how race works in the United States, because many come from countries where groups were identified by religion, place of origin or family name, Naber said.

Naber said it will also be important to see how institutions respond to what the data will show about the Middle Eastern or North African community.

“Are they going to create education in the workplaces on MENA?” she said. “Are they going to expand K-12 curriculum on MENA? Is UIC going to support a free-standing MENA studies program with a major and a minor? Is philanthropy going to start areas of funding where they would create grant opportunities based on this new data?”