Debra Nussbaum Cohen, haaretz.com; (June 18, 2015); see also.
Image from article, with caption: People hold a rope with Israeli national flags attached to it during the 51st annual Israel parade in Manhattan, May 31, 2015.
What racial category do Jews belong in, anyway?
NEW YORK – Does being Jewish mean being part of a race? Or a religion? What ethnicity are Jews? Many American Jews have found these questions difficult to answer every 10 years, when a census taker knocks on the door as part of the decennial national head count. The only choices: white, black or Asian for race and, under ethnicity, Hispanic/Latino don't quite fit the way many American Jews – and others – see themselves. Religion is not asked about at all, for reasons rooted both in privacy concerns and objections by American Jewry in the years immediately following the Holocaust.
Now the United States Census Bureau is testing a new category, Middle East-North Africa or MENA [JB see], in response to more than three decades of lobbying by Arab American organizations for a designation that better represents them. The testing, to start in September, will refine wording and sub-categories for the 2020 census. Nineteen options will be offered under the MENA designation, among them Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Turkish, Iranian, Moroccan and Algerian. Even Sudanese and Somali are being considered.
Most Arabs don't consider themselves white, said Samer Khalaf, national president of The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has long lobbied for a more accurate label than white. Khalaf was one of 30 participants in a May 29 meeting convened by the U.S. Census Bureau so that researchers and representatives of MENA communities could discuss and offer feedback on the proposed changes.
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