Statistical Gaslighting, Fetishization of Data & Dual Evidentiary Systems: OMB & Census as Sites of Racial Formation

• In Event: 20864 - Feminist and Critical Complicities, Injustices, and Culture (Co-sponsored by Section on Sociology of Culture)

Abstract

How does federal research on race and ethnicity come to be constructed as “sound,” while relevant scholarship is disregarded? What racial projects are visible in guidelines, reports and documents about race and ethnicity in the administrative state? We examine historical documents regarding race and ethnicity definitions, measurement, collection and tabulation to conduct a critical case study of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Census. Our theoretical guideposts include racial formation theory (Omi & Winant 2015), colorblind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2021), racialized organization theory (Ray 2019), critical race theory (Mills 1997; Gonzalez Rose 2016; Bracey 2015), racial gaslighting, racial spectacles (Davis & Ernst 2011, 2018) and intersectionality as critical inquiry and praxis (Collins 2019; Hancock 2016; Crenshaw 1995). We offer the concept of “statistical gaslighting” (López 2023; López & Mehta 2025) to describe racial projects anchored in knowledge claims that employ numbers, quantification, measurement, data collection, tabulation and other statistical analysis to contribute to color and power evasive racism. Statistical gaslighting has ideological and material consequences and operates through minimizing and obfuscating racism and ultimately reproducing whiteness and white supremacy through “inverted epistemologies,” and “epistemologies of ignorance” (Mills 1997). Statistical gaslighting becomes visible through two primary mechanisms: 1) the fetishization of data and decontextualized discourses of “good intentions” (Fine 1991) that decouple and minimize data use for civil rights; and, 2) an anti-science dual evidentiary system (Gonzalez Rose 2016) for adjudicating data policy by relying solely on state-sanctioned research and eschewing relevant social scientific scholarship on race and ethnicity measurement for assessing complex inequities and discrimination. We argue that interest convergence (Bell 1980), liberation ethics (Ladner 1978), and intersectionality as critical inquiry and praxis in knowledge production for equitable distribution of resources across a variety of policy domains, (e.g., housing, health, education, law, employment) can challenge statistical gaslighting.

Authors

• Nancy López, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque

• Sharan Kaur Mehta, The University of New Mexico

• Attiya White, University of New Mexico

• Joaquín Argüello de Jesús, University of New Mexico

• Michelle Johnson, University of New Mexico

• Yasmiyn Irizarry, University of Texas at Austin

• Edward D. Vargas, Arizona State University-Tempe