What’s Your Street Race? The Urgency of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as Lenses for Revising the U.S. Office of Management and Budget Guidelines, Census and Administrative Data in Latinx Communities and Beyond

Abstract

What’s your street race? If you were walking down the street what race do you think strangers would automatically assume you are based on what you look like? What is the universe of data and conceptual gaps that complicate or prevent rigorous data collection and analysis for advancing racial justice? Using Latinx communities in the U.S. as an example, we argue that scholars, researchers, practitioners and communities across traditional academic, sectoral and disciplinary boundaries can advance liberation by engaging the ontologies, epistemologies and conceptual guideposts of critical race theory and intersectionality in knowledge production for equity-use. This means not flattening the difference between race (master social status and relational positionality in a racially stratified society based on the social meanings ascribed to a conglomeration of one’s physical characteristics, including skin color, facial features and hair texture) and origin (ethnicity, cultural background, nationality or ancestry). We discuss the urgency of revising the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards, as well as the Census and other administrative data to include separate questions on self-identified race (mark all that apply) and street race (mark only one). We imagine street race as a rigorous “gold standard” for identifying and rectifying racialized structural inequities.

1. Introduction

“Demographic and statistical research tend to confound race with ethnicity, although recent theoretical understandings of the racialization of identity tend to distinguish race and ethnicity when physical characteristics, especially skin color are a principal factor in identity formation”.

(Zuberi 2001, p. xxi)

“Despite the problematic nature of racial categorization, it should be apparent that there is a crucial and non-reducible visual dimension to the definition and understanding of racial categories”.

(Omi and Winant 2015, p. 111)

A recent controversy over a Variety magazine reference to Ms. Anya Taylor-Joy, an actress and model who is the U.S.-born daughter of an Argentinian immigrant, as a “person of color” was followed by a prompt correction. Ms. Taylor-Joy identifies as a white Latina (Turchiano 2021). A question remains: How could it be that Ms. Taylor-Joy is clear-eyed about the difference between her origin and her race, but the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) race and ethnicity standards and Census designers keep confusing race (a master social status based on the social meanings ascribed to a conglomeration of one’s physical characteristics, including skin color, facial features and hair texture) and origin (ethnicity, cultural background, nationality or ancestry) in their data collection and analysis? Why is the idea that all Latinx people are racialized as “Brown”people problematic (Busey and Silva 2021)? What is the universe of data issues and gaps that can complicate or prevent anti-racist policy and practice? What would rigorous administrative data collection and analysis for monitoring and rectifying racialized inequities and advancing equitable resource distribution for liberation look like? How could critical race theory and intersectionality as lenses provide tools for liberation and human rights for all?

The purpose of this article is to bridge gaps in data collection and reporting on race and ethnicity for equity use across a variety of social outcomes, such as voting, employment, housing, education, health, etc. We make theoretical, methodological and conceptual contributions for improving the guidelines and data collection on race. Guided by the ontologies and epistemologies of critical race theory and intersectionality, we change the conversation and procedures for administrative data collection to include separate questions on self-identified race (mark all that apply) and street race (mark only one). We acknowledge that the concept of measuring how others see your race is not new; however, we argue that the street race question format (López 2014; López et al. 2017; López 2018) is a more accessible concept and question format than the alternatives (e.g., social race, ascribed race, socially assigned race, folk race, reflected race, etc.; see Jones et al. 2008; Gravlee and Dressler 2005; Wagley 1968; Roth 2016). We argue that critical race theory and intersectionality as lenses are urgently needed for tracking and eliminating racial discrimination. The street race measure provides an illustrative and intersectional framing for how people are perceived (and treated) in our society, regardless of who they are, how they feel and how they self-identify (López 2014; López et al. 2017; Vargas et al. 2019).

We begin with a discussion of the importance of critical reflexivity and how our ontologies or theories of reality about race matter in knowledge production for liberation. Next, we shine a light on the politics of racial and ethnic measurements in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) guidelines and the Census with a focus on Latinx communities. It is important to note that we use the terms Latinx (or Hispanic) “when referring to Latin Americans of all genders and reserve the terms Latina and Latino for referencing specific research studies that include only men or women who are not transgender” (Acosta 2018, p. 407). We provide a review of the preponderance of research that engages in intracategorical intersectionality or examining social inequalities within a given group (Frankenberg 1993; McCall 2005; Saenz and Morales 2015). We conclude with practical recommendations for adding a street race question to all administrative data collection and include an appendix with sample question formats for critical race intersectional inquiry and practice. It is our hope that by excavating the universe and genealogy of the ontological, epistemological, methodological and conceptual battles that can complicate or even prevent anti-racist data collection, analysis, policy and practice for liberation, we can pave the way for imagining a different future. When knowledge production and policy-making challenges the myth of race as an unchanging genetic biological reality, an irrelevant illusion or simply a matter of ethnic options, and instead confronts the reality of racialized inequities, we can plant the seeds for practicing solidarity and advancing liberation (Zuberi 2001; Hancock 2011; Feagin 2013; Morning 2011; Bonilla-Silva 2001; Collins 2019; Du Bois 1999).

