The Biden administration is proposing to issue a new directive on how U.S. agencies collect and publish data on race and ethnicity. The proposal would increase the number of primary racial groups for data collection to seven from five. That yields seven races: white, black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and MENA. Respondents to government surveys or forms would be asked to select one or more races from the list. This would replace the current method by which people are first asked whether they are “Hispanic or Latino,” and then asked to select races from the original five options.

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