ANAHEIM – Fliers that reach out to Orange County Arab Americans to promote the U.S. census proclaim: “Check it right, you ain’t white!”
While the message may initially sound shocking – or potentially incendiary – organizers say it was written by Arab Americans as a playful way to get a serious message out to a highly underrepresented community.
The 2010 U.S. census includes no box that explicitly asks whether a person is of Arab descent – they are counted as “White.”
But Arab American leaders working with the U.S. Census Bureau are encouraging local Arabs – including those from places such as Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine – to instead check a box that says “Other,” then fill in “Arab” or their specific country of origin.
“Estimates are that there are more than three times as many Arabs in America as was estimated by the 2000 census,” said Rashad Al-Dabbagh, a U.S. Census Bureau partnership specialist from Anaheim.
The Arab American community is estimated at 1.2 million, based on 2000 census figures. But the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., estimates that the number is closer to 4 million.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the census will let the government see that the Arab American community is growing and help the local community compete for some $400 billion in government funds for community programs, schools, parks and roads.
Those who indicate on this year’s survey that they are Arab will be counted in with the “white” population, but it also will give the government some idea of the size of the Arab population in the United States, Al-Dabbagh said.
That’s what led to the Arab Complete Count Committee in Orange County, a group of about 10 Arab community leaders, to design the fliers that say, “Yalla Count! … Check it right, you ain’t white!” (“Yalla” is an Arab language exclamation roughly translated as “Come on”).
“For me, it dates back to filling out applications to go to college and to join the military, and there was no box for me to check that I was Arab,” said Omar Masry, 30, an Irvine city planner of Lebanese and Saudi descent and member of the Complete Count Committee.
“It is definitely done tongue-in-cheek as a way to educate people that there is another option,” Masry said. “It’s is not because we want to be excluded from any group, but to let people know we are proud of our identity.”
The census form does include places to mark “Hispanic” and specific ethnic backgrounds such as Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban. Those of Asian descent can mark that they are Korean, Japanese or Chinese, among others.
On Thursday night, a bus promoting participation in the U.S. census pulled into Anaheim’s Little Arabia district to encourage Arab Americans to be counted.
Community leaders have said they are concerned that Arab Americans will be hesitant to participate in the 2010 census, because of fears that the information will be used to track the Arab community for the wrong reasons.
Members of the Complete Count Committee emphasize that the information cannot be shared with the FBI or used for any law-enforcement purpose.
“I think that myth is slowly fading in the community,” Al-Dabbagh said. “We tell them, if they wanted to, the FBI could learn a lot more about you by doing a Google search or looking at your Facebook page than they would get from a census document.
“This is our chance to be counted,” Al-Dabbagh said.
For more information on the census, visit www.2010census.gov.
Contact the writer: 714-704-3769 or ecarpenter@ocregister.com
