Magazine

One, she says, is the nation’s “huge increase in the number of foreclosed homes.” That means many people aren’t living in the same residences as they were last year, when Census workers canvassed neighborhoods to collect addresses. Second, and unlike years past, immigration officials will not halt raids during the count. As a result, persuading undocumented immigrants to fill out the form will be even more difficult than usual. Groups including the Mexican American Political Association and the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders have called for a Census boycott, which they call a response both to the Obama administration’s immigration policies — withholding amnesty for undocumented immigrants and implementing tougher employment verifications — and the continued raids. In order to fulfill its objective in this politically and economically charged environment, the Census Bureau has settled on a simple plan: Get propaganda— and even get silly.

Starting with its tagline, “ten questions, ten minutes for 2010,” the bureau is marketing this year’s Census as a kinder, friendlier exercise in bureaucracy. It has eliminated the so-called “long form,” which used to go to one in six American households, and asked such detailed questions as “What time do you leave for work?” and for information on disabilities, income and English-language competency, among other sensitive topics. Such questions, explains Cohn, rankled many Americans, who expressed concerns about privacy and paranoia about who might access their answers. (These questions are now relegated to the American Community Survey, for which different sets of questions are sent to different households over the course of many years.)

The bureau has also deployed 13 vans to travel around each Census region for a “2010 road tour,” says Philadelphia Regional Office media specialist Yvette Nuñez. The vans’ Plexiglas interiors are incised with each of the 2010 questions; with erasable marker, visitors can practice filling out the form. The vans, whose bold reds and blues resemble those of campaign buses, are making appearances at the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade and the Denver Powwow, among other events. In the vans, visitors can take photos of themselves and record testimonials, says Igor Alves, media specialist in the New York Regional Office. Visitors, he explains, are encouraged to record whatever they feel is relevant — regarding their neighborhoods, say (“I’d like to see more funding for parks or seniors in this area”), or personal lives (“I come from a family of eight people”). These profiles will be archived on the Census website.

The site also features professionally produced profiles, including one of a man calling himself the Scorpion, whose job is described as cab driver/philosopher. His tagline: “I’m not just a cab driver; I’m also a good-looking man driving a good-looking car.” The Scorpion, a self-identified son of migrant workers whose profile is featured on the main page, is Latino; so is Raquel, likewise featured on the main page and who tells her story in Spanish with English subtitles. These would-be Census participants give a face to the different kinds of people who benefit from services supported by Census-allotted federal funds, and humanize an impersonal government process.

 

The government wants to count people, but not to give them the benefits that come with being counted,” says Roy Cristanto, a pastor in Charlotte, N.C.

Bureau officials, says Cohn, are also “sticking their toes into online media,” with Census director Richard M. Groves maintaining a blog, A Look from the Inside. (One can only wonder what Groves, a Ph.D. in sociology and former University of Michigan professor, said when told that his new responsibilities included blogging.) Folks can also track the Census vans’ progress across America using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, as they might a favorite band.

Also for the first time, says Nuñez, Spanish versions of the form will be sent out to some 13 million residences in areas identified as Latino. To further reach ethnic and racial minorities, which are traditionally undercounted, the bureau is partnering with community groups to try to persuade constituents that the Census is “safe to do and useful,” says Cohn. Perhaps the best example of the resulting mashup of politics, propaganda and bureaucracy is a mural that recently went up on the side of a bodega in New York’s Spanish Harlem. The painting — which depicts, among others, Latino musicians, a construction worker, a firefighter and a doctor — proclaims in Spanish: “Your community needs you; to move forward, we need you to participate. Visit 2010census. gov. Paid for by the office of the Census of the United States.” The painting, which evokes the Latino tradition of murals — think Diego Rivera — was conceived by GlobalHue, a marketing firm that is handling the Census’ media outreach to blacks and Hispanics. For the project, GlobalHueconsulted Jane Weissman, co-author of On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City, and hired Brooklyn-based artists Critical Massive to paint it. For television spots, an actor has been hired to pose as if finishing the mural.

But there are signs it’s going to take much more than a mural to allay the concerns of minority groups — especially undocumented immigrants. “Any jackass that’s close to the community knows that an immigrant doesn’t enjoy the services for which they’re being counted,” says Nativo Lopez, national president of the Mexican American Political Association. “Enhanced political representation is irrelevant to them,” he says, adding that interventions like the mural are insignificant compared with the “more palpable experiences” of undocumented people, like immigration raids or job losses. Roy Crisanto, pastor of El Tabernaculo De La Uncion in Charlotte, N.C., has advised parishioners to join the boycott, telling The Charlotte Observer, “The government wants to count people, but not give them the benefits that come with being counted.”
Alves, of the Census Bureau, insists the count is a chance to bring home a portion of “$400 billion a year for the next 10 years. Why would you not want to maximize that?” He adds that the bureau does “not contribute or share any information” with other federal agencies, including immigration and customs enforcement. “We have a completely different mission and a completely different approach: a constitutional mandate to make sure we get everybody counted in the right place.”
Says Cohn, “Whether the steps they’re taking to make it friendlier overcome the greater obstacles is yet to be seen.”

 

 

 

This article appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!