Middle Eastern and North African community leaders in Orange County are once again taking their advocacy for greater visibility to the state level – fresh off the heels of getting OC’s largest city to recognize the state’s first Arab American cultural district after decades.
This time, they’re rallying local officials to support a new state bill proponents say will cast a light on inequities in health care, education and civil rights protections for hundreds of thousands Middle Easterners and North Africans in California.
Middle Eastern leaders say they are disparities that have long hid in the shadows – made invisible because their community is categorized as White in federal and state data.
The new bill, dubbed AB 91, would require state agencies in California that collect demographic data on ethnic origin to create a separate category box for the Middle Easterners and North Africans or MENA starting January 1, 2026.
On Tuesday, Anaheim officials formally supported the bill after residents and community leaders like Muntadhar Aljadeed said it will ensure Middle Easterners are properly recognized, improve policies and resources to help the community.
“By implementing this bill, we can begin addressing the disparities that affect our community, from access to educational opportunities to equitable resource distribution. Our voices matter, our struggles are real, and it is time for our identity to be acknowledged within those very systems that shape our future,” Aljadeed said at the March 25 council meeting.
Amin Nash, a policy and research coordinator with the Arab American Civic Council, said it was essential to the welfare of Middle Easterners and North Africans.
“We are invisible in the data. This causes serious problems for our community,” Nash told council members on March 4, three weeks before officials passed a resolution in support of the bill.
“If you put yourself in our shoes and ask what’s the diabetes rates, what’s the heart disease rates, what’s the bullying rates, hate crimes – this impacts us because we can’t tell our own story and we don’t know how to help our own community.”
The MENA community is wide ranging including Egyptian, Palestinian, Iranian, Armenian, Somalian, Lebanese, Syrian, Afghan, Israeli, Turkish, Djiboutian, Libyan, Sudanese, Kurdish, Moroccan, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Algerian, Tunisian, Saudi Arabian and Assyrian people.
Advocates of the bill say getting the MENA category is important because federal and state agencies use that data to allocate resources for healthcare access, education funding, and business grants.
Without the data, they argue there will be no funding for things like mental health programs, no business development support and no public health research to address the medical risks the community faces.
Leaders in those communities say elected officials don’t have to look back far to see the importance of having specific and accurate data on ethnic groups.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, local health officials and statewide health experts admitted a lack of data on the Middle East and North African community made it impossible to see what impact COVID-19 had on those residents.
Aliya Yousufi, a senior policy coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations-LA, told Anaheim officials at their meeting last week that the lack of data kept groups like hers from tracking things like misconceptions about the COVID vaccine in the MENA community.
“During the pandemic, at the peak of it, we weren’t really able to track how many of our community members were actually taking advantage of the precautions that were being offered,” she said
Last year with help from a CDC grant through the county, 17 groups that specialize in either charity, advocacy or health and supportive services launched a collective to address health inequities and quality of life issues in the South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African communities in Orange County.
[Read: Tackling Health Gaps in OC’s South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African Communities]
Meanwhile, efforts to get data on the MENA community continued at the federal and state level.
The state bill introduced by Armenian American Assemblymember John Harabedian (D-Pasadena) comes after federal officials last year announced that there will be a Middle Eastern category in the 2030 census.
[Read: OC’s Middle Eastern Community Will Finally Get Counted in Next Census]
It also comes after a similar bill in California – dubbed AB 2763 – last year ended up getting suspended by the State Assembly Appropriations Committee amid budgetary concerns.
Orange County is home to roughly about 32,000 Iranian Americans, about 30,000 Arab Americans and 6,000 Armenian Americans in Orange County, according to American Community Survey data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Orange County Leaders Back MENA Inclusion Act
Local groups like the Arab American Civic Council, Council on American Islamic Relations – Greater Los Angeles and ACCESS California Services who advocated for Little Arabia are endorsing Harabedian’s bill.
Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra, who is Syrian American, and Garden Grove Councilwoman Yesenia Muneton have also endorsed the bill, according to the California MENA Civil Rights Coalition – a collection of groups advocating for the bill.
On Tuesday, Anaheim City Council Members voted unanimously on a resolution in support of the bill at the request of Councilman Carlos Leon.
Leon said the Middle Eastern and North African communities have been statistically invisible for far too long.
“Demographic data is not just about numbers. It determines funding, healthcare, access, educational opportunities and civil rights protections,” he said at the March 25 meeting. “
“This is about fairness. It’s about accuracy and visibility. I think our city has led by example, and now California must do the same.”
David Ochoa – a representative for State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) – read a letter from the senator in support of the resolution, arguing that lumping Middle Easterners with White people in data collection has perpetuated inequities in financial opportunities, education and healthcare.
“Accurate mean and specific data is crucial for improving state planning, resource allocation and policy interventions to better serve our community,” Ochoa read.
Councilwoman Natalie Meeks raised concerns about the resolution stating the city “would continue to support the contributions and culture of” the Middle Eastern community in Anaheim.
“Are we going to financially support?” Meeks said. “I don’t like it because I don’t know what that means.”
Councilman Ryan Balius echoed Meeks’ concerns about the language of the resolution.
In the end, officials changed the word support in the resolution to recognize.
Last year, Meeks was the only council member to vote against putting up Little Arabia freeway signs arguing more time was needed to think about how they envision the future of the district.
The Little Arabia district naturally sprouted in the late 1980s when Arab immigrant business owners started to set up shop along Brookhurst Street near the Garden Grove mosque and converted a rundown area into a cultural oasis without city subsidies.
After decades of advocacy, Anaheim officials recognized the district officially in 2022.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.