“Disaggregation” is not a word that rolls off the tongue easily. But the concept of separating a whole into its distinct parts is one that we should embrace when it comes to statistics about minorities.
The time when it was sufficient to break out data by simple race or ethnicity segments has past. Demographics and new sociological and scientific understanding about the people that make up the broad categories of black, Asian and Hispanic tell us that these labels are becoming increasingly blunt instruments when we look at public health and education policy.