The “normal” values for the diversity measurements I did with recompose #1

I mentioned in a comment to my assessment of diversity in the submissions to recompose that I would pull out the population normal values I was using explicitly.

For sexual preference, I used a 2011 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA. It suggests that as few as 3.5% of persons in the United States of America identifies as LGBT. Though it’s worth noting that identify is the key part here: the same report also shows that 8.2% of the respondents had same-sex encounters in their lives, and 11% acknowledged same-sex attraction.  With over a quarter of the submitters identifying as something other than straight, this far exceeded population demographics.

For the remaining demographic data, I used the US Census QuickFacts table. There, the population breakdown by ethnic group or “race” (not an exhaustive list) was:

  • White: 62.1%
  • Black: 13.2%
  • Native American: 1.2%
  • Asian: 5.4%
  • Hispanic: 17.4%

As I noted, the submitters we had were overwhelmingly white, with 83% identifying as white, 4.8% as Asian, 2.9% as
Hispanic, 1.9% as Black, 1.9% as Jewish, with several other single
respondents claiming different identities.

Also, the gender reporting from the US Census has women making up 50.8% of the population. There is an implicit gender binary bias here, as “male” is assumed to be the other category. Regardless, with only 33% of the submissions being from women, it’s still clear there’s a lot of work to be done.

If you know of better or more up to date sources for information on this, I’d love to see them.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience and support.