The United States Census Bureau requires you to say what race you are in order to make sure everyone gets proper representation and protection from mistreatment.

While these are worthy goals, there are two huge and harmful problems with this approach:

(1) How you are treated is not determined by what race you think you are but rather by what race other people think you are. The race category people put you in is what determines how they treat you. 

You might identify as one race but someone else might identify you as another race – and how they treat you will depend on how they define your race.

(2) Many people identify with a racial category but not everyone does. Nearly fifty million people checked the “Some other race” box in the 2020 Census, making “Some other race” the second largest “racial” group after “white.” It’s impossible to know how many of these millions of people might not think of themselves in terms of race at all because the Census form does not include any way to provide that information.

To fix these two problems and make the Census work better for everyone while still collecting data needed to track discrimination and provide proper representation, the Census must (1) give people the opportunity to say whether or not they identify by race at all, (2) which race(s) they identify with if they do identify by race, and (3) what race other people think they are.

We have an opportunity to get the Census Bureau to fix these huge problems by the time the next Decennial (ten-year) Census happens in 2030. The more signatures we get, the louder our voice will be and the more likely it is that we’ll succeed in making the most important improvement to the Census since it started in 1790.

Here’s the document we’ll send to the Census Bureau with details about how to fix its approach to race data collection. If you read it and you have questions, you can send them to Carlos Hoyt at hoyt.carlos@gmail.com.

This petition and proposal will be presented in a meeting with US Census Bureau representatives in May. The more signatures we have by then, the better!

Please sign now to add your voice, and please send this along to your friends!