Catalyst California (formerly Advancement Project California) advocates for racial justice by building power and transforming public systems.

As they wait to see whether several foundational bills and a constitutional amendment related to slavery reparations become state law, Californians are getting a sense of what a key voter group thinks of the issue. A largest-of-its-kind survey conducted by the California Black Power Network (CBPN), L. Norwood & Associates, and Catalyst California shows that reparations, as a political issue, drive voting decisions among Black voters. 

No one should be invisible in data. But data, or the lack of it, can erase certain communities while overrepresenting others. Systemic exclusion from data affects all groups, and there is no true representation without the inclusion of all. Therefore, it’s crucial that those of us who work with data understand how it can exclude, so we can minimize this effect in our analyses. 

Nearly 50 years ago, the federal government established standards for racial data collection that still shape how we understand race. Federal agencies—the U.S. Census Bureau foremost among them—comply with these standards from data collection to reporting. They also trickle through to states, universities, public health agencies, and other institutions to influence how we measure race in nearly every report and dataset.