Why We Must All Be Advocates When it Comes to Race Data

By: Elycia Mulholland Graves, Director of Research & Data Analysis 

Nearly 50 years ago, the federal government established standards for racial data collection that still shape how we understand race. Federal agencies—the U.S. Census Bureau foremost among them—comply with these standards from data collection to reporting. They also trickle through to states, universities, public health agencies, and other institutions to influence how we measure race in nearly every report and dataset. 

But the history of these categories is deeply rooted in racism, oppression, and enforcement of White supremacy as a matter of federal policy.  

As the amount and interest in race data grows, we must all become better data users and advocates for more inclusive data. Because how we collect and report data by race directly affects government decisions regarding funding, program administration, protection of rights, monitoring of discrimination, and more. In this post, we discuss why racial categories in data matter, how the Census Bureau’s racial categories changed according to political agendas, and how those categories are used and determined today. 

Why Racial Categories in Data Matter  

How we collect and report data by race affects resource distribution, voting/civil rights compliance, program administration, and basic policy decisions. For instance, Census data is used to: 

• Enforce equal employment opportunities  
• Identify who is not receiving medical services  
• Allocate elected representatives  
• Evaluate the consequences of housing or transportation projects to certain groups   

Flawed racial categories influence our ability to provide evidence of inequities to achieve more equitable representation and funding. Classifying Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA), or Middle Eastern or North African (MENA), people as White in federal data has historically erased these communities while giving them no added benefits. For example, it prevents researchers from applying for federal funding to study health disparities affecting SWANA people. 

For centuries, failure to accurately count American Indian or Alaska Native communities has resulted in omitting them from statistical reporting and undercounting them in redistricting. Meanwhile, lumping Asian communities into one racial category or, at times, an umbrella Asian or Pacific Islander category reduces their diverse experiences into a single, monolithic identity. Also, past categorizing of Latine/x/o/a people as an ethnic identity, and MENA people as White, both contribute to overcounting and overrepresentation of White people, adding to their political power. 

The Problematic History of Racial Categories in the U.S. Census  

Today, we use Census Bureau data to understand racial inequities and underscore where governments should invest more equitably. But historically, Census data collection was not about racial equity. The first census, beginning August 2, 1790, aimed to identify and assert who had a right to citizenship, representation, and land ownership. It separated free White people from everyone else, including enslaved Black people, who were assigned no rights. It upheld whiteness.  

Racial politics and xenophobia influenced how the Census Bureau categorized race from the beginning. The unstated purpose was preserving the power of the ruling White elite. Including or excluding a group from the circle of whiteness manipulated its access to power and rights. In 1870, as concern grew over Chinese immigration that provided workers on the Central Pacific Railroad, "Chinese" became the first Asian category on the questionnaire, to track growing numbers of Chinese people and deny them citizenship and voting rights. The Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act, which codified this denial, passed shortly thereafter. Later, Census data helped restrict the number of Chinese immigrants allowed to immigrate. In 1930, while the Great Depression raged, the federal government deported Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens of Mexican descent to slow unemployment rates. To sort them and deny them citizenship, the government added "Mexican" as a Census category. The Mexican government and advocacy groups quickly protested—that was the first and last year that category appeared. 

The Changing Categories the U.S. Census Has Used to Measure Race 

How the Census Bureau Determines Racial Categories Now  

Today, the intent behind the Census Bureau collecting race data has changed, but racial categories have lagged. The civil rights movement and subsequent advocacy campaigns drove many of the changes. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act dramatically shifted the purpose of race data collection, from denying rights to monitoring equal access to them.   

In 1977, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) adopted the first standards for collecting and presenting data by race. The OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive 15 promoted consistent collection and reporting of race data to comply with the new civil rights laws. It established four minimum racial categories that still influence data collection: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and White. Separately, it classified Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic origin. Federal agencies must comply with these standards, but, importantly, state and local agencies also use them, and non-federal surveys use similar categories to align with federal data. 

Advocacy efforts have helped revise the original 1977 standards to better reflect the unique experiences of racial groups throughout the country. In 1997, in response to community advocacy, the OMB established Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) as a separate racial category from Asian. This marked an important distinction in the struggles of NHPI communities, though many reports still fail to use the category.  

In March 2024, after decades of advocacy, the OMB revised its standards to include MENA and Latine/x/o/a as separate race categories to increase accuracy in counting these communities and acknowledge experiences of discrimination that distinguish them from White. These changes and others took years of a persistent push for change that continues today to ensure governments accurately count and report community identities.  

Revised Race Standards Required for Federal Data Collection

Our Call to Action 

At its best, race data tells community stories and aids the fight for equity. At its worst, it obstructs clear analysis of community struggles and hinders progress toward equity. We must critically analyze race data and push for more accuracy in reflecting our country’s diversity. To achieve this, we should: 

1. Know the problematic history of federal race data collection and acknowledge it in our own reports and presentations. 
2. Analyze systems of oppression at work in the data by asking questions: Who collected the data and how did they collect it? Who was included or excluded in the data and why? 
3. Cross-check race data findings with affected communities.  
4. Call out erasure of communities in data collection instead of continuing it. 
5. Connect with local, state, and federal agencies to advocate for better collection/reporting of race data, including showing up to provide public comment and pushing them to go beyond existing standards  

Keep checking our blog to learn how we report imperfect race data and use it to tell stories that increase power alongside communities of color. 

Additional Reading and Resources 

Check out these great resources that dive more into the topic: 

• U.S. Census Bureau, Measuring Race and Ethnicity Across the Decades: 1790-2010. 
• Anna Brown, “The changing categories the U.S. census has used to measure race,” Pew Research Center.  
• Pew Research Center, “What census calls us, a historical timeline.” 
• Jasmine Mithani and Alex Samuels, “Who the census misses,” FiveThirtyEight. 
• Neda Maghbouleh, Ariela Schachter, and Rene D. Flores, “Middle Eastern and North African Americans may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves, to be White,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
• The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “The decades-long fight for accurate race and ethnicity data.” 
• U.S. Census Bureau, What Updates to OMB’s Race/Ethnicity Standards Mean for the Census Bureau. 

And sign-up to receive updates data collection standards and processes on the Census Bureau’s website: https://www.census.gov/. 

Thank you to Tessie Borden, our Senior Communications Manager and to Chris Ringewald, Jennifer Zhang, Maria T. Khan, and Alexandra Baker from our Research and Data Analysis Team for their contributions.