An Invitation to Lifelong Critical Reflexivity on your Relational Positionality in Grids of Power

“Relationships defined at least in part by race, class, gender, culture, sexual orientation, age, disability, or locale, implicate different axes of power. Each axis of power forms a context within which domination can occur. Social actors thus are situated within multiple relational contexts, with possibilities for dominating and being dominated.”

(Yamamoto 1997, p. 29)

We believe that it is important to practice what we preach by critically reflecting our own intersectional social locations or relational positionalities in systems of power, privilege, oppression, inequity and resistance (Zuberi 2001; Collins 2009; Boveda and Weinberg 2020). The first author is street race Black, and Spanish is her first language; she is the U.S.-born daughter of Dominican immigrants, who did not have the privilege of enrolling in school beyond the second grade and who was rich in funds of knowledge and cultural wealth. The second author is street race white. He is a U.S.-born white man of Irish, Scottish, English and Dutch descent. Although we both earned doctoral degrees (PhDs), we acknowledge that our ontological and epistemological universes are shaped by our distinct lived and intersectional positionalities, experiences and agency within systems of privilege, power and resistance, as well as our narratives of identity, ethical and political commitments (Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008; Zuberi 2001; Yuval-Davis 2011; Yamamoto 1997; Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2004). We believe that our lifelong commitment to practicing critical reflexivity is a first step in improving our scholarship as well as cultivating deep political solidarity (Hancock 2011), flexible solidarity (Collins 2019) and transversal politics (Yuval-Davis 1999) anchored in always critically reflecting on our relational positionalities and identities but also shifting to understand those who are different from us. We believe this is a first step in advancing human rights for liberation.

Now we invite you to reflect on your ontology or theory of reality about race, ethnicity and origin. What is your street race? If you were walking down the street, what race do you think others who do not know you would automatically assume you are, based on what you look like (e.g., a conglomeration of your physical characteristics, including your skin color, facial features and hair texture, etc.). Think about whether your street race is different from that of your biological parents/guardians, partners, siblings, children and other family members. Think about how your street race is or is not different from that of your friends, neighbors or co-workers. What is the historical context of your street race? How does that historical context affect your lived experience? How might your street race and relational positionality change if you lived another part of the world (e.g., South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Germany, United States, etc.)?

As you consider these questions, we invite you to reflect on the artwork represented in Figure 1 as an invitation to embracing a lifelong commitment to critical reflexivity about race, racism and antiracism at the individual, interpersonal and institutional levels (Jones 2000).

What questions does this artwork raise for you? How does this artwork make you feel? The very first text one encounters in this artwork is: “A relationship of power.” What could the door represent? What about the skull? Consider Collins’ (2009, p. 17) insights that: “Because race and nation have been mutually constructing categories, nationalism and racism are also linked.” What is your reaction to how a person in a position of power defines your race on the street or in any other context? How could on-going reflecting on your street race and other intersectional social location be part of your scholarship, research, teaching and community engagement?

An unsolicited email (2018) to the first author shows how reflecting on one’s street race has the potential to plant the seeds for critical reflexivity, practicing solidarity and advancing liberation for those who are subjected to contemporary and historic injustices based on their racial status:

“As [a woman] whose street race is white, but has a grandmother who immigrated [to the U.S.] from [Latin America], it made me think a lot about my own journey in understanding my relationship to race and ethnicity. It’s something that I’m beginning to grapple with and it has caused a fair amount of discomfort…as well as excitement. Do you have any book recommendation for someone who is just beginning this journey?”

Instead of exhibiting white fragility (DiAngelo 2018) or more specifically white Latinx privilege (Haslip-Viera 2018) and Latinx fragility (Dinzey-Flores et al. 2019; López 2013a, 2013b), this woman embraced a growth mindset. Upon feeling any discomfort, this woman could have left the room, avoided any discussions about race and racism; she could have also engaged in denying that race and racism has any visual, or ocular dimeniton or replying that even if race do have a corporeal dimension, it should not matter and that we should just be “colorblind,”or talk about “culture” or ethnicity. Instead, she acknowledged the value of interrogating her own ontologies or theories of reality about race and ethnicity and she sought to learn more about the scholarship and research on this topic. Hopefully, this could be a first step towards practicing solidarity and advancing human rights.

2. Taking Stock: Theories, Ontologies and Epistemologies about Race Matter for Knowledge Production and Advancing Liberation

Our theories of reality or ontologies about the meaning of race, racism and antiracism matter. This is why it is urgent that we achieve transparency about our conceptual guideposts and theories. There are several theoretical frameworks and concepts that we draw upon, including Omi and Winant’s (2015) Racial Formation Theory, Feagin’s (2013) Systemic Racism Theory, Jones’ (2000) typology of the levels of racism, and Bonilla-Silva’s (1999) Colorblind Racism Theory. We provide visuals for each of the aforementioned theories to shine a light on the different tools we use to explore the social construction of race, racism and resistance in a given context. See Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5.

