How Dismantling Racial Data Threatens to Bury Injustice in Bureaucratic Silence
As someone who grew up under Jim Crow and whose maternal and paternal ancestors were enslaved, I have lived the consequences of legalized racism. I am nearly 80 years old, and I know firsthand what it took to challenge that system—community resistance, courageous activism, and crucially, government data. It was the collection of racial data by federal agencies that made it possible to expose systemic inequalities in schools, housing, employment, and voting. Without that data, we would not have had the legal and moral ammunition to fight Jim Crow.
That’s why I am deeply fearful of what I see happening today under Donald Trump’s leadership. He is not just undermining civil rights protections—he is dismantling the very tools we used to fight for them. By attacking the collection and use of race-based data, and restricting the enforcement of civil rights laws like disparate impact, he is laying the groundwork for a new system of discrimination. This time, it will be cloaked in “colorblindness”—a system that pretends not to see race while ensuring that racial inequality continues unchecked.
I fear that my grandchildren may face something even worse than what I endured—not because it will be more openly violent, but because it will be harder to prove, harder to fight, and harder to name. A system that denies race while sustaining racism is not progress. It is regression.
