A 30-year fight is drawing to a close. Arab Americans have long grappled with the struggles that come from harbouring a double identity. Legally, they’re considered white — a label that many simply don’t resonate with, and never have.

For over three decades, the government counted people of Arab descent as ‘white’ in the U.S. Census and other government official forms, something many Americans never even realized. This grouping of Arab people contributed to an erasure in some ways of the nearly 4 million Arab Americans living in the United States.

Since the 1980s, Arab American advocacy groups and individuals have lobbied the government for change. They wanted a specific Middle East and North Africa, or MENA, box to increase data visibility and representation for the community, but also acknowledge the need for Arab Americans to accurately self-identify. “I'm too Middle Eastern for the Americans yet too American for the Middle East. At the end of the day, I identify as an Arab American. Not a white person. It’s a unique thing,” said Ahmed, a Missouri resident with Iraqi descent who felt the creation of a MENA box was long overdue.

Finally, in late March 2024, the Biden administration approved proposals for a new Census category for “Middle Eastern or North African” people, a move welcomed by many American citizens with Arab ancestry.

“I did not expect this to happen now, or really probably ever in my life,” said Sophie Whitfield, a graphic designer from Virginia who has an Egyptian-born mother and British-Irish father.

Like many Americans of Arab descent, the inclusion of the MENA box has prompted Whitfield to reflect upon when she was “white.”

“Having to put myself in a box that said ‘white,’ which in America comes with its own culture distinct from mine, was not something I ever resonated with,” Whitfield said.

White? Not Quite…

Whitfield and her younger brother during a childhood family trip to Egypt

On the surface, people could be forgiven for assuming Whitfield is, in fact, white. Upon first glance, her fair complexion and bright-pink hair belie the standard stereotypes of Arab aesthetics. “I understand that I’m pale, and I know I have Eurocentric features, but I had a different upbringing than your average white, American person.” Her mother’s cultural influence, she says, was much greater than her father’s. “[Being Egyptian] is a huge part of my life. My childhood home is full of Egyptian art, in fact art from all of the Middle East. Growing up, I spoke Arabic and visited Egypt often. So, I had this dual experience of my race in America not matching up to the way I was raised. It's like I was white sometimes, but in strange ways.”

As a self-professed “white-passing” individual, Whitfield grew accustomed to detailing her Arab heritage to those who failed to notice it.

She recounted a time when she returned from a vacation, slightly more tanned than usual, and her former boss told her she looked like she was ‘race-switching.’

“I was like, okay, dude. You forgot that I’m Egyptian? I'm not white like you are.” So common were such encounters that Whitfield had to “design phrases” to explain her non-whiteness to people. “I’d say things like, ‘my mom's from Egypt,’ or, ‘I'm half-Arab.’ My biggest problem is that many Americans don't understand that Arabs come in a lot of different colours and skin tones. So my Arab identity is something I strongly hold on to.”

It's a problem also faced by Arab Americans who fit the more traditionally expected phenotypes, too. Sarah El-Khalily is an American-born Muslim graduate student studying Health Administration at the University of Southern California. She, too, is of Egyptian descent. “We come in every shape and color. There are blond-haired and blue-eyed Egyptians and Egyptians who are darker-skinned.”

El-Khalily has long, wavy, black hair and dark eyes — some of the hallmark features of what many other Americans assume an Egyptian woman to look like. Because of this, she has always struggled with the forced categorization of being white. “It’s not a fair representation. Being white in this country (usually) comes with a lot of privilege that many North Africans and Middle Eastern people simply aren’t privy to. I deal with microaggressions because people can tell I’m from a different culture and religion to them, yet I’m meant to put myself in the same box as them?”

The issue becomes even more complex when considering that unlike other Arab countries located in the Middle East, Egypt is, geographically, in Africa. “I don’t identify as white, but I don’t identify as African-American either, because in this country that implies that you’re Black. So, it really stresses me out whenever I have to answer this question.”

She adds, “I don’t know how to identify on a form that doesn’t have a place for me.”