Each of these visuals represents theories that depart from the premise that race is a social construction, and yet each focuses on a different part of the social construction of race and racism, and each presents different analytical tools and concepts that can be used to rectify racial inequality at multiple levels (See also Morning 2009; Tuck and Yang 2012; Strmic-Pawl et al. 2018; Zuberi 2001; Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008; Smedley and Smedley 2018; Du Bois 1999; Duster 2006).

Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the scholarly writing and organizing of scholars of color in the legal profession who were responding to the limits of the Civil Rights movement in advancing enduring racial justice transformation (Bell 1980; Crenshaw et al. 1995; Harris 1993). Critical race theorists depart from the premise that the state was:

“founded and permanently structured to reproduce white supremacy…In other words, now that whites have created the state to be a sword, people of color cannot make it a plowshare”

(Bracey 2015, p. 561)

As such, critical race theories understand that liberal democracy and white supremacy are mutually reinforcing (Delgado and Stefancic 2013; Crenshaw et al. 1995). They critique the myth of a meritocracy and identify so-called “colorblind” jurisprudence as one of the key mechanisms that maintains white supremacy:

“Laws produced racial power not simply through narrowing the scope of, say, of antidiscrimination remedies, nor through racially-biased decision-making, but instead through myriad legal rules, many of them having nothing to do with rules against discrimination, that continued to reproduce the structures and practices of racial discrimination.”

(Crenshaw et al. 1995, p. xxv)

These insights are useful for mapping historic and contemporary struggles to protect voting rights, fair housing and develop data infrastructure to support collection, evaluation and reporting of racial equity.

Critical race theorists’ insight that racism is endemic, part and parcel of the fabric of U.S. laws and society, is also relevant for unraveling the paradoxes and contradictions played out in the U.S. body politic after the hard fought Civil Rights movement and the subsequent legislation, involving all three branches of government. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, year after year, elected state representatives and senators (legislative branch of government) have introduced, legislation to prohibit the collection of race data for the enforcement of civil rights legislation concerning, for example, fair housing. The Supreme Court (judicial branch of government) has severely compromised the Voting Rights Act (Tucker 2007). In 2020, the 45th President of the United States (executive branch) used his power to issue an Executive Order (2020) entitled “Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping” that barred any institutional that receives federal funding from offering trainings that included so-called “divisive concepts,” such as “critical race theory.” What is interesting is that although “critical race theory” was specifically caricatured and maligned as contributing to so-called race stereotyping, no specific theory or concept was invoked to combat so-called sex stereotyping. Indeed, the word intersectionality or the attention to the simultaneity of racism and sexism among other overlapping and constitutive systems of inequality were completely absent from the executive order.

As one of the foundational pillars of critical race theory, intersectionality and the attention to the simultaneity of racial oppression/resistance and other axes of domination/liberation illustrates how civil rights law failed to address the realities of the gendered racism faced by Black women (Crenshaw 1991; Harris 1993; Bilge 2014; Glenn 2009). Crenshaw (1991) coined the term intersectionality and offered the metaphor of “mapping the margins” to shine a light on the limits of antidiscrimination laws to address the simultaneous oppression experienced by Black women in employment that were at the crossroads of racism and sexism. Crenshaw (1991) offered at least three types of arenas where we can explore intersectionality: (1) Structural intersectionality focuses on how the actual positionalities of Black women in institutions such as employment were qualitatively different from those of their male (Black men) and female (white women) counterparts. See Figure 6 below.

Crenshaw also illustrates the concept of political intersectionality by focusing on the limits of conventional social movements, such as feminism and antiracism, to relate the experiences of Black women with injustice. Crenshaw also offered the concept of representational intersectionality to highlight the ways in which disempowering representations of Black women circulated in the mass media. Each of these concepts are useful for unpacking the politics of data collection guidelines in the U.S.

Collins (2009) offers the concept of the matrix of domination as heuristic and a diagnostic tool for intersectionality as inquiry and praxis (action and reflection) for advancing liberation. The matrix is comprised of two components: (1) intersecting systems of oppression and resistance, which include enduring social structures, such as setter colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy and racial capitalism, among others, in a particular socio-historical context, whether in the U.S. or the Global South; and (2) the particular arrangements of power that can be seen on multiple levels in a given socio-historical context—from the interpersonal/micro-level to the disciplinary/meso-level, to the structural/macro-levels and to the cultural/hegemonic/ideological level, which permeates all of the aforementioned domains of power. See Figure 7.

The concept of matrix of domination helps us name, map and challenge interlocking systems of oppression as well as identify points of strategic resistance to unjust power relations (Collins 2009; Collins and Bilge 2016). Taken together, the key assumptions of critical race theory and intersectionality are powerful tools for unpacking the ontological contests visible in the dynamics of census data collection and OMB standards of race and ethnicity (See Whooley 2013 for a description of epistemic contests in health and medicine).

