There’s a new race category slated for the next census, and it could offer an opportunity for American Jews to redefine themselves in the context of Israel, minority representation, and self-identification.
In March, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced that Middle Eastern and North African, or MENA, will be added to the list of racial categories for the 2030 census. The new category was the result of a campaign by Arab American groups who felt that their constituents were not exactly White nor Asian or African. Representing people from Arabic-speaking countries, Iran, Turkey, and non-Muslims such as Assyrians, Copts, and ethnic Kurds, MENA is comparable to Hispanic/Latino in representing people whose skin tones vary, enabling them to check more than one box on the question of race.
But what would it mean for American Jews? The census site provides MENA examples such as “Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli.” It is the final one that offers perhaps the most diversity and raises the question whether an Ashkenazi Jew with Israeli roots can identify as MENA. Likewise, a Bukharian Jew is not exactly White, nor Middle Eastern, nor Asian. To the average American, a light-skinned Ashkenazi is as White as a Pole or a Hungarian, but the same can be said of a light-skinned Arab claiming to be a “person of color.”
In an NBC story published in early April about the new category, Tariq Ra’ouf, 33, a Palestinian American, spoke about the value of having minority status as it concerns job applications. “If I say that I’m white, I might lose out on opportunities at companies who are looking to hire culturally and ethnically diverse employees. Who knows how many applications people might have missed because they are forced to put down a race that doesn’t represent them.”
Last week, the Associated Press cited another ethnic group that is historically identified as White, whose advocates seek to be included as MENA. The majority of Armenian Americans are descended from refugees who fled a genocide campaign in 1915 in eastern Turkey, a country included in the new census category.
“We will now be undercounted by potentially hundreds of thousands of people,” said Sophia Armen, chair of the Census Taskforce of the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region. “It spells out a very real destruction of Armenian identity in the next two generations.”
She pointed to Los Angeles, where Armenians sought to be drawn into a cohesive voting district to ensure representation. The historic homeland of Armenians in the southern Caucasus straddles the line between Europe and Asia, and the modern nation of Armenia relies on support from the diaspora, which includes electing lawmakers sympathetic to that country’s defense and economic needs.
Jewish Americans can relate to this situation, as support for Israel and the needs of the community depend on the makeup of Congress and districts where the Jewish vote can make a difference in electing sympathetic representatives.
One precedent for counting Jews as a minority group happened in 1984, when the Department of Commerce agreed that chasidic Jews were a “disadvantaged minority group” based on their high poverty rate. The designation qualified members of chasidic Jewish communities to Section 8 assistance in housing, school meals, childcare, and low-interest loans for small businesses.
The application for that status spoke of economic evidence and a history of encountering discrimination. Unfortunately, in many conversations about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), Jews are not included because they are considered White, benefiting from perceived White privilege. Recent incidents on campus have demonstrated the opposite, as Jews have become stand-ins for Israel, subjected to boycotts and exclusionary measures.
The last time that American Jews were asked who they really were was in the previous census, in which respondents had the option of elaborating. A White person could fill in a blank line underneath race to indicate an ethnic identity. This option was added to address Arab Americans, North Africans, and other people who were historically classified as White. At the time, some Jewish respondents filled in the line as Jewish or Ashkenazi, and the names of European countries where their families lived prior to immigrating.
Among Jews from the former Soviet Union, being listed as an ethnicity brings up memories of discrimination. I remember that my mother was raised as a loyal communist, but when she sought to join the party, she was told, “We have too many Jews.” Such quotas were also used in university admissions, military rank, and employment in a society that ostensibly promoted only one identity – that of the worker – devoid of racial, ethnic, and religious distinctions.
As racial identity is concerned, the Holocaust comes to mind, when Nazi authorities branded Jews as a race for the purposes of legal discrimination that led to their internment in ghettos, concentration camps, and ultimately their deaths. Emerging from this ordeal, Jews vowed never again to be classified as a race.
“Race is less a biological fact than a social myth; and as a myth, it has in recent years taken a heavy toll on human lives and suffering,” UNESCO’s first Statement on Race noted in 1949. In the context of the Holocaust and the struggle for civil rights, it was a bold statement for its time, when eugenics was still widely practiced as a science to justify White supremacy and colonialism.
In the 75 years since that statement, race still matters in American society, even as the meaning of race has changed and expanded to cover multiple and ambiguous identities, and as other characteristics of human identity, such as gender, have become a matter of self-identification.
Rather than a melting pot, the prevailing image of the American populace is that of a “magnificent mosaic,” a term coined by former Governor Mario Cuomo in the 1970s.
“I never liked ‘melting pot,’” he said. “Our strength is not in melting together, but in keeping our cultures.”
Looking back at our long history, we can identify with the nationalities among whom our ancestors dwelled and the appearance that makes most of us White, but our story began in the Land of Israel. It is in our culture and backed up by genetics. The next census gives us the opportunity to express this truth.