The problems extend beyond identity politics - with many Arab Americans subject to discrimination yet missing out on the benefits that are generally conferred with minority status in the U.S. Abraham Hamad, an Egyptian-American born in Canada and now based in Austin, Texas said, “It feels to me like we get all of the disadvantages of being a person of colour - discrimination and ostracization. And I don't know if you could call it an advantage, what we miss out on. But it’s like, we don't even get to check that box of diversity. It's weird.”

By counting people of Middle Eastern descent as white, statistics on things like mental health, socioeconomic status and education remain unaccounted for when it comes to the MENA community. If problems or issues cannot be seen from the data, then there is no impetus or sufficient grounds for government policy that can help the community in the ways in which it needs. Accordingly, the need for a box for MENA-identifying people on the U.S. Census is not just an issue of personal identity representation, but also policy.

What Does it Mean to Be White?

The decision to now include a dedicated MENA box for race and/or ethnicity in the Census represents a redefining of how race and ethnicity are perceived in the United States. These concepts have historically been contentious in a country with changing definitions of who counts as white. Up until the 1920s, Irish Americans and Italian Americans were not officially white in the eyes of Americans or the government.

The changing notion of ‘whiteness’ is something Arab Americans have long contemplated, as well as whether it is more than just skin deep: it’s a phenomenon that transcends the physical. Because of this, some admit benefiting from ‘white privilege’ - advantages bestowed upon those with the fairest complexions in society. So sensitive and personal are these issues, that some individuals are only willing to speak candidly about their experiences for publication if their last names are not included. With the Middle East increasingly involved in political issues and crises, these individuals wish to maintain some sense of anonymity when discussing identity politics for the sake of protecting their professional lives from their personal views.

For some Arabs, like Saïd, a 27-year-old Chicago resident with Jordanian roots, “Being white in America is a social construct more than a color. Yes, it generally implies you come from a Western European background, but it also carries a certain privilege and implication that you’re higher class and less dangerous.”

This privilege is something some white-passing Arab Americans see as a double-edged sword. Those with roots from the Levant (Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan) are known for their lighter skin, eyes and hair across the Middle East. This is the case for Omar, a Jordanian policy-worker based in Minnesota. “I won't deny that I've taken advantage of being white passing,” he said. “Minnesota is very Scandinavian… so most people assume I’m from there too, and I don’t correct them sometimes.”

Despite his appearance, Omar said he personally doesn’t view Arabs as being white due to the typical cultural and religious distinctions between white people of European descent compared to those of Arab origin. But he acknowledges that many Americans view whiteness as purely skin-deep, “and that whiteness does grant you a certain status in this country.”

Five different Middle Eastern Americans, who have been featured in this story, discuss their thoughts on whether they consider themselves white. Speakers in order: Ahmad Jaabari, Abraham Hamad, Safa Abbas, Saïd and Omar.

And it’s more than just a feeling of identity — having to categorize oneself as white can have further implications that the new dedicated MENA box could help overcome. For instance, when receiving laser treatment at a salon, an aesthetician was confused why the treatment wasn’t working as expected for El-Khalily. “They asked me if I was white or not, and I said I was Egyptian, but there [had been] no box for me to let them know that on their form.” People of North African descent have different amounts of melanin in their skin to people of European descent, so a different wavelength was required for her. Therefore, the absence of proper representation can have a multitude of implications for Middle Eastern Americans.

If being white is more than skin-deep though, then what of being Arab?

“This is a question I've had to ask myself a number of times over 30 odd years,” Omar remarked.

He grew up across the Levant and the United States. “To me, Americans are a nationality and Arab is an ethnicity. When moving back and forth, I was always switching between identities,” he said.

But simply viewing Arab as a single ethnicity is contentious too, as it ignores the cultural, historical and linguistic distinctions between countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabs from Bahrain speak a very different version of Arabic than the French-influenced dialect in Morocco. Phenotypically, Arabs from the Gulf also tend to have darker features than those from the Levant.

White Without the Privilege?

