2020 Census Campaign – ‘Speak Up. Be Counted.’
This is a highlight story from Better to Speak’s 2021 Annual Report. To explore the full annual report, visit www.bettertospeak.org/past-work.
The census, last completed in 2020, determines the legislative representation and resources a community receives.
If you recall, Better to Speak did a little bit of outreach about the 2020 census through our “Speak Up. Be Counted.” campaign. We initially spoke to Kendall B. Johnson, Program Manager for the 2020 Census Integrated Communications team, who told us that the census ultimately comes down to “power and money.”
The 2020 Census Integrated Communications team developed a specific strategy and effort to reach Black communities through intentional imagery and visual representation in their ads and with the partnership of trusted voices on the ground in historically undercounted communities. Their goal was to show people that the census was a safe and trusted way for folks to make their voices heard.
As we’ve seen from the findings from the 2020 Census that are coming out nearly a year later, there were still issues with the accuracy and completeness of the count, which were only worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has had – and as we’ll see over the next 10 years, will have – a disproportionate effect on Black and brown communities.
Here are some of the specific insights that we’ve seen come in from the 2020 census so far:
colorism might have potentially played a role in census results.
The most fascinating insights from the census came from this article featuring Harvard Sociology professor Ellis Monk’s criticisms of the 2020 census, which includes his thoughts on the potential of colorism to be a cause of incomplete census results.
“[Monk] noted that the categories used by the census fail to account for how people appear, including their skin tone, facial features, and hair type, all of which are used when people discriminate against others.
‘One thing that we know — from my own research and other people who do this research on colorism and skin tone stratification — is that there’s quite significant inequality associated with differences in skin tone,’ he said. For example, research shows that there is more education inequality within the Black population along the skin tone continuum from light to dark than there is between Black and white people as a whole.
That lack of nuance in the census data collection limits what we can truly learn about racial inequality in the country, Monk added.”
Leading with this insight reminds us of what exactly the census is for, and how deeply we should rely on it for information about such a nuanced thing as racial identity. For example, with the following insight – what should we conclude from stories about an increase in people identifying as multiracial?
There was an increase in the number of people who identified as multiracial.
This has been a big point in mainstream news for the past few weeks and months. Professor Monk’s concerns about flaws in the census apply here as well, specifically with how questions about race and opportunities for self-identification were presented in the 2020 census:
“The census has been collecting data regarding race and ethnicity since 1790, but the latest population count changed the ways individuals could self-identify. Previous censuses asked only Hispanic respondents to include their origin. The 2020 census for the first time expanded origin questions to all respondents. It also called for Latinx people to identify as ‘of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,’ and in addition to identify their race."
Essentially, all of the buzz around populations of people of color increasing over white populations isn’t new information. How will this translate into proportionate representation in organizational leadership, among elected officials, and in other arenas where Black folks and people of color have historically lacked representation and decision-making power?
Black communities were undercounted.
A new analysis found that Black people were undercounted by about 2 million people, a higher rate than in previous years (in which Black folks were still historically undercounted). From the Washington Post – “‘This might be our greatest undercount since 1960, or 1950,’ said Marc Morial, president and chief executive of the National Urban League, which sued the bureau last year to stop the count from ending early.”
LEARN MORE: New Analyses Show Potential Undercount of Black Population During 2020 Census – The Takeaway
I’d possibly attribute this to the COVID-19 pandemic and the number of volunteers who were able to reach out to Black households in-person to ensure they completed the self-response form online or through a physical form, in addition to other conditions like “minorities, renters, low-income people and children” being typically undercounted in the census.
And I would also say that a lack of widespread culture that encourages completing the census and continual education about the census and its importance may keep the census from being front of mind for Black communities to be proactive and self-respond on their own, in addition to the fact that we were and are still in a pandemic, from which many Black people were and are struggling with. Many experts also attribute it to distrust of census takers, a lack of awareness and education about what the census is for and who all should be counted, as well as the digital divide impacting this newly “online first” census.
There were, unfortunately, a lot of things stacked up against the success of the census, in addition to the context of the last presidential administration that it had to operate under. And unfortunately, this will have disproportionate impacts on Black and brown communities in a deeply structural way.
Moving forward, I believe we need a transformation in education and outreach about the census, similarly to voting education and outreach, into a more sustained effort and culture of civic engagement.
Prison gerrymandering isn’t being addressed in mainstream conversations.
As defined by Tamar Sarai Davis in this article for Prism, “Prison gerrymandering is the process by which the population count of communities with correctional facilities is skewed or manipulated because of how incarcerated people are counted in the decennial census.”
LEARN MORE: 'Prison Gerrymandering' Is Blocked In These 11 States
This means that because of where certain carceral facilities are located (often called “prison towns”), there could technically be an entire legislative district made up of incarcerated people. Without policies and procedures in place to reallocate those numbers so that incarcerated people are counted in their home community, prison towns can acquire more representation and, ultimately, more political power due to the number of people being counted from prison in that district.
“Since 1790, the Census Bureau has counted incarcerated people as residents of the communities that they are incarcerated within as opposed to counting them as residents of the communities that they last lived in before they were detained. “The result is an illusion in which ‘prison towns,’ often fairly small, predominately white rural areas that lie far away from the neighborhoods many incarcerated people hail from, are more densely populated than they actually are. Meanwhile, neighborhoods that are heavily policed and have high rates of incarceration lose a significant amount of their population in the census count. This creates further disparities in how census counts determine resource allocation for these communities.”
In turn, it pulls political power and opportunities for accurate and fair representation from the communities these individuals are from – which are disproportionately Black and brown communities. This is already on top of the fact that people who are incarcerated often lose their voting rights and aren’t able to fully benefit from this political representation in the first place.
Final thoughts on “Speak Up. Be Counted.” and the 2020 census
For young people ages 18-25 especially, the next 10 years will represent many of us transitioning into more leadership roles in companies and organizations, becoming heads of our households, and starting families. What opportunities does the Census and Census outreach present for young leaders of color, particularly young Black leaders? How are communities investing in young people to meet the needs of their communities by educating them about the census and the importance of participating in it as a form of civic engagement? And then, how are communities now preparing young people to transition into the roles of community leaders who will bear the brunt of the implications of the 2020 census over the next 10 years?
The census personally opened my eyes to how important the data collection process is, let alone the actual implementation of the data, for seemingly basic aspects of our community lives. The census has the opportunity, like voting, to be an entry point for a longer-lasting role in civic engagement if communities are properly educated and offered opportunities to get involved.
If I had the chance to redo the “Speak Up. Be Counted.” campaign, I’d plan it and create the outreach materials much earlier in advance. I’d also include a more definitive action item for people to get involved through Better to Speak or a partner organization to funnel folks from just being aware of the census to actually completing the census. Then, I’d want to create learning opportunities to equip folks with the information needed to encourage friends and family outside of their household to complete it and ultimately volunteer in their local community to get even more people to complete the census and be educated in the long run about its importance.
