Throughout this dashboard, we have included data defined as both Arab and MENA, due to the Census Bureau and other federal agencies categorizing people with “origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa” under the “White” category on the U.S. census. The lack of an official definition for MENA stems from the area’s complex and diverse geography, cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, and historical context. The MENA region includes numerous ethnic and religious groups, each with distinct identities. Historical borders, often drawn by colonial powers, add to the complexity. Additionally, political considerations, varying national interests, and different definitions used by international and regional organizations further complicate a consensus thus far on a unified definition. Because there is no official or agreed upon definition of who is included under MENA, organizations have historically defined the category with differing nationalities, geographic regions, countries, transnational communities etc. As an organization, ACCESS has chosen to define MENA as:
MENA is an abbreviation for Middle Eastern or North African. The MENA designation includes the diversity of people living in a distinct geographic region of the globe, the nationalities of which can include all member countries of the Arab League (Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen) as well as countries like Armenia, Iran, Sudan, Somalia. Accordingly, the MENA region is not comprised of just one faith, cultural, or linguistic tradition, but of diverse ethnic transnational communities like Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Kurds, Berber/ Amazigh. 1
What is MENA: MENA has become well recognized due to its simplicity and wide-ranging inclusiveness in representing the interconnected historical, cultural, and economic bonds among the region’s nations. For data collection and reporting, MENA is preferred over “SWANA” (Southwest Asian and North African), because it has been in use as a category for a longer period of time. The U.S. Census has also widely tested the usage of the term MENA. Criticism of the term MENA is also valid, as the term centers the colonial geographic term “Middle East.” For now, MENA is the best available term for the purposes of data collection and reporting.
MENA vs Arab: The Arab American community, which is comprised of people who trace their ancestry to ~20 countries, is the largest subset of MENA—but the two groups are not interchangeable. Arab is based on linguistic and cultural heritage in Arab countries, whereas MENA includes many non-Arab groups like Iran. Throughout this dashboard we will specify when we are engaging with MENA data or Arab American data.
Because the MENA category is quite recent, and very few federal and state agencies have begun implementing it, the majority of the data in this dashboard is drawn from U.S. Census Arab ancestry codes, which also include some non-Arab communities like Chaldean.
Data and Method
This report uses cross-sectional data from the 2019 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), which is a combined sample of the 1-year files from 2015 to 2019. This data was downloaded with the Census Bureau API and the University of Minnesota’s IPUMS website.
Each microdata file in the ACS is a stratified sample that includes 1% of the housing units in the United States, which is a subsample of the full Census. The unweighted sample sizes for the 2015-2019 ACS include non-Hispanic Whites (n=12,167,187) and Persons of Arab ancestry (n=75,417), hereafter referred to as Whites and Arabs. The samples are weighted in the analyses to represent the overall U.S. population of Whites (n=233,739,806) and Arabs (n=1,820,989). For the purposes of this report, we define “Persons of Arab Ancestry” if they claimed an Arab ancestry in the first ancestry response category. This approach also captures persons who list Arab ancestry in the second category if they listed it in the first. A small number of respondents claim an Arab ancestry in the second response category but not the first (n=14,993; weighted n= 308,304). We include an analyses of population characteristics in Appendix A to highlight differences with the Arab population who list it as a first ancestry. We include the non-Hispanic White population as a reference for comparison because this is the group that is typically used to classify Arabs. By disaggregating the Arab population from Whites, we can identify similarities and differences in a range of factors.
The 2019 5-year data contain unique identifiers for 20 Arab ancestry groups (see Appendix B) that are broken into the following categories: 12 countries (Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Kuwait, and Libya); 5 ethnicities (Arab, Arabic, Assyrian, Chaldean, Kurdish); 2 geographic regions (Middle East, North Africa); and 1 category of “other Arab” that contains 15 ancestry groups (Tunisian, Alhucemas, Berber, Rio De Oro, Bahraini, Omani, Muscat, Trucial States, Qatar, Bedouin, Kuria Muria Islander, South Yemen, Aden, United Arab Emirates, and Syriac). The ACS only disaggregated Kuwait and Libya from the “other Arab” catch-all category starting in 2017. This means that the total number of Kuwaiti and Libyan individuals will be under-estimated while the total number of people in the catch-all category will be over-estimated when comparing the 2014 and 2019 data. All of the group characteristic estimates should be accurate for Kuwaiti and Libyan populations, while the estimates for the “other Arab” population will be impacted by Kuwaiti and Libyan respondents surveyed in 2015 and 2016.
Purpose
We hope that scholars, organizations, and everyday Michiganders can use this dashboard to learn about the diversity and size of the Middle Eastern and North African populations across Michigan. This dashboard can hopefully be used as a tool to promote community empowerment, resource allocation, diversity promotion, and increase research and education initiatives. It plays a crucial role in ensuring that MENA communities are recognized, understood, and properly served in Michigan.
For almost 50 years, data on Arab American and MENA populations have been reported under the white category. As a result, policymakers, researchers, and representatives could never refer to official statistics to prove what we have long known to be true: Arab Americans are unique from white communities and have been systematically underserved and disenfranchised.
After decades of advocacy efforts by Arab American organizations and activists across the nation, including ACCESS, NNAAC, and the Center for Arab Narratives (CAN), the OMB has revised Statistical Policy Directive Number 15 (SPD 15) which outlines the minimum standard for Federal data collection on race and ethnicity. Now, all agencies are required to collect and report detailed data on race and ethnicity through a combined question that includes a MENA response.
The MENA category could have positive impacts on Arab American and MENA communities by expanding our civil rights protections, providing more culturally competent healthcare, direct services, and educational opportunities, expanding loan access to minority small businesses and funding opportunities for Arts & Culture organizations, and increased political representation and voting rights protections.
The fight for MENA Inclusion isn’t over yet though! #CountMENAIn is a national movement and many of our statewide campaigns and the #CountMENAInHealth campaign are still going!
In 2024, ACCESS was integral in mobilizing community members and advocating for more equitable representation of the MENA community in the redistricting process. Community members gave public comments to the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to share their stories and speak for how they want to be represented.
From January through April 2023, we mobilized 13,550 community members to advocate for a MENA category in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Thanks to the hard work of Arab American Family Services and their partners, as of 2023 Illinois was the first state to add a MENA category in state data collection on race and ethnicity.
We are currently actively circulating the Health Equity and MENA Community Inclusion Act in both the House and Senate to get a MENA category in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
