Office of Management and Budget: Request for Comments on Federal Standards for Race and Ethnicity

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking public comments on several long-awaited changes to the 1997 federal standards for collecting and reporting race and ethnicity:

1) to allow a combined Hispanic/Latino “ethnicity” question with the “race” question so that the distinction between ethnicity and race is less confusing

2) to create a subcategory of “Middle Eastern and Northern African” as part of the White category

3) to encourage further disaggregation of each race and ethnicity category, and re-emphasize that these are only minimum categories

4) to clarify terminology, such as not referring to a “principal minority race ” in reporting race and ethnicity data

Unfortunately, the public comment period only lasts 30 days, ending October 31; you can send your comments by email to Race-ethnicity@omb.eop.gov, or upload your comments at: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=OMB-2016-0002-0001

Meanwhile, there already have been dozens of racist, nativist, and anti-Muslim comments sent to the OMB (you can review them on the comment website).

The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) is mobilizing grassroots, community member comments, specifically on the need for disaggregated data for our diverse Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities: http://www.apiahf.org/omb

APIAHF published an op-ed on this issue earlier today.