Congratulations to Educational Psychology doctoral student Amir Maghsoodi, who has been awarded a research grant from the Center for Arab American Philanthropy. He will use his award from the Dr. Philip M. Kayal Fund for Arab American Research to support his study, “Making sense of the Census: A mixed methods study of Arab Americans and racial classification”, which seeks to understand the psychological impacts of continued non-recognition of Arab and other Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) peoples (i.e., their classification as “white”) on racial demographic forms in the U.S.
Maghsoodi's adviser in the Counseling Psychology program is Dr. Nidia Ruedas-Gracia. His research abstract details that though psychologists have theorized conceptual links between racial identity invalidation posed by lack of Census recognition for MENA Americans and psychological and mental health outcomes, his study will be the first to systematically investigate this relationship.
In 2015, the Census Bureau recommended that a MENA option be added to the US Census, but the Trump administration chose to forego this change to the racial/ethnic demographic section of the 2020 Census.
