Malikah founder Rana Abdelhamid, Assembly Members Jessica González-Rojas and Zohran Mamdani, and State Sen. Mike Gianaris at Tuesday’s event celebrating passage of the MENA Bill. Photo: Mike Gianaris Flickr.
Jan. 9, 2025 By Shane O’Brien
State Sen. Mike Gianaris and Assembly Members Jessica González-Rojas and Zohran Mamdani joined members of the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) coalition Tuesday to celebrate a new law requiring New York State documents to separate MENA New Yorkers from the white category.
The legislation, introduced by Gianaris and González-Rojas and signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Dec. 20, aims to give MENA communities a stronger voice in state-collected data.
The term Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) includes people from countries in the Middle East, like Lebanon and Iraq, and North Africa, such as Egypt and Morocco.
Elected officials and advocates contend that miscategorizing MENA New Yorkers as white has “real-world” impacts by disadvantaging representation for MENA communities as well as hindering their visibility and access to resources.
The MENA Bill (S6584C/A6219B) requires that every state agency, board, department or commission that directly collects demographic data regarding ancestry or ethnic origin to disaggregate Middle Eastern or North African populations from the White demographic, or collect separate data on each major Middle Eastern or North African group.
For decades, MENA New Yorkers had been statistically invisible, lumped into the white category on government documents.
Gianaris, González-Rojas, Mamdani and MENA advocates, including members of grassroots antiviolence and wellness nonprofit Malikah, gathered at Yemeni coffee house Mokafe on Steinway Street on Tuesday to celebrate the passage of the new law.
Gianaris praised Hochul for signing the bill into law and said the MENA Bill would recognize and dignify members of New York’s MENA community.
“Miscategorizing a New Yorker’s race is not only offensive but has real-world impacts on services and resources particular communities receive,” Gianaris said in a statement.
Gianaris said the latest Census data indicates that there are over 280,000 MENA New Yorkers but noted that recent studies indicate that the actual figure is over half a million.
He said MENA communities across New York State remain underserved, exhibiting higher rates of language access needs, housing insecurity, poverty, domestic abuse, and health disparities partly because of their mischaracterization of government documents.
Gianaris said businesses and organizations that primarily serve these communities struggle to receive equity-based aid because those they serve are classified as white.
He added that this can have a direct impact on MENA New Yorkers – such as when a small business is applying for Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) contractor status, who may be denied because they would be demographically mischaracterized.
Mamdani, meanwhile, said the new law will allow MENA communities to receive the recognition they deserve in New York State.
“For over a century, our Middle Eastern and North African neighbors have not existed in the eyes of New York State,” Mamdani said in a statement. “You cannot properly advocate for a community when the state does not even acknowledge it. This bill changes that.”
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