There is a significant amount of data available already from Census 2020 and diving into it is kind of my job. The fact of the matter is the race information is a significant change this time around. Census allowed people to fill in more than one category for race for the first time in the history of the Census. This is good and bad, and makes it difficult, at times, to make comparisons with prior data.
There are other issues, as there always are with any census. I can think of two ongoing questions facing North Dakota officials and policy makers as we move forward with Census 2020 data. First, to what extent did the COVID-19 pandemic influence the count? Second, to what extent are there what we consider the standard undercount issues more typical of a census? Obviously these two factors can compound the impact of the others, making it difficult to figure out.
In this post I include graphs for the single category races, “White”, “Asian”, “African American”, “American Indian and Alaskan Native”, and then the category “2 or more races.” Some of the graphs from these are unremarkable, though a few are especially surprising.
The first post delving deeper into the data looks at the significant changes in the American Indian/Alaska Native population.
White Only
American Indian and Alaska Native
African American
Asian
2 or more races
