New Census data released on Thursday should provide the best picture to date of the shifting racial and ethnic composition of the country. But after years of debate over how questions of race and ethnicity would be asked, a pandemic-plagued process for conducting the decennial count and delays to the release of the first wave of data, how should you interpret the new landscape? It all goes back to 1997. That’s when the current definitions for race and ethnicity were established not just for the Census, but for the entirety of the federal government. Adoption of those definitions were the product of four years of review by the Office of Management and Budget. The U.S. Census Bureau has collected data on race since its first count in 1790 and on ethnicity since 1970. It is used to help federal agencies monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws, such as the Voting Rights Act. #census2020 #census