Beware the Unintended Consequences: Government Transparency, Racial Data Collection, and Minority Rights in the United States and Abroad

Résumé

[extract] For several decades, the United States government has encouraged transparency by collecting data that details the nation’s racial and ethnic composition. The stated purpose of this data collection is to identify racial discrimination and create measures to promote equality. Today, most progressive American policymakers, advocates, and scholars see this effort as a necessary and positive tool for combating racial and ethnic discrimination and promoting civil rights. By gathering statistics on the status of racial and ethnic minorities, the federal government is able to track disparities in a host of areas where systemic racial discrimination continues to impede equality, including education, housing, and employment opportunities. The data also serves as a way to track potential discriminatory behaviors in areas like law enforcement and can illuminate racial disparities in arrests, criminal prosecutions, and sentencing. 

Many European nations, including France, however, have eschewed such data collection for political and cultural reasons as well as concerns regarding privacy and data misuse. This is true despite rising calls from policymakers and academics in EU member states to collect racial and ethnic statistics to address long-standing racial and ethnic inequality. Yet, even in nations like the United States where the government has been relatively transparent in its collection, research, and reporting, racial data collection has had unintended negative consequences of the sort contemplated by the very nations opposed to this form of collection. Understanding these historic and contemporary challenges may help shape how nations collect such sensitive information in the future, and can support government efforts in enforcing civil rights protections through the use of such data.