In our data-driven world, how the media uses stats against people of color -- and how to use them correctly

1. Numbers Do Lie

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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. Question to ask
• 1.3 Hispanics went in the other direction –
which way was that?

6. 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.”

7. White population decreased between
2000 and 2010

8. What is white?

9. Assume
Ass [out of]
U & Me

11. #whatlatinoslooklike

12. O’Reilly’s Claim

13. Look closely at how # reported

14. 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.

15. 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).

16. 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.”

17. 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.

18. How to Use Data…correctly

19. 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.

20. Don’t assume -- check!
Which of these “facts” is true?
A. Black women have the highest rates of breast
cancer
B. AIDS cases are skyrocketing
C. The number of white people in Central
Harlem has quadrupled in the last 10 years
Answer: C

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.