Census 2000 wants minorities to stand and be counted
By Stefanie Wong
Unity 99 Convention Online Staff

Being counted in the United States is everyone's constitutional right.

So when 8.4 million people were not accounted for in the 1990 Census, minority groups took notice because undercounting can be especially damaging for their communities.

Census data is used to establish congressional apportionment, federal funding for education and programs, and enforcing provisions under laws such as the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act.

"(The Census will) determine if our communities can do vital social programming for a 10-year period," said Menominee tribe Chairman Apesanahkwap, a panelist discussing Census 2000 during Unity '99's opening plenary session.

Using a statistical method called sampling the U.S. Census Bureau believes minority communities were severely undercounted:

§         4.5 percent of Native Americans were missed (12.2 percent on reservations)

§         5 percent of Latinos

§         4.4 percent of African Americans

§         2.3 percent of Asian Pacific Islanders.

Changing family structures, high mobility and illiteracy were some of the reasons cited for the undercount.  In minority communities, there were also language barriers, issues of mistrust in the government and lack of information about the importance of the census.

There has also been a general decrease in census participation - the percentage of households that returned the surveys declined from 80 percent in 1970 to 65 percent in 1990.

"The census response rate is a symbol of the decline of civic engagement," said Kenneth Prewitt, director of the U.S. Census Bureau. He also believes that the census is the largest indicator of social inequality.

With this in mind, the Census Bureau and community groups across the nation are vigorously working to educate and encourage people to turn in the Census 2000 surveys, which will be mailed in March.

Besides multi-language television advertisements, brochures and community forums, the panelists also urged the media, specifically journalists of color, to cover Census 2000 and the issues surrounding it.

"If we don't do this story, if we continue to ignore it, we will have failed our communities because no one else will do it," said Steven Holmes, a reporter for The New York Times.