Biden's proposal would give more options for Latinos and people from the Middle East and North Africa to identify themselves, potentially lowering the white population count.

According to Silvia Foster-Frau, a journalist for the Washington Post, with every census survey — or medical form or job application — Tala Faraj says she has no choice but to identify herself as something she is not: white. Faraj, 23, is an American of Iraqi descent, but the Middle East is usually not an option when asked about her race and ethnicity.

"It's this feeling that I don't really belong. Like there's no room for me here and I just have to conform to what this country tells me who I am," said Faraj, who lives in Chicago. "It makes me feel sad." Currently, people from the Middle East or North Africa are included in the white category, something that, according to Biden's proposal, these people have been asking for change for three decades.

According to the 2020 Census, United States is 59% white, almost 19% Hispanic, 13% black and 6% Asian. Proposed changes to the 2030 census could further reduce the white population count and reflect the country's increasingly diverse makeup.

"Federal race and ethnicity norms are inherently complex because they seek to capture dynamic and fluid sociopolitical constructs," the Office of Budget and Management said in the proposal released on Friday. In the years since the last revision of the census norms, "there have been major social, political, economic, and demographic changes in the United States."

The Biden administration's proposal is preliminary and there will be a public comment period following its publication in the Federal Register.  The proposed change would affect how the federal government captures racial and ethnic information in the decennial census and in surveys such as those done by the National Center for Health Statistics or the Department of Education, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center”.

The public can offer written comments on the proposal until April 12. Management said in a statement that it intends to finalize the reviews by the summer of 2024. "The recommendations are preliminary - not final," the statement said.

"We need data on our communities to defend them and to provide adequate services to them, and the census is the source of all that data." According to Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, by making groups invisible in census data, there are real consequences in people's lives.

Biden's proposal aims to change the way people identify their race and ethnicity, giving Latinos and people in the Middle East and North Africa more options. Additionally, Latinos will have the opportunity to provide more details about their ethnic background, including whether they are Puerto Rican, Cuban or Mexican American. Multiracial people will also be able to tick more than one race box.

The current version of the census "really undermines our ability to talk about the racial discrimination that Latinos face in this country, because we are denied the ability to articulate that in the data," said Julie Dowling, professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Biden's proposal is a recognition of the country's "greater diversity," according to Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. For the professor, it is important that these changes are implemented so that communities can be correctly represented and receive adequate support.

In addition, according to NBC News, other proposals from the Biden administration include removing black and Far East as racial identities and revising the description of the category "American Indian or Alaska Native" to include "all individuals who identify with any one of the original peoples of North, Central and South America". Additionally, the administration is proposing to discontinue the use of words such as majority and minority. It is also considering allowing people to tick more boxes on their racial or ethnic identity and provide more detail in each category.