Association of Public Data Users

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The Concept of Race: Are we asking too much of the data in our applications?

Monday, 1:15pm - 3:00pm

Speakers:

• Kimball W. Brace
  President, Election Data Services, Inc.
  
• Roderick Harrison
  Director, Data Bank, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
  
• Robert Hill
  Senior Researcher, Westat
  

Moderator:

Stephen J. Dienstfrey
Senior Analyst, Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas, Inc.
bio

Session Organizers:

Steve Dienstfrey and Terri Ann Lowenthal

Abstract:

"Race is a fluid concept whose meaning has changed over time and across societies and geographic boundaries." This opening sentence of the entry on "Race" from the Encyclopedia Of The U.S. Census, says it all. In this session, presenters will discuss the historical and current classifications of race and ethnicity in the public arena and some of the applications in apportionment, poverty and socio-economics, justice and education. But they also will raise questions about the use and stability of "race" as a metric, about the long-term viability of the categories, and about the appropriate uses of the data that are collected.