Race/ethnicity data at a block level from 1970

NHGIS
1

Hello! I’m trying to look at racial demographic data at a block level from the 1970 Census and compare with data from 2020. I’m unable to find it on your site - does this data exist? or can I only find this at a higher geographic level?

Additionally, are these racial comparisons from 1970 to the 2020 accurate?

Indian (Amer.) → American Indian or Alaska Native
Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean → Asian
Negro or Black → Black or African American
Origin or Decent: Mexican; Puerto Rican; Cuban; Central or South American; Other Spanish → Hispanic or Latino
Hawaiian → Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
White → White
Other → Some other race

2

For 1970 block data, we only have data for three race/ethnicity categories - White, Black, and Other. Table NT5B (dataset 1970_CNT3) provides race by sex counts for Black and Other. If you subtract those counts from Table NT5 (Sex), you would get a count of Whites.

Table NT2 (Sex by Race) in 1970_CNT2 provides census tract-level counts for the following race/ethnicity categories:

  • White
  • Negro
  • Indian
  • Japanese
  • Chinese
  • Filipino
  • Hawaiian
  • Korean
  • Other

I recommend looking at the details for Time Series Table B18. Persons by Race. The entry for B18 describes the intricacies of matching up 1970 race/ethnicity categories with more recent categories.

Sincerely,
Dave Van Riper