An accurate count of our community in the U.S. census results in necessary programming, funding and representation for the unique and critical needs of our community, but what happens when we aren’t even listed as an option to be counted? Join this panel of experts who will give us a historical overview of the census and the fight for a Middle Eastern, North African (MENA) category. From a data and research standpoint, attendees will learn what this means for the community and where we can go from here.
Germine Awad, Ph.D., is an associate professor and area chair of the Human Development, Culture and Learning Sciences Program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also affiliated with the Counseling Psychology Program. She conducts research on the process of acculturation and ethnic identity formation for Arab Americans residing in the United States. More recently, she has collected data testing an experimental streamlined version of a Census race/ethnicity question with Middle Eastern/Arab Americans. Awad also studies the effect of discrimination on the Arab and African American community as well as predictors of prejudice toward Arab Americans, individuals of Middle Eastern descent, and other minority groups. She has published in the areas of racial and ethnic identity, affirmative action attitudes, and multicultural research methodology.
Iyanrick John is the Senior Policy Strategist for the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF), a national health justice organization which influences policy, mobilizes communities and strengthens organizations to improve the health of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders living in the U.S. and its territories. In his role, he helps to guide the intermediate and long-term policy strategy for the organization and identify emerging issues and trends. Prior to working at APIAHF, John worked as a policy analyst for the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities at the Maryland Department of Health. He also worked as a research consultant for the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, where he managed health-related research projects, performed statistical analysis, managed research databases and designed surveys and data collection tools. John has an MPH from the Loma Linda University School of Public Health and a JD from the University of Maryland School of Law. He enjoys running and traveling to new places with his wife and three children.
Kristine J. Ajrouch, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University and Adjunct Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Her research has focused, for over twenty years, on Arab Americans beginning with ethnic identity formation among adolescent children of immigrants followed by the study of social relations, aging and health. Dr. Ajrouch’s findings have been published in high-impact journals and have considerable significance to work being conducted by the U.S. Census, with whom she has been consulting for several years on the feasibility of including Middle East/North African as a separate category. Dr. Ajrouch is currently collaborating with a multi-disciplinary group of scholars as a member of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) Research Working Group to develop consensus on how to validly and reliably distinguish Arab Americans from the White/Caucasian racial group on surveys and forms used by various organizations and researchers.
Roberto R. Ramirez is the Assistant Division Chief of the Special Population Statistics area, in Population Division. During the past 20 years, Ramirez’s work at the Census Bureau included study of the Hispanic population and other minority ethnic and racial population groups, including the publication of several reports using data from the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, and the 2000 and 2010 censuses. In 2011, he presented Hispanic data research findings to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus from the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey. Ramirez has presented key Hispanic statistics on C-SPAN’s “America by the Numbers” weekly program and has conducted numerous radio, TV, and newspaper interviews. Ramirez has received Bronze Medal Awards from the Census Bureau for his contributions in reviewing Hispanic data from both the 2000 and 2010 censuses. He was a key member of Census Bureau experts responsible for providing leadership and guidance for the 2015 National Content Test.
Matthew Jaber Stiffler is the Research and Content Manager at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, where he works with Museum staff to accurately represent the diverse Arab American community through the Museum’s collections, exhibits and educational programming. He also leads a national research initiative through ACCESS, the largest Arab American community non-profit in the country, to secure better data about the Arab American community. Stiffler received his PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2010, where he serves as a lecturer in Arab and Muslim American Studies. He is currently a board member and treasurer of the Arab American Studies Association and serves on the board of the Michigan Humanities Council.
Session tags: capacity building, human services, research, civic engagement
Location: The Gallery