Painting By Numbers

The 2020 census data is finally here! At first glance, it paints a surprising portrait of a changing United States: The number of people who identify as white and no other race is smaller; the share of multiracial people has shot up; and the country’s second-largest racial group is… “some other race.” But resident census-expert Hansi Lo Wang told us that when you start to unpack the data, you quickly find that those numbers don’t tell the whole story.