What is 'Street Race' and why a UNM Professor believes it should be asked on the Census

What race do you think others, who do not know you, would automatically assume you are based on your looks? That's the question Sociology Professor Nancy Lópezat The University of New Mexico wants asked on the next U.S. Census.

'Street Race' is not how you identify but how you believe others see you. It's based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, etc. López says Latinos who may have facial features that resemble those of East Asian people may have a lighter skin color and still be subjected to Asian hate based on what they look like. She says the same is true for Latinos who are categorized as Black and subjected to anti-blackness.

"Whenever I speak at a big conference I often say, anyone in this room could be Latino or Middle Eastern or Asian, because of their cultural heritage, but based on what you look like, you may experience something different," López said. "If we don't collect the question, what is your street race, your perceived race, then we may be missing an opportunity to make visible discrimination and equity that happens based on race as a visual status."

While she's been working on this research for more than three decades, her most recent study with UCLA comes after the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released new guidelines for all federal agencies making the race and ethnicity boxes one conjoined question, rather than two separate.

López says when you're asking about race and ethnicity together, you don't know what you're measuring. She says in the end, we will no longer be collecting data on race, only ethnicity, referring to that as 'troubling.'

"I call it statistical gaslighting because here you are claiming that you're not making Hispanic a race, but you're asking about it with race, López said. "If someone dares to mark more than one box then you're put into this amorphous box, 'two or more', which has no analytical value if you're trying to understand reeducations in poverty or housing segregation by race."

Street race is nothing new, López says the measurement has been built on decades of research by dozens of scholars before her. Some may have heard it as folk race or socially assigned, described race. López says the wording "street race" is another way to make it more accessible to more people.

"If you care about knowing things like housing discrimination, employment discrimination, or healthcare access, you need to add another question," she said. "Inequities will remain invisible if you only ask how you identify and neglect to add that second question, how you believe others see you."

López says she ishopeful about the future and urges people to think about how they can advance transformational data infrastructures that help us know whether we have achieved a more perfect union for all. She currently has a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looking at how to employ intersectionality to improve the way OMB guides all federal agencies on how race and ethnicity data should be collected.

"We hope there will be a National Acadmies consensus study on the scientific measurement of race and ethnicity for use and equity-minded policy," López said. "If the Street Race question isn't added to the decennial census, then it should be added to all the other surveys, like the American Community Survey, which is done every year."

The next Census will be in April of 2030, counting residents of the United States and five U.S. territories. According to the United States Census Bureau, this will mark the 25th population count.

Want to learn more about Street Race? López interviewed with UNM's podcast: It's (Probably) Not Rocket Science. Listen to the episode 'How Combining Race and Ethnicity Questions Could Make Research Harder' below.