Good! We need more of us to proportionately represent our US population.

From our newsletter 🗞️:

This year, there are 54 Hispanic representatives between the House and Senate, almost three times the amount back in 2001, with Hispanics now accounting for 11% of all members of Congress.

As Pew Research pointed out, the percentage is still lower than the population of Hispanics in the country — 19%. But make no mistake; there's been extraordinary progress in this demographic's representation.

In 2001, the US's share of Hispanics or Latinos was 12.5%, while their representation in Congress was a meager 3.5%. And Black members in Congress prove that reaching full representation is possible; their 13% share is roughly equal to the US's Black population share.

Source: Pew

Tools: Rawgraphs, Affinity designer

One comment , as the changes are step change at elections, I'd of graphed it that way , either a stepped line or bar

I'm always curious about the definition used for Latino or Hispanic. Is it a language group of people who speak Spanish as their first language? Is it an immigration group based on a person's or an ancestor's country of origin? If the ancestor's country of origin, how far back? What level of inter-mixing removes the Latino label? Is it like Native Americans? Where it takes between 1/4 and 1/16 (depending on the tribe) bloodline to be a tribal member.

It is especially problematic combined with Asian-American, which clearly is based on area of origin regardless of race (people of Chinese, Iraqi, Indian and Russian descent are all Asian-American), and Black which is purely a race based term. African-American (which would include non-Black people of Arab and Berber descent) would be analogous to Asian and Native American.

It is a pretty chart, but without well defined categories, it doesn't really convey good information.

This is meaningless since the vast majority of non Hispanic people just consider us white.

well the concept of "race" is silly and ive never seen anyone define it 100%. i think its fine for statistics and such,but shouldnt be used anywhere else. first time i heard about the idea was in history class , about hitler and his race theory.....i think that tells something already

So 20% of the population is now 11% of Congress.

I'm glad you see my point. Race is a social construct. That construct changes over time. What use is this data without defining what is being measured? In the decision of Alvarez v Lemon Grove (1931) the judge refers to people of Mexican descent as 'one race of White people'. White wasn't a race in 1931. Greek, Slav and German were all different races of White people.

We do need to talk about race because there are racists in the world, but we need to be sure we all have the same understanding of the words we use.

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You should have a line for the minority as a percent of congress and another line as that minority as the percent of the population.

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