On the 2030 U.S. Census, Arab Americans will have their own box to check for the first time ever. And starting on Friday, agencies across the federal government are being instructed to add a “Middle Eastern or North African” option to race and ethnicity questions on all data collection forms. 

Advocates have been pushing for this change for decades and say one outcome will be a clearer picture of economic conditions in Arab American communities. 

Until now, people with roots in the Middle East and North Africa have been directed to check the “white” box on government forms. 

“So when we approached federal data forms, we literally had nowhere to check,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. 

Nowhere that reflected how they identified or how others perceived them. Being lumped into the white category made Arab Americans invisible in government datasets, Berry said — like the monthly jobs report and others you hear about on this show. 

That could be masking economic disparities — “disparities related to racial discrimination,” said Nadine Naber, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. 

With this change, she said government data could start to reflect the outcomes of anti-Arab discrimination in schools, workplaces and the housing market. 

“The more data we have, the more we can make the case for specific services,” Naber said.

Those could include housing assistance, small business loans and economic research focused on Arab Americans.