3. Ontological Contests: Why the Census Keeps “Confusing” Race and Ethnicity, but Lenses Anchored in Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality Could Fix the Problem

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau undertakes a count of the U.S. population. Since 1790, this has included some sort of data on race and ethnicity. The U.S. is unique in that it has always had a race question on the decennial census, while many other countries like France do not (Morning 2015; Prewitt 2013). In response to the organizing by civil rights organizations, in 1980, the U.S. Census included a separate “Hispanic origin” question, referring to this group of people as an ethnicity and not a race (Mora 2014; Gómez 2020). Around the same time, the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) published standards on how race and ethnic measurements should take place for federal reporting, initially in 1977 (updated in 1997 and 2003).

Ahead of the 2020 Census, there was much debate over potential formats that would have combined “race” and “Hispanic origin” in one question. Proponents argued that doing so would provide granular data on the “origins” of all groups and reduce the high number of people of Hispanic origin people who mark “some other race” and write in their national origins or some other racial descriptor. Opponents argued that this would have made it much more difficult to track inequalities in the Latinx community, because the census would no longer capture race separately from other aspects of a person’s national origin or ethnic background.

On 26 January 2018 the Census Bureau announced that as per OMB guidelines, which stipulate that the two question format should be used when asking people to self-identity, it would keep long-standing questions on Hispanic origin and race separate for the 2020 census (Wang 2018). This was a surprise because the Census Bureau’s own studies, the 2010 Alternative Questionnaire Experiment (AQE) and the 2015 National Content Test (NCT), recommended combining Hispanic origin and race into one question as improvements in the “accuracy” of the data, because this would better capture how individuals identified themselves (Compton et al. 2012; Mathews et al. 2017).

While it is true that the Hispanic origin question remained essentially the same for the 2020 census, the race question format actually did change dramatically. While the 2010 Census question asked: “What is this person’s race? and ended there, the 2020 census asked: “What is this person’s race?” and then proceeded to instruct respondents to “Mark X one or more boxes AND print origin” in the same question! This was not a minor change in wording, but it was actually an unprecedented change in the question format. For the first time in the history of the U.S. Census, the race question format, unlike others before it, provided sample “origins” under each race box (See Figure 8 below):

Under the “white” race box, German, Irish, English and Italian are listed as examples of so-called white “origins.” The “Black” race box suggests “African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Somali, etc.” as potential “origins.” With the exception of the race box for “American Indian,” not a single other race box contains a Hispanic origin or ethnicity. By not including a single Hispanic origin group under the “white” or “Black” race box, the 2020 census not only created confusion for many people of Hispanic origin, but also inadvertently contributed to the false idea that people of Hispanic origin are all of the same race.

The logic behind correlating “origins” (read: geographic origin, familial or distant ancestry, nationality or ethnicity) with designated racial groups just does not hold. Are all South Africans and Canadians white? Are not Asian people who were born and raised in France of French origin? Following this logic, where should we list “Canadian,” “South African” or even “American” origins, for that matter? The logic of linking a particular geographic origin, nationality or ethnicity to race is puzzling. A basic introductory statistics class would advise against asking about two concepts—race and origin (sex assigned at birth and sexuality)—in one question. Regardless of its “good intentions”, this major departure from data collection may unintentionally contribute to the false and dangerous idea that some racial groups are the most “authentic” representatives of a given national origin (Yuval-Davis 2011). Why are ethnic options (Waters 1990) equated to race? Who benefits from the creation of a “white identity disassociated from white supremacy” (Collins and Bilge 2016, p. 12) and color-blind data collection (Bonilla-Silva 2014)?

Bracey’s (2015, p. 561) critical race theory of the state is useful here, as it is anchored in the understanding that “whites’ racial power advantage grants them exclusive power to impose racial meaning.” In the context of the OMB guidelines, which set the legal parameters for the collection of Census data as well as other federal and state data collection and analysis, regardless of intention, imposing a race measure that is conflated with origins contributes to what Ahmed (2012) call a “performative” feel-good diversity and inclusion, devoid of any reference to white supremacy and structural racism. It can be understood in terms of what Bonilla-Silva (2014) calls the abstract liberal frame, which detaches individual positions in grids of power from structural arrangements of racialized material inequities. It also contributes to what Mills (2007) defines as “white racial ignorance”:

“White ignorance has been able to flourish all these years because a white epistemology of ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers of an illuminating blackness or redness, protecting those who for ‘racial’ reasons have needed not to know. Only by starting to break these rules and meta-rules can we begin the long process that will lead to the eventual overcoming of this white darkness and the achievement of an enlightenment that is genuinely multiracial.”

(Mills 2007, p. 35)

Will asking about race and origins in the same question make it more difficult to discern if the U.S. has developed a tri-racial order with whites, honorary whites, and collective Blacks at the bottom (Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2004)? What are we afraid we will learn if we include question formats and measures of race that specifically interrogate race as having a visual, corporeal and ocular component, that is made legible through color lines anchored in white supremacy? It is striking that none of question format testing of the Alternative Questionnaire Experiment in 2010 or the National Content Test in 2015, specifically evaluated the value-added by a particular question format in terms of a single Civil Rights outcome, such as fair housing or protection of voting rights.

