Armenian-American organizations condemn erasure of Armenians in MENA checkbox by Biden Administration, calling move “grave attack on the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Armenian descent”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Sarkis Balkhian, sarkis@ancawr.org, 818-863-2353
Dr. Sophia Armen, sophia@armenianactionnetwork.org, 818-625-6284
March 28, 2024
UNITED STATES— Armenian National Committee of America-WR (ANCA-WR), Armenian-American Action Network (AAAN), Pan Armenian Council Western USA (PAC-WUSA), and numerous frontline and direct constituency Armenian organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Armenian-Americans nationwide, condemn the version of the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ethnicity checkbox released today by the Biden Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). While we applaud the inclusion of a MENA checkbox after decades of historical exclusion, the erasure of Armenians in MENA represents a significant violation of Armenian-American civil rights and a grave and historic injustice that has generational consequences for the Armenian-American community. Today, hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents were denied needed and accurate representation on the U.S. Census and its resultant funding and services.
This move indicates the Census Bureau has ignored the calls of the Armenian-American community. The Armenian-American Census Coalition, anchored by ANCA-WR, Armenian-American Action Network and Pan Armenian Council, united Armenian-led, Armenian-based, and Armenian-constituency based organizations across the political spectrum in the call for Armenian classification in the MENA draft, as a transnational indigenous MENA community that comprises one of the largest groups numerically in the category. Furthermore, in response to the Federal Registrar Notice of 2023, in a historic move, over 10% of all MENA public comments submitted called for the inclusion of Armenians in the Census in the new MENA draft. This was the largest number of comments of any specific ethnic group in MENA. Instead of requiring the rigorous testing and research the Census Bureau must do to develop the categories to actually improve the count of all communities, these standards rely on a flawed 2015 Census Bureau National Content Test (NCT) and ignore overwhelming stakeholder input and community comments resulting in the exclusion of Armenian Americans. This announcement indicates that public comment and the voices of thousands of Americans were not taken into consideration and the Census Bureau acted on its own without input from U.S. Armenian residents, scholars, elected officials, and community members across this country. Furthermore, today’s announcement glaringly reveals the Armenian community outreach necessary for the Census Bureau to create a transparent, scholarly-backed and data-based Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) checkbox never occurred. This happened despite the nation’s leading experts and stakeholders consistently demanding engagement of Armenian voices.
We maintain that over the past decade, the federal government has failed to engage Armenian organizations, scholars and elected leaders, in any step of the formation of the MENA checkbox. By not being invited to the table, the Census has produced an incomplete, inaccurate, and exclusionary MENA designation that will undercount, separate, deny funding and resources to, and fail to represent, hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents of Armenian descent. The Biden Administration and Census Bureau has failed to do its due diligence throughout the creation of the version of the category that was announced today. This has severe consequences for the Armenian ethnic community in the United States for generations to come.
This move will have centuries-long systemic impact. Lack of representation on the U.S. Census continues to have dire consequences for Armenian-American issues, needs and priorities. The exclusion of Armenians from accurate federal Census classification means that millions of dollars of funding and resources is denied to Armenians each year as data drives U.S. policy. SPD 15 excludes Armenian communities, so Armenians do not receive equitable protection of their voting rights and face redistricting that cuts through Armenian neighborhoods. Armenian-American small businesses are the backbone of our communities, but owners suffer from a variety of cultural, linguistic, political, and spatial barriers to stability yet are not visible in the data. Meanwhile, Armenians are not protected by the Small Business Act. Armenian-Americans continue to face ongoing hate crimes, marginalization and discrimination but are unable to address such realities because of lack of classification, nor are governments and scholars able to demonstrate gaps in equality of opportunity. Centrally, Census classification determines federal, state and local dollars and lack of Census representation means Armenians are being marginalized across every level of U.S. society. The invisibilizing of Armenian communities in U.S. policy is an alarming trend that must be course-corrected immediately.
The Federal Government has cited the 2015 NCT for much of what it announced today with regard to MENA. Unlike all of the major MENA subgroups, the Armenian-American community nor its dozens of representative organizations that do Census outreach, were not engaged but rather generally ignored in community outreach efforts of the NCT. Furthermore, even in the NCT, the results fail to hold water as Emraitis responded with 6% identifying as MENA and yet were included despite testing at a lower rate for MENA than communities like Armenians. Also, only 26% of those who identified as “Middle Eastern” and 31% of those who identified as “North African”actually checked the MENA checkbox on the NCT. An objective examination of the results of the NCT demonstrates its deep flaws with regard to the MENA category. As the coalition has maintained, the NCT had inherent testing bias and reflected the groups who saw themselves listed on the box. Armenians were never given that chance. Higher respondents were those communities that saw themselves in the box themselves and Armenians were never given the option to even consider despite being the third highest ethnicity numerically.
In this NCT, the code 012 for the first time was also randomly assigned to Armenians instead of the longstanding ancestry code that historically has placed Armenians in MENA coding and is more in line with UN statistical classification. In the NCT, the Census Bureau racialized Armenians as non-MENA unlike other communities by its own arbitrary decision ahead of testing instead of using the ancestry code in MENA, again revealing inherent bias in the structure and methodology of the test creation itself. The Census Bureau must justify why arbitrary and seemingly preferential treatment was given to some communities over others and address the lack of transparency and consistency in its efforts, outreach, consultation of scholars, and methodology.
In response to the news ANCA-WR Executive Director Sarkis Balkhian stated, “the failure to engage Armenian-Americans in the MENA checkbox process is an affront to the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Armenian descent. Armenian-American have effectively mobilized to ensure their voice is heard in the revision process and for years executed culturally-relevant outreach efforts for the U.S. Census. Today the Biden Administration and the Census Bureau failed Armenian-Americans. We reject this erasure and demand that this action is immediately rectified.” Dr. Sophia Armen, scholar of Middle Eastern-American Studies and Executive Director of AAAN, furthered that this move “indicates the Census Bureau and the Biden Administration has chosen politics over the needs of a large, historic, and vital community in the U.S. The failure to engage Armenian voices, including Armenian experts of the MENA region, is a massive error and miscalculation that will affect the everyday working Armenian family for generations to come. With these standards, what the government is saying to us as Armenians, is “You do not matter’ and that is deeply concerning and alarming.”
Furthermore, on the eve of Armenian Genocide Remembrance and Armenian-American Heritage Month, with this announcement, the Biden administration and Census Bureau has seemingly stepped into genocide denialism, perpetuating the ideological myth at the foundation of the Armenian Genocide: that Armenians are not indigenous to this region which justified their erasure and the refusal to acknowledge Armenians fully, as a transnational community with ties that cross borders and modern-nation states. By the Census’ own numbers Armenian-Americans specifically continue to be part of their MENA definitions yet now will have their Armenian identity erased, and Armenian data rendered even more inaccurate, undercounted, split, and invisible than before. This announcement today particularly has grave consequences for the future of Americans with Armenian heritage from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Western Armenia and will directly impact the future survival of the Armenian diaspora and its cultural, religious and linguistic heritage over generations, both in the region and in the United States.
The exclusion of Armenians as a transnational MENA community in the Census Bureau’s decision is a grave attack on the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Armenian ethnic heritage. The exclusion of Armenian checkbox in these new standards is glaring omission of a large and significant population of Americans. We will not stand for our exclusion and will act to safeguard our community from erasure, discrimination, and invisibility.
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