February 17, 2023
The Biden Administration is looking at two major changes to the 2030 Census, one of which would allow Iranians to identify themselves as “Iranian.”
The changes would apply not just to the Census, but to all statistics gathered by the federal government dealing with ethnicity.
The proposal reveals a dramatic change in thinking for the federal government, which until now has fought giving people from the Middle East and North Africa a distinct ethnic group, just dropping them into the broad category of “White.”
The US government does not issue new regulations by fiat like the Iranian government. US government agencies are required by law to first publish drafts of new rules and then give the public time to comment, after which the draft rules are reviewed in light of the comments.
The ethnic question was addressed not as a new rule, but as a new concept outlined January 27.
The public has been given until April 12 to comment. The comments will be reviewed and then a proposed rule will be published with time for further comments on the actual wording. Comments are to be submitted to http://www.regulations.gov. In the Comment or Submission search box, type “OMB-2023-0001.” Check Go and follow the instructions. The submissions are part of the public record, so people submitting comments are cautioned to avoid including personal information or anything they do not want displayed in public.
The proposed change includes a “proposed example” of what the new ethnic question might look like, which is reproduced with this article. Previously federal government queries first asked if you were Hispanic or not, and then asked you to select your “race” from one of five categories. This format has confused many Hispanics, who never bothered to answer the second question. It also irked many Iranian-Americans (and others) who felt excluded by the five racial categories. (See list in box.)
The new proposal makes two major changes. First it combines the two questions into one. In the proposals, you are asked what is your “race or ethnicity,” and then given seven choices rather than five. One new choice is “Hispanic or Latino.” The other is “Middle Eastern or North African.” (The list is also changed from alphabetical to be ordered in the approximate size of the category.”
After asking if you are Middle Eastern or North African, the proposal gives the option of checking one of six boxes Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syria, Moroccan, Israeli followed by a box in which respondents are asked to enter more detail: “Enter, for example, Algerian, Iraqi, Kurdish, etc.”
An Iranian, for example, could check Iranian and then write in the box “Bakhtiari.”
The Federal Register notice makes clear that the detail provided in the write-in box might never be published. It is likely that major subgroups, like Bakhtiari, will be published, but there are many Africa and Latin American tribes that are very obscure and may get only single digit responses and will not be published or the list would go on for dozens of pages.
The new ideas are outlined in the Federal Register, which is the daily publication of the federal government that carries the texts of proposed and adopted rules and regulations.
The recommendations come from a panel of 38 career civil servants who have been reviewing how to make data produced by the US government better reflect the country’s diversity. The last update to the standards on racial and ethnic data that the Census Bureau and other federal agencies must follow took place in 1997. That was an update to the original race question adopted in 1977.
Biden officials revived this multiyear review effort, which began in 2014 but was shoved aside by the Trump Administration, which was more focused on using the census to locate illegal aliens.
The Federal Register says the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is expected to published the draft regulation by summer 2024.
Thursday’s rollout of these preliminary proposals was met with relief from many census watchers who had expected a similar set of recommendations to be enacted ahead of the 2020 count before Trump officials halted the review process.
One argument that likely will bedevil this draft is that it does not include a multiracial category, which many people have been advocating as more and more Americans identify as a member of two or even more races. (Golfer Tiger Woods is Thai, White and Black.) The panel said it rejected that because “multiracial” would provide no information on which racial or ethnic group a person belonged to.
A number of Iranian small-businessmen have sought over the years to have a defined ethnic category of Iranian permitting them to receive help from the Small Business Administration as a minority deserving of assistance. The Federal Register specifically said the new system being proposed is “not intended to be used to establish eligibility for participation in any Federal program.”