WarSclerotic

Islam is not a race? Obama White House wants to change that, Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, October 1, 2016

For years those of us who have dared to note how Islamic jihadis invoke the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims have been accused of “racism.” This Big Lie has been repeated so often and so insistently, without any breaking of ranks among the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media, that it has become commonplace. In response, I have repeated more times than I could possibly recall: “What race is the jihad mass murder of innocent civilians again? I keep forgetting.” I’ve pointed out almost as often that Muslims who believe that their god is commanding them to wage war against and subjugate those who don’t believe as they do come in all races, and that race has nothing to do with their imperatives.

These simple truths have not stopped the charges of “racism,” of course, because those charges have Soros millions behind them, and a seemingly endless supply of well-paid Leftist and Islamic supremacist operatives eager to repeat them. But apparently the patent falsehood of the charge has caused some concern to this propagandist cabal, because now the Obama White House is attempting to give the propaganda a better footing by declaring a new race: “Middle Eastern and North African.”

It’s not a perfect designation, because it would include Middle Eastern and North African Christians and other non-Muslims, and would exclude Muslims who aren’t Middle Eastern and North African, but the principal beneficiary would be Muslim Arabs, and that is obviously the objective. This new designation would allow the incoming Clinton administration, among other things, to enforce “the Voting Rights Act and drawing congressional and state legislative district boundaries,” i.e., gerrymander districts to exaggerate Muslim voting power; establish “federal affirmative action plans and evaluating claims of employment discrimination in employment in the private sector,” i.e., continue and expand Obama administration efforts to establish special preferences and accommodations for Muslims in the workplace; and help “minority-owned small businesses get federal grants and loans,” i.e., make sure that Muslim-owned businesses get a healthy slice of the federal taxpayer pie.

Those special privileges are, ultimately, what this is all about, as well as to bolster the spurious charge of “racism” leveled against those who oppose jihad terror and Sharia supremacism.

“White House wants to add new racial category,” by Gregory Korte, USA Today, October 1, 2016:

WASHINGTON — The White House is putting forward a proposal to add a new racial category for people from the Middle East and North Africa under what would be the biggest realignment of federal racial definitions in decades.

If approved, the new designation could appear on census forms in 2020 and could have far-reaching implications for racial identity, anti-discrimination laws and health research.

Under current law, people from the Middle East are considered white, the legacy of century-old court rulings in which Syrian Americans argued that they should not be considered Asian — because that designation would deny them citizenship under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. But scholars and community leaders say more and more people with their roots in the Middle East find themselves caught between white, black and Asian classifications that don’t fully reflect their identities.

“What it does is it helps these communities feel less invisible,” said Helen Samhan of the Arab American Institute, which has been advocating the change for more than 30 years. “It’s a good step, a positive step.”

On Friday, the White House Office of Management and Budget advanced the proposal with a notice in the Federal Register, seeking comments on whether to add Middle Eastern and North African as a separate racial or ethnic category, which groups would be included, and what it should be called.

Under the proposal, the new Middle East and North African designation — or MENA, as it’s called by population scholars — is broader in concept than Arab (an ethnicity) or Muslim (a religion). It would include anyone from a region of the world stretching from Morocco to Iran, and including Syrian and Coptic Christians, Israeli Jews and other religious minorities.

But the Census Bureau, which has been quietly studying the issue for two years, also has gotten caught up in debates about some groups — such as Turkish, Sudanese and Somali Americans — who aren’t included in that category. Those are issues the White House is trying to resolve before adding the box on 2020 census forms.

Adding a box on the census form could have implications beyond racial identity. According to the White House notice, the new data could be used for a wide range of political and policy purposes, including:

• Enforcing the Voting Rights Act and drawing congressional and state legislative district boundaries;

• Establishing federal affirmative action plans and evaluating claims of employment discrimination in employment in the private sector;

• Monitoring discrimination in housing, mortgage lending and credit;

• Enforcing school desegregation policies; and

• Helping minority-owned small businesses get federal grants and loans.

Adding the classification also would help the government and independent scholars understand more about trends in health, employment and education.

“We can’t even ask questions like that, because we don’t have the data,” said Germine Awad, an Egyptian-American and professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin….