NEW YORK (March 28, 2024) -- On March 28, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its much-anticipated new standards on how the federal government collects data on race and ethnicity. These new standards are historic — as their release marks the first time in 27 years that the U.S. government has changed the way it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. 

Clear and accurate data on our diverse communities is a key tool to creating strong public policy. That’s why the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) and our nearly 90-member strong coalition of AAPI-led and -serving community-based organizations collaborated on a detailed public comment to the OMB on the proposed new race and ethnicity standards last spring. 

CACF’s public comment truly represented the voices of New York City’s multi-racial and multicultural AAPI communities and throughout our comment, our coalition stressed the pivotal need to make the federal race and ethnicity standards more inclusive — especially when it comes to AAPI groups that are overlooked far too often.

To that end, the new standards will use more precise geographical terms like East Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia to represent the regions our communities come from. Significantly, the new standard also eliminates several descriptors – including ‘Oriental,’ ‘Far East’ and ‘Indian Subcontinent’ — our community members have flagged as outdated and offensive. Not only were those terms inaccurate, they also contributed to a narrative of Asian Americans being perpetual foreigners in the United States.

Equally notable is the creation of a new Middle East or North African (or MENA) option – which enables people from this community to truly be seen in government data. We are also encouraged by the fact that federal agencies will now be required to collect detailed data on community members that fit under the Asian umbrella and will remove the exclusionary word ‘other’ in the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander category.

But while there is much to celebrate in the OMB’s revised standards, the omissions in Thursday’s release reflect the continued work that needs to be done to ensure that ALL Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are seen by the federal government.

We remain concerned that the federal government will collect detailed data on only the ‘largest’ groups in the Asian American community — leaving smaller and most in-need data representation groups like Burmese, Indo-Caribbeans, Nepalis, Sri Lankans, Tibetans, and Thai at the risk of continuing to be overlooked. 

CACF is committed to advocating that all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are seen by the federal government. We are also dedicated to ensuring these new federal race and ethnicity standards are effectively implemented by federal, state, and local agencies in collaboration with our community partners.

##

For more information, please contact CACF’s Senior Communications Coordinator Lakshmi Gandhi at lgandhi@cacf.org.

About The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF):

The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families is the only pan-Asian children and families’ advocacy organization in the United States and brings together community-based organizations as well as youth and community allies to fight for equity for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. cacf.org