--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Halima Shah: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
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--:-- Halima Shah: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com. It's Today Explained. I'm Halima Shah.
--:-- Halima Shah: And perhaps you've seen some of the headlines in the last week that say something to the effect of, The white population is in decline! For the first time on record, the white population in the United States has declined.
--:-- Halima Shah: Just released data from the 2020 census shows the white population in America is down 8.6% from 2010. Here's what those numbers show. The number, not the proportion, but the absolute number of Americans who describe themselves as white has dropped for the first time in our history.
--:-- Halima Shah: The total decline is around 5 million people. Now that is huge. But that's not the full story. At all.
--:-- Halima Shah: If you talk to Hansi Lo Wang, he's a correspondent at NPR, whose literal job is to report on the census, those headlines really miss the mark.
--:-- Halima Shah: When you see this kind of analysis of the new census data, the key question to ask is, how are you defining white? Because if you're talking about people who checked off only the white box on the census form, That group has dropped over the past decade by 8.6%.
--:-- Halima Shah: But if you expand the white population to also include people who checked off white and one or more of the other racial categories, then the white population has grown 1.9% since 2010.
--:-- Halima Shah: And the bottom line here is that white people still make up the largest racial or ethnic group in the United States.
--:-- Halima Shah: And what happens when statements like the white population is in decline are in the headlines? What's the impact of that? What this risks is an oversimplification of a very complicated and messy topic, race in the United States of America.
--:-- Halima Shah: And some people tracking far-right white racial extremism have been worried about this kind of headline about a so-called declining white population.
--:-- Halima Shah: This kind of stuff could fuel propaganda. White people are being marginalized, but you're not allowed to notice. You're not even allowed to talk about it. And if you disagree with them being marginalized, you're racist.
--:-- Halima Shah: Some psychologists have done research on how white people in general react when they hear about changes in the racial demographics in the United States.
--:-- Halima Shah: And when they hear about a declining white population, it tends to raise anxiety and concern about the future of their status in U.S. society.
--:-- Halima Shah: It's racist, of course, because supposedly white people are the villains of human history. That is an absurd calumny.
--:-- Halima Shah: The truth is that the specter of white supremacy is used to fuel the growth of a corrupt political order, and whites are in fact the victims in this system.
--:-- Halima Shah: And we should keep in mind that the changes in the white population, as captured by this new census data, is likely not just the result of demographic shifts, you know, not just because of changes in births, deaths, and migration, but also could be the result of how the Bureau changed how it categorized the responses people wrote in about their identities on census forms.
--:-- Halima Shah: This is a change that may have increased the number of people recorded in this new census data as identifying with more than one race.
--:-- Halima Shah: And I'm sure that this has been debated since the country's inception, but today in 2021, what exactly does it mean to be white?
--:-- Halima Shah: Well, the Census Bureau has to follow a very formal definition set by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Halima Shah: And it says anyone with, quote, origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, unquote, should be categorized as white in government data about race.
--:-- Halima Shah: But we have to remember that census data is produced through how people report their racial identities themselves.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they may have different concepts of who is white. Some people may be thinking about their family trees. Some people may be thinking about their white privilege.
--:-- Halima Shah: Some people may be thinking about what they're most comfortable telling the federal government what their racial identity is on a census form.
--:-- Halima Shah: And I can see people, especially someone from the Middle East or North Africa region, who might fit the description of white but doesn't identify as white, having a hard time with that question on the census.
--:-- Halima Shah: What exactly does the census data mean for them? Well, it means that folks with Middle Eastern or North African origins are essentially hidden in this new census data about race and ethnicity.
--:-- Halima Shah: Because if you identify as Lebanese or Egyptian, for example, according to these federal government standards, you should be characterized as white, which, like you said, for some people, does not match how they see themselves, does not match how others see their racial identities.
--:-- Halima Shah: And there has been a decades-long push by some Arab-American advocacy groups for a separate checkbox on census forms to collect race ethnicity data specifically about people with Middle Eastern or North African origins.
--:-- Halima Shah: Right and I think Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who is Palestinian has been really vocal about this.