The ontological battle over the meaning of race in federal standards and administrative data collection has major consequences for protecting voting rights, fair housing and the distribution of resources to marginalized communities (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). The Census Bureau’s own 2020 data dictionary, which stipulates how Hispanic origin and race responses will be coded, raises many questions about the impact of population counts that conflate data collection on race and origin and lack any measure of street race (mark only one). The current measures only capture self-identity and allow one to mark one or more boxes. This raises the question of how those who list one race will count for voting rights versus those who mark two or more race and even up to six races (U.S. Census Bureau 2020). Will this gap in data and coding protocol dilute our ability to identify and rectify racialized injustice in congressional redistricting, fair housing, employment, educational attainment or even public health measures such as death rates during pandemics (e.g., COVID-19, etc.)?

While the retreat from the Civil Rights use of Census data collection changes may seem new, they have actually been under construction for decades. When the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued federal guidelines on the collection of race and ethnicity data in 1977, it excluded any explicit definition of race that acknowledged the visual and corporeal dimension of race/street race/racialization or the social meanings assigned to one’s skin color, facial features and other physical characteristics are the basis of racial discrimination (López et al. 2017; Omi and Winant 2015). Instead, OMB guidelines have always defined race in terms of geographic origins, adding confusion about the meaning of race. While subsequent revisions of the OMB guidelines have added more race categories (OMB [1997] 2003), they have not altered the basic ontological false equivalency that equates race (read: street race) and origin (read: geographic origins of your familial or distant ancestors, ethnicity, nationality, etc.). Indeed, just after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the 1970 Census erased the word “color” from national data collection systems, contributing to what Bonilla-Silva (2014) has referred to as colorblind racism through the minimization of the racism frame. Even the American Community Survey (ACS), an annual survey administered by the Census Bureau to over a million households annually, does not include a measure of how people are perceived, but it does ask a separate question on ancestry.

The difference between street race and origin (ancestry) is real and tangibly shapes people’s experiences of injustice. Flattening these differences in the federal, state and local administrative data that are collected in the census, hospitals, schools, law enforcement as well as housing, will impede our ability to track injustice and rectify these inequities through the distribution of resources. Bonilla-Silva explains what antiracism could look like:

“I urge a personal and political movement away from claiming to be ‘nonracist’ to becoming ‘antiracist.’ Being antiracist begins with understanding the institutionalized nature of racial matters and accepting that all actors in a racialized society are affected materially (receive benefits or disadvantages) and ideologically by the racial structure. This stand implies taking responsibility for your unwilling participation in these practices and beginning a new life committed to the goal of achieving real racial equality. The ride will be rough, but after your eyes have been opened, there is no point in standing still.”

(Bonilla-Silva 2014, p. 15)

If one is a Latinx person who is racialized as white in terms of street race, practicing solidarity for advancing liberation may mean marking “white” in administrative data collection or, like Ms. Taylor-Joy, clarifying that she is a white Latina. This again will allow for examination of social outcomes of white Latinx in relation to Brown, Black and other Latinxs who are not street race white.

Could a street race white Latinx person (or any other person racialized as white, including those who identify as multiracial) still practice antiracism? Mills provides us with insight about the importance of distinguishing one’s phenotype/street race or one’s social location as a person racialized as white and one’s ethical and political commitments:

“The theory of the Racial Contract, by separating whiteness as a phenotype/racial classification from Whiteness as a political economic system committed to white supremacy, opens a theoretical space for white repudiation of the Contract. One could then distinguish “being white” from being White.”

(Mills 1997, p. 105)

In other words, just because one is racialized as street race and identifies as white, doesn’t mean that one is ethically and politically committed to white supremacy (and visa versa):

“And in fact, there have always been praiseworthy whites-anticolonialists, abolitionists, opponents of imperialism, civil rights activists, resisters of apartheid-who have recognized the existence of the immorality of Whiteness as a political system, challenged its legitimacy, and insofar as possible, refused the Contract (Inasmuch as mere skin color will automatically continue to privilege them, of course, this identification with the oppressed can usually only be partial).”

(Mills 1997, p. 107)

4. Insurgent Ontologies and Epistemologies and Other Inconvenient Truths: Centering Black and Brown Latinxs Embodied Relational Positionalities Vis-à-vis Oppression/Resistance for Liberation

An overview of the existing evidence-based, social scientific literature and key concepts could help elucidate the relationship between street race and social inequity within Latina/o/x communities as regards voting rights, housing, poverty, wealth, employment, poverty, education, health and cumulative disadvantage (Rodriguez et al. 2012; Rodriquez 2000; Massey and Denton 1993; Logan 2003; Vargas et al. 2019; LaVeist-Ramos et al. 2011; Morales 2008; Haslip-Viera 2018; Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2004; Steffensmeier and Demuth 2000; Zambrana and Thorton Dill 2006). Against the backdrop of the current efforts to undermine voting rights across the United States, research and particularly audit studies, are needed to interrogate if the way others view one’s race, shapes the right to vote. Through mechanisms of implicit bias, some poll workers may rely on visual cues about a person’s perceived race (read: street race) in deciding whether to accept or reject valid identification or provide information about provisional ballots. This means that people from the same national or ethnic origin may be treated differently according to their “street race” or phenotype (Vidal-Ortiz 2004; López et al. 2017; Vargas et al. 2019; Hannon 2015; Monk 2015; Sue 2013; Telles 2014; Hernández 2008; Morales 2008).