For non-white-passing Arabs in the US, their whiteness came with none of the benefits typically associated with white privilege — increased social acceptance and mobility, more favourable job opportunities and more lenience in justice systems, to name but a few.

Mohammad Jamal was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, but has now lived in Texas for over two decades. He feels the move to include a box explicitly for Middle Eastern people on the census is a welcome change, as the previous categorisation of whiteness was problematic on many fronts.

“Not only do we not get the privileges, but we also bolster the statistics of the white community! A lot of immigrant communities in the United States have much higher literacy rates, much higher education rates, they're more likely to go to college... but none of these statistics are attributed to us, they go to the white population instead.”

On the other hand, Jamal also reasons that masking the statistics of Arab and Middle Eastern communities in the white category detracts from their accomplishments, and instead allows negative stereotypes to persist.

“I feel like it doesn't give us credit where credit is due to show that the majority of immigrants in the United States do not commit crimes, rather we focus very heavily on education and doing well in our careers.” Jamal said.

Every respondent agreed that Arabs miss out on privileges that come with being white.

Being Seen — and Heard

The quest to be counted on the census for Arab Americans began in the late 1980s. The Arab American Institute was one of the principal groups lobbying for the change, in what was initially an attempt to improve the collection of socio-economic and medical data for their community. “We thought it was probably a good idea to disaggregate the data on people from the Middle East and North Africa from the white population for statistical purposes, otherwise we were invisible in the white data.” Said Helen Samhan, who served 25 years as a senior executive at the Arab American Institute, where she led its Census and Demographics program.

During the journey, members of the Institute and broader community went back and forth on what the right label would be for this elusive new box. It’s a question many have pondered, with some Arabs drawing issue with the term “Middle East” because of its colonialist and orientalist roots.

“It’s funny MENA was chosen as the label because no one in the Middle East really uses the term ‘Middle East’ when referring to their background or the region.” Saïd said.

A new acronym, SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) had been proposed by some. It is particularly liked by those with North African roots, who feel the current understanding of the term MENA overlooks the diversity of groups within the region. Hamad said, “When I first heard SWANA, I thought ‘that’s brilliant.’ It’s exactly the concept I’ve been trying to identify. I think that's the best name for it. Southwest Asian and North African covers a group of people that have a lot of cultural ties and a sense of group identity.”

But with SWANA in a stage of relative newness, many people simply don’t know what it means or who it refers to. “I think to keep it really simple,” Saïd suggested, “I would like to have called it Arab, but I don’t think that’s realistic because within each Arab country are ethnicities who don’t consider themselves as Arab.”

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This is exactly why the MENA term was campaigned for by the Arab American Institute, spearheaded by Samhan. “Yes, it is a colonial concept. But it made the most sense to us for two reasons,” Samhan explained. “MENA is the geographic definition that’s most used today — it’s the way the world is divided up. Also, there are many subpopulations in the Middle East, and especially in Arab countries, that don't consider themselves Arab.” This includes groups like the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, the Assyrians or Chaldeans (Christian Arabs from Iraq and Syria), the Berbers in Morocco and Algeria but also, more broadly, those from non-Arab Middle Eastern countries, like Afghans, Persians, Turks and for some, even Pakistanis. “While we were trying to get a category for Arab Americans, we wanted it to be inclusive for people in other sub-ethnic communities, too,” Samhan said.

Ahead of the 2010 census, the Arab American Institute and other grassroots campaigns like, “Check it right - you ain't white!” encouraged Arab Americans to write in their ethnicity on the line next to the ‘other’ category, rather than tick the white box.

“It was a wake up call for the Census Bureau,” Samhan said.

As a result, the tangible possibility of a new census box for Arabs and other Middle Eastern Americans finally emerged on the horizon, because the nature of writing in an “other” option goes against the whole point of the census, according to Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer and immigration expert at the Pew Research Center. “The basic underlying principle since the late 1970s has been self-identification. Allowing respondents to pick what category they feel they identify with or [that] describes them best is very important in census data collection.”

