- Recommendations from the Office of Management and Budget include new categories for the US Census.
- It includes categories for Middle Eastern and North African people previously considered white.
The Biden administration is pushing for changes to the way $4 is collected, including for Middle Eastern and North African people.
The proposed changes come after years of reviews on the way the US Census Bureau collects its data. Last year, President Joe Biden continued the review effort after former President Donald Trump's administration $4 of $4for the 2020 census, $4
Proposals $4 on its race and ethnicity statistical standards show, among other changes, a "new and distinct minimum reporting category" for MENA people, who are classified as white under current $4
The proposal would also alter the definition of white to only include people of European ancestry.
The document notes that civil servants advocated for this new category because "many in the MENA community do not share the same lived experience as White people with European ancestry, do not identify as White, and are not perceived as White by others."
The new MENA category would also help with allocating resources to these groups, the document notes.
A MENA category was supposed to be added to the 2020 census, but the $4 that would no longer be the case until further research on the categories was done.
Groups have long $4 in the Census to combat underreporting by Middle Eastern and North African groups, whose numbers are obscured in the broader "white" definition and who may be wary of checking off the "white" category $4
Another major change in the proposal would be the addition of "Hispanic or Latino" in the race category, and adding more specific ethnicity categories, such as Colombian, that people can fill out on the form. Some presenters in the OMB working group, however, disagreed with this proposal, saying that it would result in the undercounting of Latinos who identified with other races, such as Afro-Latinos.
Other proposed changes to race and ethnicity data collection include the removal of "Negro" from the definition of Black or African American people, replacing "Far East" with "East Asian," and the addition of Indigenous North, South, and Central Americans to the definition of American Indian or Alaska Native.
The group also proposed getting rid of the terms majority and minority to refer to white people and people of color, respectively.
The OMB will not make a final decision on the proposals until the summer of 2024 but is currently $4
The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.