How Different Countries View Race
Essays for Specific Countries
IASSIST members have contributed essays or resources explaining how their respective nations have viewed or counted racial groups over time. Please note that the authors do not claim expertise as researchers in this area. Rather they are data professionals who help researchers and students find data on race, racism, and racial justice. In most cases, they have cited the literature about these issues or compiled documentation from their country’s official statistics to describe how such counts were done. Authors were asked to keep entries extremely brief to be suitable as blog posts.
If you would like to contribute an essay for an additional country or a revision to one of these, please email the current chairs of the interest group.
Please note: Due to the historical nature of some of the data sources and topics in these essays, terminology, language, classifications, and methodologies necessary for searching may include language that is problematic for and/or offensive to contemporary users. Specifically, vocabulary used to refer to racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups is specific to the time period when the data were collected and does not reflect the attitudes and viewpoints of contemporary society.
Country
November 2022 Webinar
A Conversation About Data on Race & Ethnicity Around the World 30 November 2022 11:00 AM-12:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Recording (1:30:16 hours)
Suggested Citation: Bordelon, Bobray J., Cooper, Alexandra, de Noronha, Nigel, Levergood, Barbara, Manuel, Kevin, Perry, Anja, Wiltshire, Deborah, & Zald, Anne E. (2022, November 30). A Conversation About Data on Race & Ethnicity Around the World. IASSIST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S8Y9dA1rPY&t=48s
Slides (PowerPoint format) and Webinar chat transcript (rich text format) on Zenodo
Suggested Citation: Bordelon, Bobray J., Cooper, Alexandra, de Noronha, Nigel, Levergood, Barbara, Manuel, Kevin, Perry, Anja, Wiltshire, Deborah, & Zald, Anne E. (2022, December 5). A Conversation About Data on Race & Ethnicity Around the World. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7400733
The Black Lives Matter and Indigenous rights movements, as well as international migration in recent years have raised awareness of issues around inequalities because of race and ethnicity. In turn, this has prompted many organizations and groups such as IASSIST to reexamine their own understanding and knowledge, processes and practices. In response, the IASSIST Anti-Racism Interest Group was formed and brought together data stewards and librarians who had some or no prior expertise but who were interested in having a conversation about race and ethnicity in terms of data available for research and exploring how they could support the vital work in this field.
This webinar, brought to you by the Anti-Racism Resources Interest Group and the IASSIST Professional Development Committee, marks the beginning of that conversation with a focus on the data that is available for research. Bringing together a panel of data stewards and librarians from 4 countries - Canada, the US, the UK and Germany - and this webinar aims to discuss and review these key questions:
- How are race and ethnicity recorded in the national Censuses and other key data sources?
- Have these definitions changed over time?
- What groups are identified, how much detail is available?
- What are some of the key issues with these data?
Presenters:
- Framing of the Issues: Anne Zald - Northwestern University
- Canada: Kevin Manuel - Toronto Metropolitan University
- United States: Barbara Levergood - Bowdoin College
- United Kingdom: Nigel de Noronha, U.K. Data Service
- Germany: Anja Perry - GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
- Overview of Sources and IPUMS: Bobray Bordelon - Princeton University
- Conclusion and Q&A: Deborah Wiltshire - GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences