Which box do I check Am I Normal With Mona Chalabi
Transcriber:
If you’ve been watching this series,
you’ll know I care about data.
But data has its limitations,
especially when it comes to language.
Basically, if you get
your categories wrong,
you can wind up with some
pretty misleading statistics,
and the US Census is a prime example.
[Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi]
Taken every 10 years,
this survey aims to collect
demographic data
from each and every resident
of the US and its territories.
Those responses help the government
to determine everything,
from the allocation of seats in Congress
and the Electoral College,
to the allocation of hundreds of billions
of dollars in federal funds.
And those funds pay for things
like new hospitals,
road improvements
and school lunch programs.
And crucially, the statisticians
that work there are nonpartisan.
They sit at the same desks,
applying the same formulas,
no matter who is in charge
at the White House.
So undoubtedly, the US Census
Bureau does important work,
but it does have some blind spots.
For example, there has been
a decades-long effort
to add the category Middle Eastern
or Northern African or MENA to the census.
Currently, the census defines
people from these regions,
and that includes me, as white.
Yeah, that’s incorrect.
In 2015, the census did test a version
of this survey that included MENA.
It found that when given the MENA option,
the number of people from that region
who identified as white
dropped from 86 percent to 20 percent.
See, when you reconsider language,
the numbers can change dramatically.
Unfortunately, though, the census
still didn’t make the change,
saying that further tests were necessary
to determine if MENA should appear
under ethnicity instead of race.
That means that those
who have rallied for its inclusion
will have to wait another decade
to see if our community can be recognized.
This isn’t the first time
that language has restricted
how people are represented in the census.
The very first one, way back in 1790,
only had three broad categories,
and I quote: “slaves, free white men
and women, and all other free persons.”
It would be another 30 years
before distinct categories for free Blacks
and another 40 years
before American Indians
would appear on the census.
Since then, more and more
categories have been added,
but progress has been slow.
It wasn’t until 2000 that people
could choose more than one race
to describe themselves,
and for the very first time in 2020,
people who selected Black or white
could go a bit more granular
and provide more detail
about their origins,
like naming France or Somalia
or spotlighting their Indigenous identity.
Right now, you might be thinking:
Why does the wording
on a survey even matter?
Race and ethnicity
are social constructs anyway.
But that doesn’t change
the lived experience
of those who aren’t truly
reflected in these forms.
Questionnaires need to ask
the right questions
if they want to capture
what’s really happening in the world.
A Northern African non-binary person
might be misgendered
or considered white by the census,
but face disproportional discrimination,
health disparities or language barriers
that are unique to their community.
It’s no wonder, then,
that it’s often marginalized
and vulnerable communities
ones whose identities
are missing from these forms
that lack access to governmental
resources and protections.
Now, there are some
understandable historical reasons
why people might not want to engage
in this kind of data gathering.
But without the data, it’s just easier
to deny the inequality is real.
If we want a more equitable society,
we have to measure our reality,
and the best way to start
is by using language
that recognizes our differences.