Navigating Race and Ethnicity Statistics in Census Data
In March, the Equity in Data Community of Practice learned about how to responsibly utilize census data to explore race and ethnicity. We heard from CTData’s own Cynthia Willner (Senior Research Associate) and Jason Cheung (Senior Data Analyst) who shared how race and ethnicity data is collected and how we can use it appropriately in our work. Watch the video below!
Some of the highlights include:
Jason provided a demo on how to navigate the Census Bureau's data.census.gov website to find race and ethnicity data from the American Community Survey (ACS).
Jason showed how to search for relevant tables on the Census Reporter website to find the data you need, preview the table structure, and copy the table code.
Jason explained the difference between using 1-year ACS estimates (more recent but less reliable) vs 5-year estimates (more reliable but less recent data).
Cindy discussed how the Census Bureau collects and codes race and ethnicity data, with a focus on the changes made in 2020 that impacted data collection.
Starting in 2020, the Census added write-in areas for respondents to specify their origin under the White and Black/African American race categories. This particularly affected Hispanic/Latino respondents who wrote in their origin under White or Black and got coded into "Some Other Race."
Cindy recommended using the "Race Alone or in Combination" categories rather than mutually exclusive races when comparing before/after 2020.
The links mentioned in the chat thread are:
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