Today is a special day and we are so excited to share the success of a major step towards our being accurately counted and represented. The culmination of decades of advocacy by our parent organization ACCESS, NNAAC and its member organizations, and many Arab American community organizations, legislators, and partners: the newly revised Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (SPD 15). SPD 15 lays out the “Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.” Under the newly revised standards for data on race and ethnicity, the government will now collect and report data on Arab American communities under a “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA) reporting category.
The National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC) has been closely involved in this lengthy process through the years, working very closely with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) when it began its own detailed process in June 2022. Through our #CountMENAIn campaign, we collectively submitted nearly two-thirds of the 20,000 comments reviewed by the OMB’s Interagency Technical Working Group, which also held almost 100 listening sessions to finalize these important standards.
Our advocacy was focused on one clear goal for the community: to require the collection and publication of detailed data on Middle Eastern and North African communities through a combined question on race and ethnicity. We are pleased to announce a successful outcome, as the government has now committed to the following key revisions:
- Using one combined question for race and ethnicity and encouraging respondents to select as many options that apply to each individual’s unique identity.
- Adding Middle Eastern or North African as a new minimum category. The new set of minimum race and/or ethnicity categories are:
- American Indian or Alaska Native
- Asian
- Black or African American
- Hispanic or Latino
- Middle Eastern or North African
- Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
- White
- Requiring the collection of additional detail beyond the minimum required race and ethnicity categories for most situations, to ensure further disaggregation in the collection, tabulation, and presentation of data when useful and appropriate.
- The updated standards also include several additional updates to definitions, terminology, and guidance to agencies on the collection and presentation of data.
Of course, the work is not done. There are still aspects of the final revisions that we need to work on in the coming years together. For instance, the OMB has provided agencies the chance to opt out of the detailed data requirement, which would limit the ability of agencies to produce the most valuable and accurate data on MENA subgroups, like the Arab American community. To ensure that Arab Americans are included to the fullest extent possible, we will continue to engage the government to ensure that agencies opt in to the detailed data requirement. Only then will we have access to the vital information used to enforce civil rights law and make needed programs more equitable for our communities.
You can read more about these revisions in a blog post from U.S. Chief Statistician Karin Orvis on OMB’s website, which includes an Arabic language translation, and can view the updated Directive No. 15 on the Federal Register as well as at www.spd15revision.gov.
Looking forward to continuing to forge this path to data equity and representation together.