This paper presents data on how the self-reported Hispanic or Latino population reported their race in the 2020 Census, providing analyses of both self-reported race data and race response patterns for the updated 2020 race question.

Race reporting among the Hispanic or Latino population varied by demographic and household characteristics, detailed group and by geography. One of the major takeaways is that with 8.1 percent of the self-reported Hispanic or Latino population not answering the race question and another 35.4 percent classified as Some Other Race, fully 43.6 percent of the self-reported Hispanic or Latino population in the 2020 Census did not report one or more of the minimum race groups prescribed in the 1997 race and ethnicity standards.  Additionally, we saw the largest increases since 2010 in the Two or More Races category, particularly due to a 1,106.4 percent change in “White and Some Other Race” reporting.

The improvements to the 2020 Census provided an important research opportunity to expand our analyses to respondents’ race response patterns by examining how respondents interacted with the race question itself when write-in response areas were made available for each minimum race category. The addition of White and Black or African American write-in areas in the 2020 Census along with the updates made to the race coding procedures played a role in the dramatic increase in Two or More Races reporting among Hispanic or Latino respondents.

The response pattern data shows most respondents provided their write-in response in either the White (38.8 percent) or Some Other Race (34.4 percent) write-in areas. Combined, these two reporting patterns represent 73.2 percent of the self-reported Hispanic or Latino population. Of the respondents only providing write-in responses in the White write-in area, 96 percent only selected the corresponding White checkbox. Meanwhile, 85.6 percent only selected the corresponding Some Other Race checkbox for those that only provided write-in responses in the Some Other Race write-in area.

These analyses provide a more nuanced picture of how Hispanic or Latino respondents interact with a separate race question, beyond aggregated data tabulations, yielding a more accurate portrait of how people report their Hispanic origin and race within the context of a two-question format. These results yield critical insights for understanding the challenges that many Hispanic or Latino respondents faced with responding to the separate question on race in the 2020 Census that did not include a Hispanic or Latino category and help us to see the persisting problems with the two-question design that our qualitative and quantitative research over the past 15 years has illuminated.