The Urban Institute conducted a housing audit study that employed 8000 testers in 28 cities across the United States (Turner et al. 2013). Stage one of the audit study involved just a phone call asking about apartment listings to detect if there was discrimination based on a person’s name or language/accent. The second stage of the audit study involved sending testers that were matched in age, gender and economic profile to actually go and look at apartments. They found little if any discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities at stage one, where presumably a potential landlord could assume a person’s ethnic background or national origin based on their name or so-called accent; however, at stage two, when testers actually showed up to look at the apartment, if the individual was perceived to be a “visible minority,” they were told that there were no more apartments available or shown significantly fewer apartments than others who may have been from the same racial and ethnic origins, but where not perceived to be visible minorities.

Using the 2008–2012 Census American Community Survey (ACS), Hogan (2017) finds that among Hispanics, 88% of Cubans and 74% of Colombians report their race as white compared to 34% among Dominicans. Hogan (2017) also finds that white Hispanic households experienced substantially lower poverty rates than those who identified as “some other race” [read: Brown] or Black. Saenz and Morales (2015) find that Cubans and South American groups where two-thirds to 85% of individuals racially identify as white have the highest levels of educational attainment compared to other Latinx groups who have substantially lower rates of people identifying as white (See also Rodriguez et al. 2012; Morales 2008; Hernandez 2018). Steffensmeier and Demuth (2000) find that sentencing for Hispanics differs by race, whereby Black Hispanics are sentenced more harshly than white Hispanics, all things being equal. Even when we look at health care access we also find disparate outcomes among Hispanics by racial status (LaVeist-Ramos et al. 2011; Jones et al. 2008; López 2013a, 2013b). This means that studies on racial discrimination that employ the generic category of Hispanic without interrogating the differences between light-skinned white Hispanics and dark-skinned Black and Brown Latinxs may be missing an opportunity to document and remedy inequities based on street race (Logan 2003; Massey and Denton 1993). Where do we go from here?

One approach could be mapping the complexity of identity by drawing on Yuval-Davis’s (2011) conceptual mapping of domains of belonging. For Yuval Davis, intersectional domains of belonging are visible in at least three dimensions: (1). Intersecting Social Location/Relational Positionality in Grids of Power; (2). Identification and Emotional Attachments; and (3). Ethical and Political Commitments. See Figure 9.

It is important to clarify that this visual helps to convey the multifaceted domains of belonging that one person can occupy simultaneously, and that each domain is not necessarily interchangeable; therefore, when it comes to data collection, they should not be used as proxies for one another. One’s social location is not always the same as one’s narrative of identity, which is not equivalent to one’s ethical and political commitments. For example, in the 1990s, the first author spoke to a young man who was standing outside the high school where she was doing research (López 2003). Like the first author, José was street race Black and he was also the U.S.-born child of Dominican immigrants; however, when asked about his personal identity narrative, José described himself as an Afroasiatic Dominican man, while the first author identified as AfroLatina. José and the first author did share common ethical and political commitments and he urged the first author to read a book that deeply impacted him: Dr. Carter Woodson’s, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Woodson 2006).

As this story illustrates, it is important to underscore the importance of intersectionality as inquiry and practice, as it can elucidate the complex social inequalities within Latinx communities:

“We caution that ‘Latino/Latina’ as a social construct must be problematized, that is complicated by differences in national origin, citizenship, race, class, and ethnicity and by the confluence of these factors. An intersectional approach acknowledges these differences and seeks to reveal and understand how they shape social experience ”

(Baca Zinn and Zambrana 2019, p. 678)

Baca Zinn and Zambrana urge us to understand the terms Latina/Latino as terms of implicit solidarity that embrace differences across and within the heterogeneity of this community. Baca Zinn and Mirandé’s (2020) analysis of the genealogy and the future of knowledge production on Latinx communities urge use to consider the ontologies, epistemologies and ethics of critical race theories and intersectionality for the future of knowledge production on Latinx communities (Romero 2018; Amaro and Zambrana 2000).

What are the inconvenient truths that must be confronted before we can practice solidarity in administrative data for racial justice? Mills (1997, p. 125) offers important insights:

“To the extent that ‘race’ is assimilated to ‘ethnicity,’ white supremacy remains unmentioned, and the historic Racial Contract-prescribed connection between race and personhood is ignored, these discussions, in my opinion, fail to make the necessary drastic theoretical correction.”

(Mills 1997, p. 125)

5. Measuring Personal Identity Is Not Enough: On the Urgency of Adding Street Race for Practicing Solidarity and Advancing Liberation

A truly rigorous and equitable census, as well as any administrative data collection, would bring those at the margins to the center of analysis; it would also educate the general public about the difference between race/street race and ethnicity or origin. In terms of federal, state and local data collection in the U.S. context, it would also mean including at least three separate questions: (1) Hispanic origin (mark all that apply), (2) racial self-identity (mark all that apply); and most importantly, (3) street race (mark only one). Below is the question format for the street race question that has been included in national surveys on Latinx communities in the U.S. (López et al. 2017; Vargas et al. 2019):

If you were walking down the street what race do you think strangers would automatically assume you are based on what you look like? For the purpose of this question please mark only one box.

The suggested language that can be used as a preamble to the street race questions is as follows: “For this street race question, we are not asking about your personal identity, ethnicity, nationality and/or genetic, ancestral origins. We are asking about how others typically perceive your race based on your physical characteristics (e.g., conglomeration of skin color, hair texture and facial features). For the street race question, it is very important that you mark only one box. We collect these data because we depart from the premise that color-evasive data that conflates street race with personal identity will not advance justice. With these data we hope to make visible any injustice that people are experiencing based on their street race, so that we can rectify racial injustice. Thank you for critically reflecting on your street race as a way of practicing solidarity with those who, even if they are biological members of your family or of the same ethnicity, ancestry or mixed race or monoracial origins, may be subjected to differential racialization and unequal treatment based on their street race.” See Appendix A for more questions that can be considered for critical race intersectional analysis that considers the simultaneity of race, gender, class and other systems of oppression/resistance.

The street race question is not the first attempt to measure race as a master social status, that just like gender, overpower all others in most social circumstances. Many other scholars have used measures of how you believe others see your race (López 2014, 2019, 2021; López et al. 2017; Wagley 1968; Jones et al. 2008; Gravlee and Dressler 2005). We argue that street race is a more impactful discourse than other nomenclature (e.g., social race, folk race, reflected race, socially assigned race or ascribed race), because it phrased in a way that become immediately accessible and legible to broad audiences, including those who do not use social scientific jargon. The street race phrasing also challenges the myth of race as a matter of genes or biology, by underscoring the relational aspect in how other see your race. It also clarifies that race is not interchangeable with personal identity, culture or ethnicity. And finally, it also has the potential to disrupt color-evasive and power evasive logics.

It is also important to clarify that while some people and communities that identify as mixed race may feel uncomfortable at the thought of marking only one box to identify their street race, the proposed changes would not eliminate the “gold standard” question of honoring how people self-identify their race; everyone can mark more than one box for the question on their racial self-identity; however, what would be different is that the new “gold standard” would not just stop there, but would also add an additional value added question on street race question and ask everyone to mark only one box for the street race question. This is because research shows that mixed race individuals that file discrimination cases are not experiencing discrimination because they are being racialized as “mixed race;” rather, they report being exposed to discrimination because they are being racialized as monoracial (e.g., street race Brown, Black or other stigmatized street race) (Hernandez 2018). Think about why President Obama, the son of a Black immigrant man from Kenya and a white U.S.-born woman from Kansas, marked only one box—“Black”—for the race question in the 2010 Census, which aimed to detect housing, health care access and employment discrimination. Ask yourself: if President Obama were walking down the street looking for an apartment, if he applied for a mortgage or if he showed up in an emergency room with symptoms of appendicitis, would anyone think he is white? What about his daughters, who are technically mixed race because they are the daughters of white paternal grandparents? The reality is that their street race would never be seen as white despite their mixed race status. By contrast, other light-skinned and non-Black mixed-race individuals may be street race white.

Although the focus of this article has been the experiences of the Latinx communities, the street race question is relevant for everyone, including people who may personally identify as American Indian/Native American/Indigenous, Black or even Asian and Asian American, among others. The reality is that everyone reading this article most likely had distant ancestors that walked all over the globe as we are indeed members of the same human family; however, our racial status based or street race may differ widely and shape our experiences with racial discrimination in education, health, employment, voting, etc. (Huyser et al. 2010; Monk 2015; Irizarry 2015). For example, the Census Bureau is currently discussing including a potential separate question on Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) origin in the 2030 census. If the 2030 census designers do decide to test this question again, we hope that they maintain it as separate from street race on the questionnaire. This would allow researchers to examine if people of MENA origin, who mark their race as white, experience the same levels of residential segregation as those who may check “Black” or another race.

6. Conclusion: Imagining a Different Future with Rigorous Administrative Data for Racial Justice

How can we practice solidarity in data collection, analysis, reporting and policy making? U.S. Congresswoman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Puerto Rican woman born and raised in New York (Democrat–New York) is clear-eyed about the difference between race and origin: “My identity is the descendant of many different identities. I am the descendant of African slaves. I am the descendant of Indigenous people. I am the descendant of Spanish colonizers…I am a descendant of all sorts of folks. That doesn’t mean I’m Black, that doesn’t mean I’m Native, but I can tell the story of my ancestors (DiversityInc. 2019).” The dilemma then becomes how should Representative Ocasio-Cortez and others answer the Hispanic origin and race questions on the Census?

