Civic Language + Race

A deep dive on the impact of race on civic language.

On Thursday, May 26, PACE partnered with United Philanthropy Forum to host a deep dive on civic language and race. This deep dive followed a robust discussion of these data and the intersection of race and civic engagement more broadly at our May Member Meeting in Washington, D.C., one week earlier. PACE is committed to integrating a racial equity lens into our work; we are guided by our current statement of specific commitments to racial equity, which you can read on our website here. Examining the data from our Civic Language Perceptions Project through the lens of race is one way that we are gathering insights to help us advance racial equity in our operations, programs, and networks.

In addition to reading this summary of our findings below, you can watch the recording of the deep dive session and view the slide deck on your own for more information.

All data in this piece is by Citizen Data. All charts and graphs were created by Kyle Chambers.

For the purposes of the analysis we shared at this deep dive, PACE made a few choices in how we analyzed the data that are important to note. We focused our analysis on the three racial groups that had over 20% of the survey population each: Black, White, and Hispanic. For this first look at race in the data, this felt to us like the best place to start because we have the most statistically significant information given the sample size of each of these groups. We are presenting the survey results of these groups next to national results, because we want to minimize any sense of pitting racial groups against each other. Instead, we will see how they compare to national figures in parallel. In the cases where someone identified with multiple racial groups but did not select the multiracial option, we decided to count them fully in both of their respective racial groups, as those are their expressed identities. To do this analysis, we went into the raw data, so the numbers you see on these slides might be weighted slightly differently than what you find in the dashboard. Admittedly, this is a tricky area from a data perspective. How someone identifies is a personal choice, and if someone selected both Black and White, for example, we wanted to look at analysis that represented that person’s point of view in both categories because they see themselves representing both. These are some of the important choices we made in going into the data for this deep dive session. We intend to do deeper analysis of civic language with these and other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups through data we now have from focus groups led by our partner, Citizen Data.

These data reveal several interesting storylines, centered around the following questions:

1. How does race and ethnicity impact people’s perception of terms?
2. How do different racial and ethnic groups associate civic terms?
3. What activities do people belonging to the various racial and ethnic groups think are important to ensure that democracy works?

Analysis and Findings

In comparison to the national sample, we looked at how people who are Black, Hispanic, and White perceive the 21 civic terms in our survey. Looking at the positive, negative, and unfamiliar responses, we found the following results:

• People who identify as Hispanic were more positive than the national sample on 12 of the terms, with civic engagement, civil society, common good, pluralism and racial equity having the widest margins of difference.
• Overall, people who identify as White were more positive than the national sample on 10 out of the 21 terms, with terms such as citizen, democracy, justice, liberty, and patriotism having the widest margins of difference from the national average.
• People who identify as Black were more positive than the national sample on 8 of the terms, with activism, diversity, civic health, and social justice having some of the widest margins of difference.
• There was some alignment on the words these three racial groups ranked negatively. For example, Black and Hispanic people were negative towards the word racial equity, and White and Hispanic people were negative towards the terms activism and social justice. All three racial groups ranked privilege negatively.
• Term unfamiliarity varied by group, especially as compared to the national average. For example, people who identified as Black reported higher unfamiliarity with democracy, liberty, and patriotism; people who identified as Hispanic reported higher unfamiliarity with civility, racial equity, and belonging; and people who identified as White reported higher unfamiliarity with civil society, civil health, and pluralism.

When looking at what activities each group thinks are important to ensure that democracy works, we see in the data that voting received the most support from all of the groups, although it is noteworthy that people who are White had a higher rate of selection than the national sample, whereas people who are Black and Hispanic selected voting at a rate lower than the national sample. This trend also played out for serving on a jury, attending public meetings, and volunteering. People who identify as Black selected advocating for issues, joining a cause or movement, donating to causes, and posting on social media at rates higher than the national average. People who identify as Hispanic selected joining a cause or movement, working in a public service career, attending protests or rallies, and posting on social media at rates higher than the national average.

When we turn to the question of associations of terms–as in, who do people associate with using the various terms–we see both similarities and differences between the three racial groups. This table is showing only the top selection by members of each group. For example, it’s not that all White people only associate White people with the term democracy, but rather, it’s that White people was the top selected racial association for White people overall on the term democracy. In the case of democracy, it is interesting to note that each of the three largest racial groups in the survey associated democracy most with their own racial group. With the exception of the term patriotism, which White people associate noncollege grads with using, the three groups associate the other terms with college grads rather than noncollege grads. On 14 of the terms, all three groups agreed on whether the term was associated with conservatives or liberals and progressives, with terms falling into both categories. There was more difference in association of terms related to class, race, and ethnicity, though no group associated any of the terms with being most often used by Asians and only two of the terms were associated with the upper class by any of the groups — patriotism and privilege. In looking at the racial group associations, each of the three groups was most likely to associate the most terms with their own racial group: White people associated 17 of the terms with White people, Black people associated 16 of the terms with Black people, and Hispanic people associated 10 of the terms with Hispanic people. All three racial groups were in agreement that White people most often used the terms civic infrastructure, liberty, patriotism, and privilege, and Black people most often used the terms racial equity and social justice. Class association had the most variation between working class and middle class associations according to all three of the groups we looked at in this analysis.

After considering this data, participants at the deep dive wondered about several lingering questions:

• When people say they are unfamiliar with a term, is it because they do not know what the term means, or is it because they are unfamiliar with the lived experience of the reality of that term?
• How can we ensure that this data is not used to put people in various racial and ethnic groups into monolithic categories?
• Why is it that none of these groups associate any of these terms with people who are Asian? What more do we need to unpack to understand this data point?

We are grateful for all who joined and shared their insights on these data. Keep an eye on our Medium page and twitter as we publish more learnings on this topic, and please keep us updated on how this data is helping you and your work by emailing Language@PACEfunders.org. We look forward to learning from you!

To learn more about the Civic Language Perceptions Project, please visit www.PACEFunders.org/Language.