Civic Leadership to Counter Racialization
Three weeks ago, I co-facilitated a one-day conference, “Resolving the Race-ism Dilemma,” along with colleagues Sheena Mason and Carlos Hoyt, with great support behind-the-scenes from Kristin Bedard. Our approaches to addressing the race—>racialization—>racism nexus were variations on a theme: Sheena grounded hers in a humane and salutary “theory of racelessness,” Carlos in a heroic move toward “anti-racialization” via the petition below, whereas I discussed “deracialization,” centering on cultural intelligence and development to decenter the racialization process. (Here’s a long-form essay, published this weekend, on this perspective, “Considering Deracialization: A Response to Glenn Loury and Clifton Roscoe.”)
By many measures, the conference was a big success, from the open and brave engagement of the 60 diverse participants, each of whom grappled with difficult issues without harm and recrimination; the great feedback post-event, where 80% of the respondents gave the occasion the top score of 5 out of 5; as well as the spirited involvement of my partner Jewel and daughter Kaya, who took time out of her busy schedule as a grad student at MIT to attend. But perhaps the most crucial evidence is the civic action we’re taking now: a proposal, introduced and discussed at the conclusion of the conference, for the U.S. Census Bureau to change the way it tracks and collects race data.
In planning the conference, images from which you’ll see below, we decided to focus on practical ways to put into action the understandings we brought to bear on countering the way racialization creates subspecies called “races,” and how an insidious perspective called a racial worldview keeps it in place, resulting in layered, tiered racism. In August 2022, the U.S. Census asked the public for comments on ways to improve—the deadline for comments is November 15, 2022. Finding a way for the government to continue tracking bias and discrimination related to persons being racialized while not reifying and reinforcing the fatally flawed idea of race is the challenge we’ve decided to take up. Below you’ll find the text composed by Carlos Hoyt for a petition toward that end.
To go to the petition and sign right now, click here.
Current census race data question, which compels Americans to racialize themselves
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 representaton, 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.
The deadline to submit our document with your signature to the U.S. Census Bureau is November 15, 2022.
Please sign now to add your voice, and please send this along to your friends!
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.
L-R, Kaya Thomas speaking, seated next to Jewel Kinch-Thomas; Greg Thomas; Carlos Hoyt and Sheena Mason; Michael Mascolo and Angel Eduardo; Carlos setting the tone early; and a gentleman, Carlen Charleston, wearing an ERASE Race shirt with the message: “What if we were all 1 race? HUMAN”
Photos courtesy of Ildi Tillmann