A group of organizations are pushing for New York lawmakers to pass a bill that would disaggregate data of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals, according to a letter sent Monday. The bill (S6584-B/A6219-A) would direct every state agency, board, department and commission that collects demographic data to use separate categories to collect data for the “White” and “Middle Eastern or North African” groups. “Our organizations have seen firsthand the impact of the systemic exclusion of Middle Eastern and North African communities from data collection,” the letter reads. “For too long, Middle Eastern and North African communities have been made invisible by our federal and state governments' lack of data collection or lack of disaggregation," Assembly sponsor Jessica González-Rojas said in a statement. "By not including categories for these various communities in the data compiled and analyzed by our state institutions’ data, the needs of neighbors have been unaccounted for and ignored."

Source: The North Africa Journal May 15, 2024 03:39 UTC