{"id":24949,"date":"2026-08-09T16:18:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T20:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=24949"},"modified":"2026-08-09T16:18:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T20:18:46","slug":"race-conscious-data-the-new-political-taxonomy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-114\/volume-114-issue-6-june-2026\/race-conscious-data-the-new-political-taxonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Race-Conscious Data: The New Political Taxonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><i>Well before the Court issued <\/i>Students for Fair Admissions<i>, archconserva<\/i><i>tives broadcast far more ambitious plans to dismantle the building blocks of <\/i><i>race consciousness. The second Trump Administration now levies once-fringe <\/i><i>demands: that employers abandon racial data collection, disparate impact <\/i><i>doctrine, and even voluntary inquiries about racial self-identification. Such <\/i><i>attempts to suppress information about race undermine our ability to redress <\/i><i>its harms and the bedrock status of race consciousness within a democracy. <\/i><i>This Article is the first to demonstrate how informational norms have <\/i><i>assumed a crucial role in instantiating<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u2014<\/span><i>or resisting<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u2014<\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>colorblindness<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>in <\/i><i>the Trump Era.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Through a conceptual integration of race <\/i><i>studies, information science, <\/i><i>and law, this Article reinterprets the legal frameworks governing infor<\/i><i>mation about racial identity. It introduces the term <\/i>race-conscious data <i>to <\/i><i>refer to information that permits society to communicate racial iden<\/i><i>tity, regardless of whether it is digitized. The Article then advances a <\/i><i>new <\/i><i>taxonomy of ideological positions regarding racial data gleaned <\/i><i>from legal, social movement, and lay sources: <\/i>(1) Liberal Data Guardians, (2) Race-Conscious Dignitarians, (3) Colorblind Regressives, (4) Libertarians, (5) Techno-Authoritarians, and (6) White Nationalists<i>. <\/i><i>A modernized taxonomy captures the full range of thought and rhetoric <\/i><i>beyond right\/left typologies in regulatory choices and their ideological <\/i><i>assumptions.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Posing the question of race-conscious data to ideological formations <\/i><i>uncovers <\/i><i>the racial functions of competing legal claims. It reveals de<\/i><i>scriptive and normative values, particularly when race-silencing is selec<\/i><i>tively applied to spaces that confer material benefits of citizenship to <\/i><i>non-whites. Workplaces and other fora for racial dialogue illustrate the <\/i><i>compelling legal and practical barriers to a federal <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>colorblind<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>regime. <\/i><i>Labor\u2019s particular relationship with conceptualizing material harm will <\/i><i>prove crucial in helping society navigate beyond abstraction <\/i>ad absurdum<i>. It remains possible to chart future policies addressing race, <\/i><i>inequality, and law. As before, multilevel conceptual frameworks fill a <\/i><i>vacuum in today\u2019s debates over data\u2019s functions as potentially beneficial, <\/i><i>exploitative, or otherwise harmful.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2026\/08\/Lin_Race-Conscious-Data.pdf\"><strong><em>Race-Conscious Data: The New Political Taxonomy<\/em><\/strong><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-pdfemb-pdf-embedder-viewer\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2026\/08\/Lin_Race-Conscious-Data.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">Lin_Race-Conscious-Data<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well before the Court issued Students for Fair Admissions, archconservatives broadcast far more ambitious plans to dismantle the building blocks of race consciousness. The second Trump Administration now levies once-fringe demands: that employers abandon racial data collection, disparate impact doctrine, and even voluntary inquiries about racial self-identification. Such attempts to suppress information about race undermine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13871,"featured_media":0,"parent":24941,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24949","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24950,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24949\/revisions\/24950"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}