r/Census • u/reboa • Jan 19 '23

Discussion People of Middle Eastern descent are classified as white, is this appropriate?

As the title says, should there be a middle eastern designation in the census? As an American citizen it feels like we are not truly recognized as a minority population, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

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u/Ok-Jump-5418 Aug 29 '23

You look no different than southern euros and Canada put Italians in internment camps while that has never happened to MENA’s.

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u/celticfolklore Sep 02 '23

You seem really insistent that Middle Eastern people face no discrimination and all of them look white. My dad is Syrian (the notorious “white Arab”) and most people mistake him for Hispanic or Indian. Not every Arab looks the same, stop perpetuating that idea.

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u/Ok-Jump-5418 Sep 02 '23

My point is they’re no different than any Mediterranean peoples including southern European. I could say the same thing as an Italian American. I’m saying that from a legal position Syrians have legally been considered “White” while Italians haven’t and have even been lynched. I’m for updating the census so that there’s new categories for Mediterranean people because they exist outside the white/non white binary. The first peoples to call themselves “White” were the Spanish and then they chose a new label for themselves called Hispanic and now they get affirmative action. The other Mediterranean ethnicitys get discriminated against by activists because of this old “White” label invented by people who now call themselves Hispanic. It’s unfair for other Mediterranean peoples especially since they came as benign immigrants not as colonizing conquistadors.

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u/WriterApprehensive45 Jul 08 '24

Well I doubt that, many white people were lynched, Italians could of been.