Within hours of releasing a report last week on how Iowa schools had done at improving achievement by disadvantaged students, the state Education Department was forced to acknowledge something was missing: performance data on African-American, Hispanic and other minority students.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (which replaces No Child Left Behind), states must track the progress of students of low income, with disabilities, and who are learning English, as well as students from racial and ethnic minority groups. That’s intended to ensure they are getting the tools to succeed.

The state agency acknowledged the omission after a Register reporter pointed it out. But the issue of public institutions identifying the races of people they interact with is not an easy one. Civil rights advocates have met with some pushback for calling on police agencies and schools to document the races of people they pulled over or suspended. But their hope is that requiring law-enforcement to track that data can help demonstrate the use of racial profiling and prevent it in the future.

The paradox is that for decades, some of us concerned with civil rights tried to minimize the gratuitous inclusion of race because it could increase bias.  If a newspaper reports that someone was robbed by “a black man” without further description, it tends to put every black man under suspicion while doing little to identify the culprit. Even when it’s meant as a compliment, attributing someone’s intelligence, or mastery in math or sports — or anything — to their race does that group no favor. If race or ethnicity make an entire ethnic group good at one thing, it makes them not good at something else. Such biological determinism not only limits people’s potential, it piles unfair expectations on certain ones to excel in certain ways

So data showing African-Americans to be disproportionately arrested or suspended can build a false impression in the public mind that black people commit most of the crimes or act out the most in schools. But not using race data can give institutions cover for pursuing, suspecting or disregarding certain people based on racial profiling.

Thirty-one states have passed laws against racial profiling by police. An Iowa state representative is planning, with support from the NAACP, to introduce legislation to ban it in Iowa, and to prohibit police from pulling drivers over for minor infractions while fishing around for more serious ones. Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad and the NAACP also want police to be required by law to keep track of the races of people they stop. (Currently only two city police departments in Iowa do that). Proposed legislation would have the Iowa attorney general's office create a form to document such information for every traffic stop.

Collecting that information makes sense. Without knowing the races of those who are pulled over, searched and arrested,  there’s no way to know if it happens more frequently to black people. But determining someone’s race can itself be tricky for police. If they ask, it could be interpreted as a sign of racism or immigration enforcement. Or police might guess incorrectly — or worse. The Chicago Tribune a few years back discovered sheriff’s deputies in McHenry County, Ill., were falsely reporting the race and ethnicity of people they stopped. They were marking Latinos down simply as white without noting their ethnicity. The same thing happened in Texas, where the law now requires racial identification for every traffic stop, data on complaints of profiling and the disposition of motor-vehicle stops. It includes penalties against law enforcement administrators for failing to submit such reports.

So the most foolproof approach is to include race on drivers’ licenses. Yet decades ago, the NAACP successfully challenged states’ practice of doing that.

We tend to trust our institutions to do the right things for the right reasons. But when anecdotal evidence and data show disproportionate outcomes depending on race, we need the tools to dig deeper. The Register reported Sunday that more than 18 percent of students suspended from Iowa schools in 2014-15 were African-American, though African-Americans account for just 3 percent of the population.

In Cedar Rapids, Charles City, Des Moines and Davenport, more than 36 percent of suspensions were of black students. In Waterloo, half were. The reporting documented instances of black students being suspended for minor infractions. Such incidents can lead to unnecessary involvement in the criminal justice system, which can have long-term negative effects on young people.

Most of us probably look forward to a day when we don't need to classify people by race. Maybe that day will come when Americans are all a blend of races. But in the meantime, from a societal perspective, the potential value in knowing the data outweighs the possible harm from tracking it.

In other words, sometimes you need to be color conscious to build a color-blind society.

Read or Share this story: