April 7, 2023

The Maddox Fund submitted the following public comment to the Census Bureau.

The Dan and Margaret Maddox Fund’s mission is to better our community through partnerships that improve the lives of young people and protect the natural environment.  Nashville is home to the largest concentration of Kurds outside of Kurdistan and Arabic is the third most spoken language in the state.  As a funder of youth and education organizations in Middle Tennessee, we recognize the importance of adding a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) category on the Census and federal paperwork.

The exclusion of MENA Americans from federal data has led to a statistical blindspot, leaving many without equitable access to the educational opportunities needed to thrive in the 21^st century.  We have heard from nonprofit partners that they are frustrated with having their Arabic and Kurdish students being identified as “white” in school data at the local, state, and national level.  This causes harm which is best evidenced when we look at data from the American Community Survey that does disaggregate this data.  There we can see that MENA students are twice as likely to not graduate high school and twice as likely to live below the poverty line.

The inclusion of MENA would help our nonprofit partners and local school districts understand and serve our communities.  It would ensure that all students and families are receiving trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and linguistically competent services.  We thank you for considering the addition of a MENA category when collecting federal data.

Best,

The Maddox Fund