Purge gets rid of racial equity data

I had no idea about the SVI that was started by Bush of all people.

The CDC’s social vulnerability index and environmental justice index — tools that could show whether particular populations might face disproportionate health risks — have both been taken offline within the past week. In 2007, during the Bush administration, social scientists, geographers, and statisticians started developing the social vulnerability index (SVI), which incorporated demographic and socioeconomic factors including poverty, race, and ethnicity over the years.

The Biden administration launched the environmental justice index (EJI) in 2022. “Too many communities across our nation, particularly low-income communities and communities of color, continue to bear the brunt of pollution. Meeting the needs of these communities requires our focused attention and we will use the Environmental Justice Index to do just that,” then Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a press release at the time.

This is a the goal of a “Color-less” society. Without collecting racial data, we can’t show that systemic racism is real and hurting us.