From Durban to the 2030 Census

In Durban, we fought to establish that recognizing one human race does not require blindness to racism. We fought for governments to collect the information necessary to determine whether racial disparities existed and whether government action was reducing them.

We understood that data alone would not end racism. Numbers do not enforce themselves. Statistics do not redistribute power, provide medical care, desegregate schools, or compensate communities for generations of stolen labor and wealth.

But without reliable data, governments can deny the problem, misdirect resources, conceal failure, and avoid accountability.

The United States has long possessed racial population data that African-descendant communities in parts of Europe struggled to obtain. That data has helped Americans document racial disparities for generations. The Trump administration now proposes to weaken a central part of that national data system by removing race and ethnicity questions from the 2030 Census.

We should improve racial and ethnic data, not eliminate it from the census. We should strengthen privacy protections, respect self-identification, refine overly broad categories, provide meaningful information about multiracial identities, and produce better data concerning communities too often hidden inside national averages.

What we must not do is confuse statistical erasure with racial justice.

Removing race from the census will not remove racism from American life. It will not close the racial wealth gap, prevent discriminatory policing, reduce Black maternal mortality, protect voting rights, desegregate neighborhoods, or ensure equal medical treatment.

It will make those injustices harder to prove. It will also make the remaining data easier to challenge.

I have already seen what happens when governments refuse to collect racial and ethnic population data. Racism does not disappear. Government accountability does. The people experiencing discrimination are told to prove what the government has chosen not to measure. Their testimony is dismissed as anecdotal, their studies are attacked as inadequate, and the government’s deliberate ignorance becomes its defense.

A colorblind census in a racist society is not progress. It is statistical erasure—and statistical erasure protects white racial power.