Providing a MENA Option
When a #MENA option is provided, 78.8% of MENA respondents select it & only 20% select White; however, when no MENA option is provided, 85.5% select White (Mathews et al., 2017;
).
Given that the vast majority of MENA individuals would prefer to not identify as White (or be identified as White by others), the current coding system utilized by the US Census is leading to the erasure of MENA individuals as they are inaccurately being subsumed into the White ethnoracial category.