--:-- Halima Shah: We need to get it right because I not white I not And I try to say to others that you should be this or that But when I sit on this form and I look at it, I don't see myself represented on this form.
--:-- Halima Shah: That almost happened for the 2020 census, but the Trump administration effectively blocked that from happening, as well as other changes to the census race and Hispanic origin questions.
--:-- Halima Shah: And we may get more detailed data about race ethnicity later from the 2020 census.
--:-- Halima Shah: But for now, those folks, their data is captured in the white data, if that's how they identified on the 2020 census.
--:-- Halima Shah: The conversation, the dialogue about race is always changing in this country.
--:-- Halima Shah: Does the census respond to those conversations and to those changes? The Census Bureau does a lot of research ahead of conducting a national headcount specifically about race and ethnicity and how concepts of that have changed over the years in order to try to have a form that best reflects how the country is thinking about racial and ethnic demographics.
--:-- Halima Shah: But if you look back at the very start of the U.S. census, way back to 1790, it really shows you also just these concepts were really, in terms of the census, were determined by people who had power and who had influence.
--:-- Halima Shah: 1790, the categories were free white, all other free persons, and slaves.
--:-- Halima Shah: In 1850, mulatto was first used, and it made return appearances as late as 1910 and 1920.
--:-- Halima Shah: 1890 included quadroon and octoroon.
--:-- Halima Shah: In 1920, Hindu was added as a racial category.
--:-- Halima Shah: And we have to remember, it was not until 1960 when U.S. residents were first allowed to self-report their race on the census until 1960.
--:-- Halima Shah: It was a government worker, a representative of the federal government, whether that be a Census Bureau worker or way back in the day, a U.S. marshal on horseback, determining what to mark down for your race.
--:-- Halima Shah: And sometimes it matched with maybe how you thought about your race. Sometimes it didn't.
--:-- Halima Shah: It didn't matter. That wasn't for you to determine for the census.
--:-- Halima Shah: And it wasn't until 2000 when U.S. residents were allowed to check off more than one box, more than one racial category, when answering the race question for the census.
--:-- Halima Shah: So it sounds like we have to take racial data dating all the way back to the year 1790 with a grain of salt.
--:-- Halima Shah: How comparable is the data that was just collected to previous years? You know, that's a very tricky question.
--:-- Halima Shah: The Census Bureau itself put out a statement before it released this new race-ethnicity data from the 2020 census, and it said, you know, comparing 2020 data with 2010 data from a decade ago, should be done with a lot of caution because of how the race question has changed over the past 10 years and because of how the Census Bureau changed how it sorted through people's write-in responses.
--:-- Halima Shah: All of this are factors that really raise questions about how comparable this 2020 data is with 2010 data and with data from 1790 and onward.
--:-- Halima Shah: So Hansi, we've talked about people from the Middle East, North Africa region potentially becoming invisible on the census.
--:-- Halima Shah: Are there other groups who are left out when answering the race question on the census?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: You know, what's interesting is that according to the 2020 census results, the second largest racial group in the United States of America is a group that's called Some Other Race.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And this is a group that was the third largest racial group in 2010, as well as 2000.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: So it's growing in prominence according to these census results.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And the Census Bureau says, according to its research, that most of the folks who identify with some other race also identify as Hispanic or Latino.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And it is a reflection, the Census Bureau says, of what its research has already shown, that the way that the census forms asked about race as well as people's Hispanic or Latino origins does not reflect the way a lot of people, especially folks who identify as Latino, think about their identities.
--:-- Halima Shah: I think the Latino identity is pretty confusing to me because oftentimes I find it in a little checkbox on a form and I'm confused on whether I should put Latino or Hispanic, but I'm Mexican.
--:-- Halima Shah: It is a two-part question for the 2020 census forms. First, it asks the person, are you of Hispanic? Is this person of Hispanic or Latino origin?
--:-- Halima Shah: And then it asks, what is this person's race? And for a lot of folks who identify as Latino, not all, but a lot of folks, they get to the race question and they don't see a box for Hispanic or Latino.
--:-- Halima Shah: And for a lot of folks, some other race is the best out of no really good options.
