Civil Rights Require Evidence

Civil-rights laws do not enforce themselves. Courts and government agencies require evidence.

Racial and ethnic population data can help determine whether electoral districts dilute the voting strength of racial minorities. It can reveal whether schools discipline Black children more severely than white children. It can expose racial segregation in housing and education. It can show disparities in mortgage lending, unemployment, incarceration, environmental exposure, maternal mortality, and access to medical treatment.

Census data does not, standing alone, establish every element of a legal discrimination claim. But without reliable population data, many civil-rights claims become much more difficult—and far more expensive—to prove.

Census information provides an essential national foundation. It supplies population estimates and geographic detail against which other evidence can be evaluated.

Eliminating race and ethnicity questions from the census would not erase every racial statistic collected by federal agencies, states, universities, or private researchers. That is not my claim. My claim is that without authoritative census population data, those other datasets become more vulnerable to attack.

Researchers need reliable population denominators to calculate rates, compare communities, evaluate trends, and determine whether a disparity is widening or narrowing. Smaller studies can be dismissed as unrepresentative, geographically limited, or methodologically inadequate. The government can continue demanding rigorous proof of racial inequality after weakening the population framework necessary to produce that proof.

Without that foundation, civil-rights litigation and policy research become more difficult and more expensive. Large institutions are in a better position to defend themselves. Communities experiencing discrimination face a heavier burden of proof.

That is not a neutral redistribution of costs. It transfers power away from the people seeking accountability and toward the institutions being asked to account for racial disparities.