Ongoing Request of Buncombe County Leaders for Plan for Consistently Collecting Racial Demographic Data

Update 7/11/24: We are now targeting the July 20th Leading with Race Summit as an appropriate setting for an official statement by Buncombe County on racial data collection. Read more below in the Report Back section.

Background: In our 6/17/24, 6/24/24 and 7/1/24 GAP Reports, we expressed a serious and longstanding concern about the County’s tendency not to track or report on racial demographic and equity data in their programs and processes. We’ve been raising this concern for years now, both in prior GAP Reports, and in attempts to privately and directly engage County officials. This issue was also prominently flagged by the Carter Group in their Cease The Harm audit from earlier this year.

The reason we keep bringing this up, and that it was such a focal point of the Cease The Harm audit, is that the consistent collection and sharing of racial data is a baseline requirement for any serious attempt to address racial inequities. Deep racial inequities are present in literally every dimension of life in Buncombe County: economics, education, criminal justice, health, and housing. The County has pledged to address these inequities, which is an important starting point. However, the only way to assess whether racial inequities are actually shrinking in County-led or funded work is to collect and share racial identity data about the beneficiaries of their programs.

Our Ask

Update: We are now asking the Buncombe County Manager, Avril Pinder, to make a clear statement at the July 20th Leading with Race Summit on whether the County intends to consistently track racial demographics across all of its programs and funded projects. Read more below in the Report Back section.

We initially invited GAP Supporters to join us in asking the County Commission whether they were committed to consistently sharing and tracking racial equity data, and, if so, what their plan was to act on that commitment. More specifically, we suggested that they might discuss whether there is racial equity data available surrounding the Covid Recovery Fund programs, and if they would consider making a practice of sharing racial demographic information around current and prospective members of County Boards and Commissions.

Report Back

Update 7/11/24: We learned this week that the County will be hosting a Leading with Race Summit on July 20th. According to the event description, “Buncombe County will… share information about the Racial Equity Action Plan, goals accomplished, and our next steps.” We think this is an excellent opportunity for an official statement from County leadership about their intentions around consistently collecting racial demographic data for all of their programs. With that in mind, we have modified our email template and are asking for an official statement by Buncombe County on racial data collection at the July 20th Leading with Race Summit.

Check out the new email template below asking for just that from the County Manager.

GAP Supporter Actions Taken: 31

Recipients and Responses:

Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder: No response

Buncombe County Communications and Public Engagement (CAPE) Director Lillian Govus: Responded (see here)

Buncombe County Commission

• County Commissioner Brownie Newman: No response
• County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara: No response
• County Commissioner Amanda Edwards: No response
• County Commissioner Martin Moore: No response
• County Commissioner Parker Sloane: No response
• County Commissioner Terri Wells: No response
• County Commissioner Al Whitesides: No response
• Chief Equity and Human Rights Officer Noreal Armstrong: No response

Additional Context: In our GAP Report on Monday 6/17/24, there were two items on the County Commission agenda that reflected missed opportunities for the County to either track or share relevant racial demographic data. 

• The Commissioners were asked to approve reallocations of the Covid Recovery Fund, federal money that has been appropriated to various local initiatives. As a backdrop to this conversation, data on the past performance of the Fund was shared, which included how many jobs were created, how many folks received mental health support, and so on. No information was shared about the racial identity of these beneficiaries – either because it wasn’t collected or because it wasn’t considered important enough to include in the report – making it impossible to know whether there were racial inequities in the distribution of these funds and resources.
• The Commissioners also considered two vacancies on the County’s Boards and Commissions. The County has named the diversification of these Boards as a priority, but has not publicly shared (to our knowledge) a baseline assessment of the current level of racial diversity of these bodies. When there are new candidates, as there were this week, the County does not share what their racial identities are or any other information about them. Once again, this makes it impossible to assess whether Boards and Commissions are becoming more or less racially diverse over time.

(For an excellent discussion of what it takes for local governments to become data-driven, check out Eric Jackson’s newsletter I Don’t Care About DATA – a great place to start is with Becoming a Data-Informed Organization.)

Previous Update 7/8/24: We haven’t yet received any response from the County Manager

Previous Update 6/27/24: We got a lengthy response to our reports from County Communications and Public Engagement (CAPE) Director Lillian Govus, which you can read in its entirety here. There is heartening news here:

• Director Govus shared the current racial demographics of County Boards and Commissions overall, which stands at 74% white and 16% Black, and very small percentages of other ethnicities. This is a higher percentage of Black participation than we expected, and therefore welcome news. However, much of the Black representation might reflect the twenty-five members of the Community Reparations Commission, which leaves us to wonder about all the other County Boards. The County is apparently working on collecting (and ultimately sharing) more detailed information broken down by committee.
• Ms. Govus also shared racial demographic information about the beneficiaries of some of the County-funded programs using COVID Recovery Funds – those programs who had chosen to collect “race/ethnicity data in their performance measures to track and report.”
• Ms. Govus suggests that the County could “do better” in the future by requiring that ”this data… be reported in a consistent way for all projects so that we could generate portfolio-level rather than project level racial impact analysis.”

While we very much appreciate the County responding to our reports, and agree with Ms. Govus that there is some good news here, our lingering question is whether there is an overall County-wide strategy to shift its culture and practices in the direction of being data informed. The Cease The Harm Audit, in identifying this issue as a “key harm,” was not saying that the County doesn’t track some racial data some of the time; it named the lack of consistency as the central issue. So while Ms. Govus is right that it would be “better” for the County to collect racial demographic data for all COVID Recovery Fund projects, it would be far better still for the County to commit to collecting this data for all of its programs and funded projects. Such a shift can only happen if it is a County-wide priority that is overseen, organized, and led by the County Commissioners and the County Manager. We’re still wondering if the County will make such a commitment and, if so, how they plan to implement such a strategy. We’ll be updating our email template in our GAP Report this coming Monday, July 1.

Update 6/20/24: At the County Commission meeting on Tuesday, June 18th, both of the agenda items we flagged were addressed with no discussion of racial demographics, equity, or the concerns we raised. We haven’t received any response from any of the County officials we reached out to.

This issue is about more than just the COVID Recovery Funds or the current state of Boards and Commissions’ demographics. We plan to keep raising and re-raising this issue as an overall call for the County’s attention to measuring and demonstrating racial (in)equity until we get a satisfactory response, and we invite you to join us.