‘The Census Is Here! The Census Is Here!’
BOSTON — 2010 census forms are due to be mailed out to every home in the country in just a few weeks. With millions of federal dollars at stake, Massachusetts officials are scrambling to make sure that historically under-counted minority and immigrant communities fill out and mail in their forms.
But aside from the issue of whether people are counted, there’s also the issue of how they’re counted. The new racial categories on this year’s form are sparking some controversy.
Negro Or Nigerian, Just Check ‘Black’
Inside the Roxbury Mall on the corner of MLK Boulevard and Warrant Street, Cheryl Crawford fills balloons as she holds court with passing shoppers.
Cheryl is from the voting rights group MassVOTE, and she’s here promoting the census in a neighborhood that was, by some estimates, under-counted by 30 to 40 percent in 2000.
“The census is here! the census is here!” she calls out.
It’s a predominantly working-class African American crowd passing by. The Boston branch of the NAACP has its headquarters right here. Its president, Karen Payne, comes out to help drive home the message. “Everyday things — our schools, our nursing homes, our senior citizen homes — all those things are impacted if we don’t get counted,” she says.
“Everyday things — our schools, our nursing homes, our senior citizen homes — all those things are impacted if we don’t get counted.”
But there’s an extra wrinkle involved in getting this community counted this year. On the census form, Question 9 asks: “What is your race?” The first box is labeled: “White.” Next to the second box, it says: “Black, African Am., or Negro.”
Payne says African Americans have gone through many phases of how they are portrayed as a race. “My mother is 81 years old and she’s gone through all those different categorations [sic],” she says.
In those 81 years, the word “Negro” has turned up on a number of census forms. But many today hear the term as an epithet, and younger blacks are bristling at its appearance on a government form.
Karen Payne says she at least understands the reasoning behind the word’s reappearance. “You know, there were 50,000 people that filled out their census in 2000,” she says, “and they identified themselves as ‘African American,’ and then they wrote in ‘Negro.’ ”
Payne says how older blacks wish to describe themselves is of no concern to her. She’s encouraging everyone here to write in anything they want, from “Negro” to “Nigerian,” so long as they also check that top box that says “Black.”
Not Hispanic, Not Latino, Not Spanish. Brazilian.
Across the river in Cambridge, another minority group is having its own troubles with the racial questions on the form.
By some estimates, Brazilians now constitute the largest immigrant population in Massachusetts. But no one knows really, because the census doesn’t specifically count Brazilians.
Renan Leahy, with the Massachusetts Association of Portuguese Speakers, is trying to get around that problem today. He’s at Muqueca Brazilian Restaurant, talking up the census with the employees.
He translates as he speaks to one of the Brazilian women. “She’s saying she really doesn’t identify herself as Hispanic, Latina or Spanish, which Question 8 asks — if she is from Hispanic background, Latino or Spanish,” he says. “As Brazilian, she says she’s none of that.”
The first priority for Leahy’s organization is to get people counted, period. But their second priority is to get Brazilians to answer “no” to the Latino question, and then to write-in “Brazilian” as their race. Many Brazilians feel that “Latino” is too closely identified with Spanish speakers to suit them.
“It is important that all Brazilians fill out the census form as Brazilians,” Leahy says, “so we can show that we are trying to become a stronger community, and we are trying to be more united and get together and have more political power in this country as well.”
Add that to the long list of things that are at stake for Massachusetts communities as Census 2010 rolls out.
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Recently, I found the 2010 Census form hanging on my door. As I began filling it out, I came across a dilemma. The U.S. government wants to know if my children are adopted or not and it wants to know what our races are. Being adopted myself, I had to put “Other” and “Don’t Know Adopted” for my race and “Other” and “Don’t Know” for my kids’ races.
Can you imagine not knowing your ethnicity, your race? Now imagine walking into a vital records office and asking the clerk for your original birth certificate only to be told “No, you can’t have it, it’s sealed.”
How about being presented with a “family history form” to fill out at every single doctor’s office visit and having to put “N/A Adopted” where life saving information should be?
Imagine being asked what your nationality is and having to respond with “I don’t know”.
It is time that the archaic practice of sealing and altering birth certificates of adopted persons stops.
Adoption is a 5 billion dollar, unregulated industry that profits from the sale and redistribution of children.
It turns children into chattel who are re-labeled and sold as “blank slates”.
Genealogy, a modern-day fascination, cannot be enjoyed by adopted persons with sealed identities. Family trees are exclusive to the non-adopted persons in our society.
If adoption is truly to return to what is best for a child, then the rights of children to their biological identities should NEVER be violated. Every single judge that finalizes an adoption and orders a child’s birth certificate to be sealed should be ashamed of him/herself.
I challenge all readers: Ask the adopted persons that you know if their original birth certificates are sealed.
@Skarrette – Would you like to have appropriate congressional representation? Because it’s based on the census – that’s why it’s conducted every 10 year as directed by the constitution. As for the rest of your rant, exactly how is trying to figure out the racial/immigrant make up of the country an invasion of privacy? It’s not like the gov’t is asking for your SSN, income, and sexual preferences. Get over yourself.
Whenever a group gets together and states something “HAS” to be done. I get nervous. First of all just from the onset before I even dig into the reasons for the census my first reaction is that its an invasion of privacy BIG TIME. If someone is going to make me fill something out than I need to know what they are really going to do with the information, not just what they on a radio they are going to do with the information. Who looks at the information? Where does the information get entered? Is their any investigation into the people that fill out the information. How do they protect peoples information? What do they do with the records from the information they collect? I need answers to these questions not propaganda about “your country needs you”. I have heard the “everything is alright speech, don’t worry about it” from to many agencies, politicians, and groups to fall for that. I need more information, and frankly while I was listening to your show today and a women stated that it’s the law, and you “HAVE to fill out the form, and people don’t fill out the form strangers will come to your house and harass you at your door to get it is offensive and inappropriate. First off I don’t have to answer my door ever, and no one can make me unless a judge orders it so I feel it is inappropriate to scare people into believing they have to open their doors. Also their is the moral issue of telling an undocumented immigrant that they need to fill out the census so that the rest of the population can benefit from programs they will excluded from. Why would an undocumented immigrant want to help give money to programs they are not allowed to participate in? Unless the government is planning on initiating the “coming out of the shadows” program and offer these immigrants who generate millions of dollars in this country though all the services and products they purchase, some protection from deportation and a more friendly less hostile environment to live and work in. Otherwise I would tell any immigrant I meet not to fill it out.
Fausto da Rocha is NOT the voice of the Brazilian community. It was not fair to Brazilians to identify Mr. Da Rocha in this way since NOT all Brazilians support the boycott.
As a Brazilian-American and a community activist I feel frustrated that Brazilians who support the Census and are working to get Brazilians to respond to the Census did not have their voicss heard and represented.
also important to notice that the GOVERNMENT definition of Latino does NOT include Brazilians
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