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Communities excluded from the national census will be represented and included; for the first time since 1997, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) expanded its rules on race and ethnicity, seeking to make all people visible and represented in federal data collection.
During a briefing held by Ethnic Media Services, Experts discussed how new standards regarding race and ethnicity have been included by OMB to ensure clarity in data collection and to ensure that needs are heard and communities are represented.
Juan Rosa, National Director of Civic Engagement for the National Educational Fund (NALEO), commented that these changes in data collection can benefit communities in the long term, while considering that generations have changed and are more capable of recognizing their identity, feeling proud of their origins and looking for a way to truly identify themselves as they are and where they come from.
Thirty-five percent of Latinos indicated they were of another race on the 2020 census because they did not identify themselves, while 8 percent did not respond; an estimated 27 million of the 63 million counted in the census did not see themselves reflected in the questions regarding race, creating a need for change, he said.
Tina J. Kauh, Senior Program Officer in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Research, Evaluation and Learning Unit, explained that the organization works with communities, physicians and institutions to create a future where medicine is accessible to all.
She said systemic racism is still present, not only for the Asian American community, but also for other minority communities, so getting enough resources for various studies or programs is really complicated, and without hard data it becomes almost impossible.
In this regard, he said that support is currently being given to the collection of data that will greatly benefit the communities, allowing them to understand their shortcomings and needs, generating relevant information to implement new and better support programs.
Gail C. Christopher, executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity and director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's National Commission on Transforming Public Health Data Systems, explained that the data system must be expanded to include the most vulnerable communities in California.
Christopher stressed that it is very important to address the structural racism that limits communities of color, and that there are currently different categories for people to identify themselves and feel truly heard, showing that they are not invisible.
“The data system still needs to be transformed so that communities, health agencies and associations can understand that this is done with the best intentions, since there are different narratives. However, the goal is to ensure that the resources and results help those communities that do not feel represented prosper,” she stressed.
"The challenge we face is that the lack of data fits into the framework of discrimination and racial stereotypes that have been part of our nation and right now we are at that moment of accepting our history to create strength, reconciliation and healing processes.”, he added Gail C. Christopher.
Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity programs at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, explained that when you put dots on numbers, you're not telling the stories of racial equity and you're only really showing one part.
And, she said, when we talk about collecting data, we only seek to have a better version of the people we want to represent, because the data can never pigeonhole a person, since there are many origins and cultures, but having more options in a survey allows them to show themselves as they are or as close to what they are, and that is what we seek.
With this new format, people can identify themselves and tell their story through surveys. To achieve this, there will be enough time to codify the data collected. Organizations will be monitoring the process to achieve results closer to reality.
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