Week 10 — Two Questions, Not One Pie: Reading the 2020 Census Race and Ethnicity Shares — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 9 of the term — read the 2020 Census race and ethnicity shares, work out what they say, and explain to someone outside sociology why a census chart cannot stack every share into one pie.

This week you learned that race is a category people built, that ethnicity is a shared heritage, that a minority group is defined by power rather than size, how prejudice differs from discrimination, and how bias can sit in a procedure rather than a person. In Week 2 you learned to read any statistic four ways and to keep percentage points separate from percent; this week you use those habits on the real 2020 Census race and ethnicity shares. In this assignment you work four short problems, interpret each one, and explain a finding to someone who has never studied sociology. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Sociology in Action Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will use these figures, all from this week's chapter:

• 2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country (Census Bureau, 2021 release): the self-identified race shares in the 2020 Census were White alone 61.6%, Black or African American alone 12.4%, Asian alone 6.0%, American Indian and Alaska Native alone 1.1%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 0.2%, Some Other Race alone 8.4%, and Two or More Races 10.2%.
• From the same release: Hispanic or Latino (of any race) was 18.7%, asked as a separate question from race. White alone or in combination was 71%.
• From the same release: Two or More Races was 2.9% of the population in the 2010 Census, and the Census Bureau attributes the change to 2020 partly to improved question design and coding.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. In the 2020 Census, the race shares were White alone 61.6%, Black or African American alone 12.4%, Asian alone 6.0%, American Indian and Alaska Native alone 1.1%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 0.2%, Some Other Race alone 8.4%, and Two or More Races 10.2%. What do the seven race shares add to?
2. In the 2020 Census, the seven race shares add to 99.9, and Hispanic or Latino (of any race), asked as a separate question, was 18.7%. What total do you get if you add the Hispanic share to the race shares?
3. The share of the U.S. population reporting Two or More Races was 2.9% in the 2010 Census and 10.2% in the 2020 Census. By how many percentage points did the share rise?
4. In the 2020 Census, White alone was 61.6% of the population and White alone or in combination was 71%. How many percentage points of the population reported White together with at least one other race?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it. For problem 1, say what the shares measure and over whom, and why the sum is 99.9 rather than exactly 100. For problem 2, explain why the total runs above 100 and why that does not mean anyone was counted twice. For problem 3, explain why the change is written in percentage points rather than as a percent, and say whether the rise reflects only a change in the population. For problem 4, explain why the alone share and the alone-or-in-combination share overlap and must never be added.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your cousin has never studied sociology and is building a pie chart for a community newsletter. The plan is to give White alone 61.6%, White alone or in combination 71%, and Hispanic or Latino 18.7% each its own slice, next to the other race shares. Write a 3–5 sentence message to your cousin that explains in everyday words why those shares cannot all be slices of one pie, says what "alone" and "alone or in combination" mean, keeps Hispanic origin as a separate question, and names one limit, such as that the shares describe who was counted and say nothing about why. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one accurate message can be defensible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker who reads a staff survey in which some workers said they "drive alone" and a larger group said they "drive alone or carpool on some days," and who wants to add the two groups to show how many staff drive. Model answer: "Don't add those two groups together. Everyone who drives alone is already inside the bigger 'alone or carpool' group, so adding them counts the same people twice. The bigger group already tells you how many staff drive at least some of the time. The limit is that neither number tells you why people choose to drive."

Use that pattern for your message to your cousin, with your own explanation and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single data-reading report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and a brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it;
• your message to your cousin, explaining why the shares cannot all be slices of one pie, what "alone" and "alone or in combination" mean, that Hispanic origin is a separate question, and one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used, so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of the census shares with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's numbers, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com