Coalition of Communities of Color Redefines Data Use

Today, data shapes policy—and life outcomes—so improving data systems is a tangible way to fuel justice.

Data and metrics and analytics are influential buzzwords when we talk about the institutions that shape our lives. Whether they’re based in universities, government offices, or other fields, these institutions rely heavily on quantitative research—counting beans—when they make decisions. But numbers often can’t tell the whole story. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities feel the impact of this more than others.

The groundbreaking leadership of Foundation grantee partner Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC), an alliance of 18 culturally specific community-based organizations in Portland, OR, helps BIPOC communities take an active role in leading and shaping research practices so systems will better reflect the needs, perspectives, and wisdom of communities whose voices often go unheard.

“It’s a real aha moment when you start understanding that the community or group most impacted by a challenge has to be the ones guiding the solutions,” says Dr. Andres Lopez, research director at CCC.

CCC focuses on three main areas: advancing data justice, collective advocacy, and environmental justice.

What is data justice?

Quantitative research can lead to mistakes in representing communities. In fact, standard metrics regularly fail to communicate the full spectrum of community interests, misrepresent disparities, or lead to decisions that exclude their interests.

CCC emphasizes that qualitative data—the stories and firsthand accounts of community members—helps close that gap.

Lopez, who trained as a sociologist but now identifies as a community researcher, says one of the challenges he encounters is that institutions aren’t familiar with models for using qualitative data effectively.

“What we’re trying to do with qualitative data—meaning reports of individual experiences to illustrate a shared experience,” says Lopez, “is provide a richness, a context, and action items about what is and isn’t working, and what is desired for the future. That’s the data we need to aggregate and use for decision-making.”

Data justice means truly centering community members’ lived experience by gathering, aggregating, and relying on it for making decisions and taking action.

CCC bases its work on five principles that position communities as researchers and leaders.

CCC’s Research Justice Institute positions BIPOC communities to conduct research, develop policies, and then advocate for those policies with institutions at the local and state government level—and in academia, philanthropy, and other institutions. It’s an approach to research that returns power to historically marginalized communities by centering their lived experience.

Communities will be better served when institutions meaningfully consider quantitative and qualitative data—both numbers and stories—in ways that reflect the lived experiences and earned wisdom of the people in that community. That’s how institutions can best develop and support solutions that respond to communities’ true needs.

According to CCC, data can take many forms—numbers, words, art, music, maps, and more—and the process of capturing it should follow five core principles:

Using these guiding principles allows the CCC team to work with communities to elevate their lived experience as evidence rather than anecdote. Doing so, the coalition members believe, will support better decision-making by helping dominant institutions be less biased in their research and data.

“Institutions often track outcomes on a very broad level and are very extractive when they engage in research,” Lopez observes. “But when community leads, when communities’ lived experience is the most important data for decisions, we get to better outcomes much faster.”

As an example, Lopez talked about CCC’s community collaboration on climate, which touches all aspects of our lives. Community knowledge can and should be part of shaping effective solutions. The goal should be elevating the potential of community members to advocate for local policy solutions.

“Climate and environmental justice can seem abstract—like reducing carbon emissions. While that’s a component, it’s really about people’s everyday experience of the world around them, e.g., safe water, heat waves, or weatherization,” says Taren Evans, CCC’s environmental justice director. “Then people can think, ‘Oh, OK. I do actually know about this, and I have something to say.’”

CCC partners with local community groups to use data to address a full spectrum of policy options.

CCC also builds connections across underrepresented communities in the Portland area, including nonprofit groups that serve African, African American, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and North African, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Slavic populations.

One of those groups is Suma, a Portland-based nonprofit dedicated to removing technology barriers while increasing digital skills and resources for low-income households. Suma envisions a landscape of inclusive technology available to communities that are often overlooked by the tech sector.

“The data ecosystem CCC is part of building is so necessary,” says Malena Lechon-Galdes, a digital community builder with Suma. “Our information, as individuals and as an organization, only holds so much power. But when we start sharing and really looking at data from a larger perspective, that’s when to deploy it toward policy and infrastructure changes our communities need.”

Changing the narrative on data one community at a time.

It’s easy to see how CCC’s work creates conditions that lead to justice. By conducting and sharing context-rich research that illustrates community experience in multiple and diverse ways, CCC supports self-determination—communities’ ability to change the systems that impact their lives.

Along with its member organizations, CCC also develops and advocates for policies that reflect the insights gleaned from that deeper research. CCC’s work highlights where traditional data collection and analyses fail to end racial disparities, which promotes a new paradigm for research.

CCC’s work is an example of the kinds of work our recent grants are supporting. CCC advances justice in the region by overcoming inequities through effective, community-centered solutions.

To learn more, contact Jen Samperio, CCC’s senior communications manager.

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