https://www.nj.com/opinion/2026/10/erasing-race-data-erases-evidence-of-discrimination-opinion.html

• Published: Oct. 04, 2026, 12:00 p.m.

The Trump Administration wants Black people erased. And that is just the beginning.

Under the guise of protecting residents from intrusive questions, the U.S. Census Bureau recently issued a proposed rule that would, for the first time in the nation’s history, eliminate questions about race and ethnicity from the national census.

The move expands on the Trump administration’s July proposal to no longer require employers to collect race and ethnicity data about their workforces, data that has been used for decades to enforce civil rights laws.

It is peculiar that the federal government now wishes to treat longstanding questions about race and ethnic origin as intrusive while simultaneously pressing to add a citizenship question that has been empirically shown to be intrusive and to diminish participation in the census.

However, census race and ethnicity statistics are critical to enforcing civil rights and ultimately democracy. Census racial data enable us to determine whether racial groups are able to access legally protected spheres such as education, housing, medical services, employment and voting in proportion to their presence within a community.

A census count by race provides concrete data about racial hierarchies and exclusion. Without it, systemic racism is rendered invisible and shielded from efforts to eradicate it.

Black communities have long been undercounted

While this affects many communities of color, the targeting of Black people is unmistakable. Black people have been undercounted in every census since 1790. Over the centuries, the accuracy of census-taking has steadily improved, while the undercount of Black residents has remained a persistent problem.

For example, the 2010 census resulted in a Black undercount rate higher than that of any other racial or ethnic group. When demographers conducted an independent analysis, they found the 2020 U.S. Census again undercounted Black people at a rate nearly three times higher than in 2010.

News reports later revealed that the 2020 undercount rate for the Black population increased by 60.2%, attributable not only to the challenges of conducting a census during a global pandemic but also to longstanding structural problems in counting Black communities.

Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League, noted: “This isn’t simply an unfortunate accident. It’s the result of a deliberate campaign of sabotage intended to steer political influence and public resources away from communities of color.”

The consequences are measured in dollars and services

In fact, the 2020 Black undercount was estimated to result in a lloss of $8 billion in funding for Black communities.

For Black residents in Newark, census undercounting reduced funding for critical social safety-net programs, including:

• Community health centers
• Head Start programs
• School lunch programs
• Affordable housing assistance

Similar consequences affected other Black-majority municipalities across New Jersey.

The proposal fits a broader pattern

The anti-Black implications of the census-erasure proposal are in lockstep with the administration’s disproportionate targeting of Black professionals for removal as so-called “DEI hires.”

It is also connected to broader efforts to dismantle civil rights protections that Black freedom fighters struggled to build.

This pattern can be seen in attacks on the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, health care equity protections, educational diversity initiatives and the administration’s proposal to eliminate workforce race and ethnicity reporting requirements.

Why census data still matters

Even if the entire architecture of anti-discrimination law were dismantled, census racial data would still be essential for tracking racial disparities and providing evidence to support future legal and policy reforms.

With so much at stake, the erasure of race, and particularly Blackness, from the census is a civil rights crisis.

Consider France, where the government’s ban on collecting racial statistics has been demonstrated to hinder efforts to address longstanding racism.

A global civil rights issue

Nor is France unique.

My research for the book The Global Erasure of Blackness: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census (Under) Counting, shows that people of African descent exist across the globe but are often made statistically invisible through their countries’ census policies.

This includes not only Europe, North America and Latin America but also Asia, the Middle East and Oceania.

In the book, I argue for the creation of an international human-rights framework establishing an Afro-descendant right to full and inclusive racial census data.

Such a framework could be developed as part of the ongoing effort to create a United Nations Declaration to promote, protect and fully respect the human rights of People of African Descent.

Until such a declaration becomes a reality, it remains crucial to preserve whatever access to census racial data currently exists.

The public still has a voice

The Trump administration has opened a public-comment period on its proposal to eliminate race and ethnicity questions from the census.

Everyone who values truly representative democracy should make their voices heard before the comment period ends Oct. 13.

This is the time to be counted.

Tanya Kateri Hernandez is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law in New York and the author of the upcoming book The Global Erasure of Blackness: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census (Under) Counting.

Erasing race data erases evidence of discrimination, NJ.com Opinion Essay was originally published in Cultured on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.