*The 2020 census undercounted Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, and overcounted people who identified as white, according to estimates from a report the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.
Here’s more from NPR:
Latinos — with a net undercount rate of 4.99% — were left out of the 2020 census at more than three times the rate of a decade earlier. Among Native Americans living on reservations (5.64%) and Black people (3.30%), the net undercount rates were numerically higher but not statistically different from the 2010 rates. People who identified as white and not Latino were overcounted at a net rate of 1.64%, almost double the rate in 2010. Asian Americans were also overcounted (2.62%). The bureau said based on its estimates, it’s unclear how well the 2020 tally counted Pacific Islanders.
The report notes that the census has long undercounted Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans.
READ MORE: U.S. 2020 Census Confirms Boom in Diversity, White Population Shrinking [VIDEO]
Per Complex, “The Census Bureau director Robert Santos addressed the findings during a webinar conference on Thursday, when he highlighted several factors that may have led to the undercounts.”
“As you can imagine, we are just terribly – I can’t even find the word right now – upset about the extent of the Latino undercount,” Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, said during the conference. “These numbers are devastating. Once again, we see an overcount of white Americans and an undercount of Black and Hispanic Americans.”
When the U.S. 2020 census report was released in August, the data showed that the white population is declining for the first time ever.
“Our analysis of the 2020 Census results show that the U.S. population is much more multiracial, and more racially and ethnically diverse than what we measured in the past,” Nicholas Jones, director and senior advisor of race and ethnic research and outreach in the U.S. Census Bureau’s population division, told CNN.
“If the White decline is confirmed by the new data, that benchmark will have come about eight years earlier than previously projected, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, per Journal-isms.
“ ‘Twenty years ago if you told people this was going to be the case, they wouldn’t have believed you,’ he said, adding that the opioid epidemic and lower birthrates among millennials accelerated the White population’s decline. ‘The country is changing dramatically.’
“The United States is also expected to have passed two other milestones on its way to becoming a majority-minority society in a few decades: For the first time, the portion of White people could dip below 60 percent and the under-18 population is likely to be majority non-White. . . .”
