Numbers Do Lie

More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White, NY Times, 5/21/14

Crux of the piece:

• The researchers found that 2.5 million Americans of Hispanic origin, or approximately 7 percent of the 35 million Americans of Hispanic origin in 2000, changed their race from “some other race” in 2000 to “white” in 2010. An additional 1.3 million people switched in the other direction. A noteworthy but unspecified share of the change came from children who weren’t old enough to fill out a form in 2000, but chose for themselves in 2010. (Source, The Pew Institute)

Question to ask:

There were 35 million Hispanics in 2000; how many in 2010? 50 million. So in this story, what about the other 15 million

Question to ask

• 1.3 Hispanics went in the other direction – which way was that?

Is this conclusion sound?

“The data also call into question whether America is destined to become a so-called minority-majority nation, where whites represent a minority of the nation’s population. Those projections assume that Hispanics aren’t white, but if Hispanics ultimately identify as white Americans, then whites will remain the majority for the foreseeable future.”

White population decreased between 2000 and 2010

What is white?

AssumeAss [out of] U & Me

#whatlatinoslooklike

O’Reilly’s Claim

Look closely at how # reported

FBI data: also flawed

• The FBI reports rely on self-reported data from a small chunk of the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies.

• The lack of a national clearinghouse for fatal police killings "is a national embarrassment," said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who specializes in high-risk police activities.

Who is white?

• O’Reilly’s reference of the number of whites killed in legal interventions does not strictly account for non-Hispanic whites. People who identify as Hispanic are also counted in the total of 326 deaths.

• Running the search again for whites but excluding Hispanics leaves 227 deaths from legal interventions -- substantially fewer deaths due to the absence of 97 white Hispanics previously in the mix (in the black category, two were identified as black Hispanic).

Richard Cohen – racism vs reality, Washington Post, July 2013

“In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects – almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news. Those statistics represent the justification for NYC’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk…Even still, race is a factor without a doubt. It would be senseless for the police to be stopping tourists in Times Square just to make the statistics look good.”

The rise of the data driven society and the quantification of trust

Statistics are used when personal experience is in doubt because the analyst has no intimate knowledge of it. Statistics are consistently used as a technology of the educated elite to discuss the populations they aren’t a part of or don’t know about -- or those individuals that are considered unknowable and untrustworthy of delivering their own accounts of their daily life.

A demand for statistical proof is blatant distrust of someone’s lived experience.

The very demand for statistical proof is otherizing because it defines the subject as an outsider, not worthy of the benefit of the doubt.

What does this look like in practical terms? A white person can say that a neighborhood is “sketchy” and most people will smile and nod. She felt unsafe, and we automatically trust her opinion. A black man can tell the world that every day he lives in fear of the police, and suddenly everyone demands statistical evidence to prove that his life experience is real.

How to Use Data…correctly

Use statistics to support your ideas

The chancellor of CUNY, James Milliken, is overpaid. Prove it!

He makes more than president Obama but less than the $7 million the nation’s highest paid college president earns.

Don’t assume -- check!Which of these “facts” is true?

A. Black women have the highest rates of breast cancer

B. AIDS cases are skyrocketingC. The number of white people in Central

Harlem has quadrupled in the last 10 years

Answer: C

Find interesting data points

California has more Latinos than any other state…. SO WHAT? That’s not a big shock, plus California has the highest population of any U.S. state.

More interesting: the census reports that the proportion of Hispanics in a number of Southern states has increased more than 100 percent. They are: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina and South Carolina.

Don’t be fast and loose with numbers

• Sexual assault doubled between 2012 and 2013 at City College…it went from 0 incidents to 1. That is NOT significant.

Use stats to find good stories – but reputable sources only

Did you know that the NYPD has excellent crime stats? The community boards collect and analyze demographics that are interesting and specific. Use government sources and reputable nonprofits.