The Census Bureau undertook intensive research to come to understand who would include themselves in the MENA origins category. Research showed both Turkish and Sudanese Americans did not see themselves in the MENA category, Passel noted, although the Census still chose to include those people in their definition of who fits into the new MENA box.

According to Samhan, focus group testings also revealed surprising truths about how non-Middle Eastern Americans viewed this issue. “When [the Census Bureau] did the focus groups, many of the Americans would say, ‘Oh heck, yeah, they're not white. You know, what, why would those people be white?”” She said. “It’s funny, but they’re right.”

But all the progress made under the Obama administration stopped once Trump took over office. “It was picked up again in 2021, under the Biden administration, and it became much more of a civil rights community joint effort then.” Samhan said, highlighting how organizations representing other ethnic groups in the United States also helped support the cause.

In late March 2024, the decision was made for the creation of a MENA box to be accepted in the next U.S. Census. Passel noted that, “We have to wait a few years before it’s actually implemented,” meaning Arab American citizens will first be able to tick the box in the 2030 Census.

Right Move, Wrong Time?

This Ramadan, which fell during March - weeks before the new MENA box announcement - brought something different for many of the Middle Eastern Muslims who observed the holy month.

At the University of Southern California’s University Religious Centre, El-Khalily rushes around, helping prepare for the communal iftar (breaking of the fast) that the Muslim Student Union holds every evening.

“Obviously it’s not been the same,” she said, referring to how this Ramadan felt different from previous years for many Muslims. Many have struggled with images and accounts of the ongoing killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the flood of this imagery on televisions and computer screens.

Many Arabs perceive the timing of this decision as suspect given how the Biden administration has been under fire for its ineffectual efforts to stop or even noticeably limit the death toll in Gaza, as they continue to vote against a ceasefire in the U.N. Security Council.

“I think the timing of this decision, while it has been a long time in the making, is ultimately political and always has been,” Whitfield said. Indeed, it came during an election year in which polls show that Biden has lost support in key swing states like Michigan and Ohio, both of which are home to electorally significant Arab populations.

"Biden is now being shunned by some Arab Americans because of his continued support of Israel and is pulling moves like this almost to "appease" the Arab vote,” she said.

But Whitfield remains unconvinced, and like many Arab Americans is a supporter of a ‘None of the Above’ campaign for the upcoming election. “I'm not voting for Biden (or Trump), but I will check that MENA box on the next census!”

Saïd agrees with this sentiment. Although the MENA box was one of the Biden administration’s promises at the beginning of his 2020 presidential campaign, the implementation of it now raises issue for him. “It certainly seems like suspect timing, and part of Biden's efforts to gain Arab-American votes in the upcoming election,” Saïd said.

For Samhan, a confluence of factors led to this point. “It was stalled for so many years, but the issue didn't go away – we were still advocating and campaigning for it.” The Biden administration also had an executive order for diversity and inclusion in the year he took office, which the Arab American Institute were able to fold in with their campaign for greater data equity and visibility.

“There has been more public discussion about people from the MENA region having not only race confusion, but a very strong desire to have some kind of an identity that's recognised. And I think that all kind of converged to this point.” Samhan said.

The MENA identity on the new Census form does not convey status as a minority nationwide to this group — at least not yet.

“The first step is getting accurate data on the population. And once we do, it's easier then to make decisions about what the population might need. Language assistance, healthcare, whatever it might be. It was just harder to do when there was no access to data.” Samhan said.

It is difficult to determine how much difference the box will make in terms of political representation at this point, according to Passel, but its importance in allowing individuals to identify as a group should not to be understated. Data visibility efforts will also be improved. “Having the data will permit us researchers and the country to recognise whether people are treated differentially,” he said.

The sentiment that this is a first step is also echoed among members of the community. “If I get to tick a new box, great, but it's only the beginning of the work that needs to be done in this country,” Whitfield said.

Amid a resurgence of Islamophobia and anti-Arab discourse, Hamad said, “Our government definitely treats us as ‘other,’ so it did feel fairly insulting to, after all that, say, oh, you're just white people too. At least that’s not the case anymore.”