Mixed Race Studies

Race and Ethnicity in the 2020 Census: Improving Data to Capture a Multiethnic America

The Leadership Conference Education Fund
Washington, D.C.
November 2014
36 pages

“Race and Ethnicity in the 2020 Census” is the culmination of The Leadership Conference Education Fund’s year-long project to examine the Census Bureau’s research and testing program from the perspective of civil rights stakeholders and to ensure that any revisions to the 2020 census race and ethnicity questions continue to yield data that support the advancement of fairness and equity in all facets of American life. The report – co-branded with Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) and the NALEO Educational Fund – includes a set of recommendations for the Census Bureau and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter I: Collecting Race and Ethnicity Data in the Census
• Chapter II: The Essential Role of Race and Ethnicity Statistics in the Quest for Civil Rights
• Chapter III: Revising the Census Race and Ethnicity Questions: The Civil Rights Perspective
• Chapter IV: Recommendations
• Endnotes
• Appendix I

…Stakeholders emphasize, however, that census data and school enrollment data are not always comparable with respect to the categories used and the level and range of detail collected, making it more difficult to evaluate trends in education outcomes and their relationship to broader community conditions, such as poverty, unemployment, and access to health care, that can influence performance in school. The Department of Education requires educational institutions to collect race and ethnicity data on students and staff, but individuals are not required to provide those data (resulting in a category of “Race and Ethnicity unknown”). The department only updated its data collection guidelines in 2007—10 years after OMB finalized the new standards for race and ethnicity data—for implementation in the 2010-11 school year. The updated Education Department categories do not ask Hispanics to report a race; they also collapse multiple race responses into one, unspecific category of “Two or more races,” instead of assigning multiracial individuals to their respective race choices.65 The latter practice is especially worrisome to civil rights data users, given the growth in the multiracial and multiethnic populations. The percentage of the population reporting multiple races grew by nearly a third (32 percent) between 2000 and 2010, compared to an overall 10 percent growth in the U.S. population. Failure to capture multiple race responses as part of specific race groups can adversely affect the ability of educational institutions to meet minority student enrollment thresholds under various education programs…

…Other observations about current census race and ethnicity data, for civil rights purposes, include concerns about the accuracy of data on multiracial and multiethnic populations, especially Afro-Latinos; the need for more detailed and accurate data on Americans of South Asian origin and Native Hawaiians; and the need for expanded data sets on industry, occupation, and employment status, by race and ethnicity, including for American Indian tribes, to assist in the enforcement of equal employment opportunity laws. Employment experts generally believe that a combined race and Hispanic origin question would produce data of acceptable (if not higher) quality and enhanced granularity for all race groups to support their efforts. They emphasized the importance of detailed, subgroup data to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in the labor market, since many people of color, and especially immigrants, are concentrated in “ethnic enclaves.”…

Read the entire report here.