The gaps in current race and ethnicity demographic data gathering have led some academics and even civil rights organizations in the U.S. to believe that it would be better to eliminate the separate Hispanic origin question and include Hispanic as a racial category in our official data collection on race: “We are also confident, as shown in our research over the past decade, that using a single combined question for race and ethnicity in the decennial census would ultimately yield an even more accurate portrait of how the U.S. population self-identifies, especially for people who self-identify as multiracial or multiethnic” (Jones 2021).

But the inconvenient truth is that despite the best intentions, this approach is flawed. It is not based on the preponderance of scientific evidence on the non-equivalence of race and “origin” when it comes to monitoring and eliminating social inequalities. Latin America and the Caribbean were sites of European colonization of Native American communities and the enslavement of Black Africans forcibly transported to the Americas (LaVeist 2017). There are white, Black, Native American and Asian Hispanics (Telles 2014; Dinzey-Flores et al. 2019; Allen et al. 2000; Amaro and Zambrana 2000; Flores and Jiménez-Román 2010; LaVeist 2017; López 2003; Flores 2017). If we ask about someone’s race or origin in one question and the person says, I’m Hispanic origin (Cuban, Puerto Rican or Guatemalan) and then answer the race question by marking three racial categories: white, Black, American Indian race and stop there, we may miss an opportunity to find out if someone who identifies as Hispanic origin and is light-skinned and racialized as white, is treated differently from their siblings, cousins or other family members that may be seen as Black or Brown people when walking down the street. It is vital that we not conflate Hispanic origin and race and instead use critical race intersectionality for inquiry and praxis and rigorous metrics for equity use and the redistribution of services (Busey and Silva 2021; Haslip-Viera 2018; Dinzey-Flores et al. 2019).

Smarter questions could advance justice and equity and can help create a more perfect union for all. The challenge that remains is that a very large portion of Hispanics are racialized not as white or Black, but as “Brown”, and our federal, state and institutional data infrastructure refuse to capture this lived position (See Gómez’s 2020; Dowling 2014). Could the inclusion of a street race question with a Brown racial category, help elucidate the visual, corporeal and ocular dimension of race and shine a light on the racial inequities experienced Latinx according to their street race in the U.S. and beyond? What if Representative Ocasio-Cortez and others that look like her had the ability to check a “Brown” category for answering the Census or any other administrative data collection? What if Representative Ocasio-Cortez had a question on her racial self-identity where she could mark more than one race, that would allow her to “tell the story of her ancestors” while at the same time having a separate question where she would mark only one box to denote that her street race or relational positionality in hierarchies of race is not that of a white Latina or Black Latina but of a Brown Latina when she walks down the street or looks for an apartment? In Brazil, “pardo” serves as the intermediate “Brown” racial category, a relationally distinct racial status, between white and Black Brazilian (Telles 2018).

We can all play a part, large and small, in changing the research questions, the national and local conversations and the national narrative about race in the Latina/o/x community in the U.S. and beyond. The future of race and social justice for Latina/o/x and other disadvantaged communities in the years to come depends on our willingness to transform the status quo of data collection on race and ethnicity, to practice solidarity and action for social justice and advance liberation. As the current administration considers revising the Office of Management and Budget guidelines, we invite you to join us in asking if a street race question can be included as an additional “gold standard” that will help us document and rectify racial inequity (See Appendix A for sample question formats for critical race and intersectional data collection and an analysis for advancing liberation).

If you are a researcher, practitioner or community member, consider cultivating a community of practice around intersectional inquiry and praxis (action and reflection)—a consortium of sorts to advance what Morris (2015, p. 188) calls “liberation capital”—“a form of capital used by oppressed and resource-starved scholars to initiate and sustain the research program of a nonhegemonic scientific school” (See López et al. 2019 for a discussion of how creating a convergence space for a statewide race, gender, class data policy consortium anchored in the insights of intersectionality, cultivate the creation of transformational intersectional capital). Invite those community members who have experienced and fought against injustice to dialogues with gatekeepers focused on the create new knowledge for rectifying contemporary and historic injustice. Imagine what we could learn from an institutional ethnography of the OMB, the U.S. Census, and their accompanying race and ethnicity advisory committees, as well as the sexual orientation and gender identity advisory committee, if we focused on the ways in which power relations shape the data that we collect for advancing justice across the decades. See Figure 10.

The next time you fill out a questionnaire or do research on race, think about how a critical reflection on the following questions can help create rigorous data for equity use. What is your theory of reality or ontology about race? What is your street race for practicing solidarity and advancing liberation? These simple questions can plant the seeds for what Yuval-Davis (1999) calls transversal politics, Hancock (2011) calls deep political solidarity, Collins (2019) calls flexible solidarity or a form of political praxis (action and reflection) that is grounded in a commitment to healthy, loving and more just communities. Examples include being rooted in your history, experience, social location, identity, community and political values, but at the same time creating bridges of understanding and empathy for those who are different. While some may find calling attention to differences in street race divisive, we hope that the street race question catalyzes a lifelong commitment to critical reflection and action for practicing solidarity and advancing social justice, unity and human rights for all.