WHY RACE & ETHNICITY DATA MATTERS
Add your name to our Census Proposal
Comment Letter
The current administration is proposing to remove race and ethnicity categories from the 2030 Census. This comes alongside existing proposals to reintroduce a citizenship question. Given the ongoing challenges in ensuring an accurate count, particularly for Afro-Latine communities due to recent race and ethnicity measurement changes that our coalition opposed, these proposals present a major threat to our representation and resource allocation.
An accurate Census count is not only essential for protecting civil rights and securing federal funding; it ensures our communities receive their fair share of resources and political power. Because Census data directly determines congressional apportionment, suppressing or obscuring our numbers risks severe underrepresentation in the federal government. Furthermore, federal law strictly requires the Census Bureau to keep individual responses confidential and use data solely for statistical purposes.
Following the lead of our partners at LatinoJustice, we are drafting a sign-on statement for the public comment window to demand that race and ethnicity questions remain on the Census. The notion of a "race-blind" survey ignores reality, deepens systemic inequity, and guarantees a severe undercount of Afro-Latino populations.
If you want to do so, we urge you to join our Sign-On letter.
Read the recent report our friends at the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy Institute released entitled "Latino is Not a Race: Understanding Lived Experiences Through Street Race," it underscores the impact of various issues and the need for improved data collection methods especially because the Census is essential for equitable distribution of federal and state resources. The title of this report also shouts out the work we have done as a nascent coalition! Our campaign, launched in February 2023, was always a collective effort which seeks to highlight the fact that ‘Latino’ is an ethnicity, not a race, and to elevate AfroLatine representation. Read the report!
The current administration is proposing to remove race and ethnicity categories from the 2030 Census. This comes alongside existing proposals to reintroduce a citizenship question. Given the ongoing challenges in ensuring an accurate count, particularly for Afro-Latine communities due to recent race and ethnicity measurement changes that our coalition opposed, these proposals present a major threat to our representation and resource allocation.
Why this matters?
An accurate Census count is not only essential for protecting civil rights and securing federal funding; it ensures our communities receive their fair share of resources and political power. Because Census data directly determines congressional apportionment, suppressing or obscuring our numbers risks severe underrepresentation in the federal government. Furthermore, federal law strictly requires the Census Bureau to keep individual responses confidential and use data solely for statistical purposes.
Coalition Partners
