WE MUST NOT BE ERASED
NABLEO Opposes Changes Proposed For Census Restrictions
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dated: Friday October 02, 2026
It has been reported that the U.S. Census Bureau is considering a proposal that would drastically change the way that census data is collected. The proposed changes would remove race and ethnicity questions from the 2030 decennial census questionnaire and other questionnaires used to enumerate the population; and exclude certain immigrant residents from the population counts used for congressional apportionment.
While the proposal has not become final policy, its implications are enormous. Race-related questions—although the categories have changed considerably and often reflected the racism of their time—have appeared in every decennial census since 1790.
This proposal would weaken political representation, resource allocation, civil-rights enforcement, public-health research, redistricting, and our ability to document racial inequality. And if the government removes race and ethnicity from the census, racism will not just simply disappear. The government will merely make its consequences harder to prove and easier to deny.
Race and ethnicity data remain essential for understanding the population of the United States and for identifying and documenting racial and ethnic disparities. Racial inequality does not disappear when government stops collecting the data necessary to measure it.
Removing race and ethnicity questions from the decennial enumeration would eliminate a direct, nationwide source of racial and ethnic population data from the census questionnaire. Although the Census Bureau could continue obtaining demographic information through the American Community Survey, administrative records, and other sources, those sources are not the same as directly collecting race and ethnicity information as part of the decennial census.
Refusing to collect full racial data will do nothing more than provide the government and others with the ability to plausibly deny racial equality and provide support for racially biased programs and weaken the levels of trust that is necessary for law enforcement to sufficiently provide services to the communities they serve.
Reliable racial and ethnic data are necessary to identify disparities, evaluate whether laws and programs are working equitably, conduct meaningful research, and hold public institutions accountable. A government cannot adequately measure racial inequality if it deliberately removes an important means of measuring race and ethnicity from the nation’s decennial enumeration.
It is with this in mind, that the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, Inc. and its members oppose this proposed change and ask the Census Bureau not to adopt the proposed restriction on collecting race and ethnicity information through the decennial census enumeration.
The National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, Inc, a 501.(c).(3) non-profit, is a premier national organization representing the interests and concerns of African American, Latino and other criminal justice practitioners of color serving in law enforcement, corrections, and investigative agencies throughout the United States, and the communities in which they serve.