--:-- Halima Shah: What we were supposed to have seen on the 2020 census forms was what's known as a combined question that would have asked about race, ethnicity together and Hispanic origins together.
--:-- Halima Shah: And alongside white, black, the Asian categories, for example, there would also be a category for Hispanic or Latino.
--:-- Halima Shah: And by presenting the question in that way, the Census Bureau's research showed that it would have collected more accurate data to capture the diversity within the Latino community.
--:-- Halima Shah: So why didn't it happen? Because the Trump administration didn make a decision on a proposal to change these federal standards that the Census Bureau has to follow.
--:-- Halima Shah: Census Bureau had to get approval essentially from the White House Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Halima Shah: And these proposals, Trump administration didn't make any decision on them, no public decision.
--:-- Halima Shah: So the Census Bureau had to move forward, had to get forms finalized and printed, and essentially were stuck with basically the same format that was used for 2010.
--:-- Halima Shah: Hansi, almost exactly a year ago, we were talking about the Trump administration with you on Today Explained.
--:-- Halima Shah: And you said that the pandemic and interference from the administration was potentially going to have an effect on the data.
--:-- Halima Shah: Did that end up happening?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: The decisions of the Trump administration about the census certainly is a factor in how the 2020 census results were produced.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: The extent to which they were a factor, we don't know.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: But we do know that the Trump administration had a failed push to add a citizenship question.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And today, the president announcing he's still trying to find a way to ask a question about citizenship on the census after the Supreme Court had stopped the administration's efforts.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: That took up a lot of attention and likely made a lot of folks question, especially folks in households with immigrants, question whether or not they should participate in the census.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And then during counting, the Trump administration pushed and successfully ended door-knocking efforts earlier than expected.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Door-knocking efforts that were a key part of the Census Bureau's plan to make sure that historically undercounted groups, immigrants, people of color, renters, rural residents, groups that were less likely to participate and fill out a form themselves.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: We need that door-knocking. We need that in-person contact that we've not been able to have in large part because of COVID.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: That type of outreach was ended earlier than expected and could have exacerbated what are expected to be undercounts of Latinos, Black people, Native Americans, all groups that were undercounted in 2010.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And we're not going to know for sure to the extent to which groups were undercounted or overcounted, not until early 2022 when the Census Bureau releases this information.
--:-- Halima Shah: But we do know that there was a higher rate of households not answering the Hispanic origin and the race question than in past counts.
--:-- Halima Shah: And in 2022, we are also set to have a midterm election.
--:-- Halima Shah: Do we know what influence the Trump administration's interference might have on redistricting?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Well, that interference is baked into this data.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: These new population numbers, as well as this race-ethnicity data, all this information is going to form the foundation for voting maps that will be drawn for elections at every level of government.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Congress, state houses, local government, and we're talking about elections for the next 10 years.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: After the break, Hansi explains how this census will reshape the next decade of American politics.
--:-- Halima Shah: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
--:-- Halima Shah: Adio is an AI native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Halima Shah: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Halima Shah: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up.
--:-- Halima Shah: And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Halima Shah: You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Halima Shah: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Halima Shah: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Halima Shah: Hansi, for those of us who are not census reporters, how is data used when it comes to drawing congressional districts?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Well, congressional districts, as well as other voting districts at other levels of government, are generally supposed to be reflective of the population as determined by the census results.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And generally supposed to be equal in size and drawn fairly.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And there are lots of different ways of measuring it.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: But essentially, political mapmakers take this data about population sizes, these very basic demographic characteristics, and try to draw voting districts that are representative.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And the extent to which they actually do that is often challenged in courts as part of the redistricting cycle, as we've seen it in past ones.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And data is from the census. It plays a big role in trying to answer, was this map drawn fairly?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And who exactly gets the authority to draw these districts? Voting maps, how they're drawn, who draws them, all of that is determined for the most part by state lawmakers.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And often that is determined along party lines, who has control of those state houses.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: But in some parts of the country it an independent redistricting commission In some parts of the country courts have a key role in finalizing and approving voting maps and to see if they're drawn fairly.
