See the structure of racism and your power to challenge it.
Our mission is to build antiracist futures in which everyone thrives.
Racial Data Lab
Racial Data Lab
At the Center for Antiracist Research, we believe that change requires four elements: research, policy, advocacy, and narrative. The Racial Data Lab mobilizes these four elements as we seek to imagine and build towards antiracist futures where everyone thrives.
The Racial Data Lab includes data scientists, lawyers, scholars, and organizers who work together with community partners to investigate racist problems and propose antiracist solutions. We feature our work on an interactive website for use by advocates, journalists, scholars, policymakers, and all who are working for antiracist social change.
Get Data
Racial data can illustrate racial inequities—and, therefore, the racist policies and practices that cause those inequities. We aim to make publicly available racial data more accessible to everyday people, organizers, advocates, and policymakers. We created downloadable data tables and visualizations that can be used for antiracist public education and organizing.
Explore Solutions
Everything from our health to our jobs to where and how we live is impacted by our country’s policies. In the United States, deliberate policy choices have historically upheld systemic racism. However, antiracist policies have the potential to upend racism. Experts at CAR developed collaborations with community-based organizations and scholars to collect information about racist policies and antiracist solutions in order to support organizing efforts across the country.
Change Narratives
Narratives are patterns of stories that contain beliefs about the way the world works, and narratives shape both policy and individual actions. Researchers at CAR examined current and evolving beliefs on race, racism, and antiracism to craft and disseminate narratives that can help build an antiracist world.
Resist
CAR aimed to highlight sites of resistance and build a digital commons featuring community-created best practices, toolkits, and case studies. We believe in providing a digital home for antiracist organizers and campaign leaders to build collective power and share resources with each other.
About CAR
The Boston University Center for Antiracist Research is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that convenes researchers, advocates, and practitioners to find novel and practical ways to understand, explain, and solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice. The Center is organized into four offices—Research, Advocacy, Narrative, and Policy—that reflect our theory of social change. The Research Office collects and analyzes data; the Advocacy Office connects, aligns, and strengthens antiracist efforts across the country; the Narrative Office reframes racist narratives and supports antiracist public scholarship; and the Policy Office helps translate the Center’s work into tangible outcomes.