Eli5: Why does the US Government classify Arabs/Middle Easterners as white?

Question

So according to the US government, Arabs, Persians, Kurdish, etc people are white. Why is this?

In: Other

Answer 1

Apparently the federal govt just added “Middle Eastern/North African” as another race option on their forms. As someone who reviews lots of google forms where we ask for race, a LOT of Arabs/Middle Easterners selected “other” and then specify “Middle Eastern” in the box. So they clearly don’t consider themselves white, and most whites don’t consider them white.