--:-- Halima Shah: So what's the timeline for when all of this happens? And how is that affected by the fact that we just had a delay in getting the census data out?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: We just had a major delay, a more than four-month delay, which, you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: We're also in the middle of back-to-school season. people have a lot on their minds, but for folks in the redistricting world, this delay has been weighing on their minds.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And finally, finally, for them, this new redistricting data is out from the Census Bureau.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And it has really just put a lot of pressure, especially on states with early legal deadlines to finish, you know, the first drafts.
--:-- Halima Shah: In Colorado and Oregon, mapmakers have less than seven weeks to get their first draft done.
--:-- Halima Shah: Early numbers from April showed Colorado's population grew nearly 15 percent over the last decade.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's enough to give Colorado an extra seat in Congress next year.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ohio's redistricting commission has less than three weeks.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ohio is one of seven states losing a congressional seat, going from 16 to 15, starting with next year's election.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's because of the decline in the state's population.
--:-- Halima Shah: So it's a lot of pressure.
--:-- Halima Shah: And this is a process that in other parts of the country is going to go into 2022, but it is all in preparation for the most part for next year's midterm elections, November 2022.
--:-- Halima Shah: And so there is a ticking clock here.
--:-- Halima Shah: And let's keep in mind, it's not about just getting voting maps drawn.
--:-- Halima Shah: It's also about candidates who are going to run in those elections, filing applications to actually run in those elections.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they would probably want to know what are the lines of the districts that they are going to possibly represent.
--:-- Halima Shah: And right now, that's an open question.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: What will the latest data we got from this census mean for people who make voting maps?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Well, what political mapmakers have to keep in mind is not just changes in population sizes, but also the racial and ethnic demographics and how that may have changed over the past decade.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And that's because of the Voting Rights Act, which has protections in place to help ensure that the voting power of minority groups is not diluted by these new voting maps.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And that's why we'll likely see some legal challenges once draft voting maps are out.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: A lot of civil rights groups are watching this process very closely to see if these new voting maps are representative of racial and ethnic demographic shifts.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: There may be a merging community of voters of color in certain parts of the country.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: And if their voting power is essentially diluted and broken up, there might be some challenges in court.
--:-- Halima Shah: When might we see this actually start playing out in elections?
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Well, all these redistricting efforts are really trying to gear up for elections the next November 2022.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: So everyone in the redistricting world is essentially rushing to get ready for that election day.
--:-- Halima Shah: But again, to keep in mind, it's not just about next November's elections, it's about the next 10 years of elections, because these voting maps are supposed to last for the next decade.
--:-- Halima Shah: Not until the next census in 2030, until after the next census in 2030 will there be new voting maps drawn.
--:-- Halima Shah: There might be some court cases that throughout some of these new voting maps at some point.
--:-- Halima Shah: But for the most part, we're going to have to live with these maps for the next 10 years.
--:-- Halima Shah: All right. Well, Hansi Lo Wang, we will see you in 2030.
--:-- Halima Shah: Hope to see you earlier than that, but sure.
--:-- Hansi Lo Wang: Yeah, 2030.
--:-- Halima Shah: Hansi Lo Wang is a national correspondent for NPR.
--:-- Halima Shah: He reports on the people, power, and money behind the U.S. Census.
--:-- Halima Shah: I'm Halima Shah, and the Today Explained team is made of Amina El-Sadi, Afim Shapiro, Matt Collette, Miles Bryan, Will Reed, and Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Halima Shah: Our facts are checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Halima Shah: Our music is made by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Halima Shah: Our vice president of audio is Liz Kelly Nelson and Jillian Weinberger is her deputy.
--:-- Halima Shah: We got extra help from Paul Mounsey and we got no help from Sean Ramos-Furram, but that'll change when he's back next week.
--:-- Halima Shah: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we love hearing from you.
--:-- Halima Shah: So get in touch with us at todayexplained at vox.com.
--:-- Halima Shah: Thank you.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
--:-- Halima Shah: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
--:-- Halima Shah: Adio is an AI native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Halima Shah: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Halima Shah: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up.
--:-- Halima Shah: And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Halima Shah: You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Halima Shah: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Halima Shah: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Halima Shah: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Halima Shah: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- [Theme music continues to play]
