Spend any amount of time in El Cajon and you’ll soon realize the city is a hub for Middle Eastern and North African communities, with people representing many ethnicities and nationalities.
But every 10 years, when it comes time to take the U.S. Census, people from these varied cultures have been counted as white.
“Thinking about East County, in particular, and El Cajon … there’s an enormous Iraqi, Chaldean and Assyrian population that is not being accounted for correctly,” said Ryan Fan, advocacy & campaign manager at Majdal: Arab Community Center of San Diego. “There’s an enormous Syrian population here that’s not getting counted. There’s an increasingly large Afghan population that’s not getting counted as well. Among many others, right?”…