12 February 2010

Looking for a Full Count in U.S. Census

Arab, Iranian-American groups try to overcome worries about 2010 Census

 

A logo for the 2010 Census invites U.S. residents of all races and ethnic groups to participate in the census.

A logo for the 2010 Census invites U.S. residents of all races and ethnic groups to participate in the census.

By Jeff Baron
Staff Writer

Washington — Mahasti Afshar wants the 2010 U.S. Census to tell her how many people of Iranian birth or ancestry live in the United States, and where they are.

For that to happen, she has to get them to tell the 2010 Census that they are Iranian Americans.

Afshar, like other leaders of many ethnic groups in the United States, is helping to mobilize her community to participate enthusiastically in the census, which every 10 years tries to count and gather information on every one of the estimated 308.6 million people living in the United States. Since the last census, though, the government has changed its approach: The form that will go to households in mid-March is short — just 10 questions — and it has no questions about people’s ancestry, just one on race.

Each person’s information remains protected from prying eyes, inside and outside the government, for 72 years. Leaders of the Iranian and Arab communities in the United States are urging those groups to fill out the forms, reassuring them that the information will remain private and never will be used against them, no matter their politics or even whether they are in the United States legally.

The U.S. government has been counting its residents every 10 years since 1790. The U.S. Constitution requires the count; it is used to determine how many representatives each state gets in the federal Congress and to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to states and cities. The first census counted 3,929,326 Americans, and the biggest city was New York, then the nation’s capital, with 33,000 residents.

As the country grew, so did the census. Race was always a part of it; until the 1860s, when slavery was outlawed, slaves were counted separately in the census, and their numbers were factored into a state’s representation in Congress. The government also began to use the door-to-door count to find out more about its people: how old they were, for instance, what kinds of work they did, whether they could read and write, where they were born and where their parents were born.

By 1960, the Census Bureau had decided to ask everyone a basic set of questions and give a longer form of more than 100 questions to a smaller group of households. This year, the census form is the shortest in decades, and the long form is gone, replaced by an annual questionnaire, the American Community Survey, that goes to 3 million households.

Helen Samhan, executive director of the Arab American Institute Foundation, said Arab Americans and many other ethnic groups have mixed feelings about the census. Illegal immigrants “will have the most concerns about filling in a U.S. government form,” she said. And those concerns are very strong in the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities after a decade of U.S. security concerns focused on Islamic extremism. “There’s a natural suspicion that any government form can be misused or used against the person,” Samhan said.

For those Arab Americans “who are more secure,” including U.S. citizens, “the issue of recognition, respect, identity” is more important, so instead of wanting to avoid the census, they are eager to be counted in it, ancestry included, Samhan said.

“The American Community Survey does measure ancestry,” she said, but “it’s more hidden. It’s more technical. … It’s a little bit hard to sell.”

Mahasti Afshar is the executive director of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.

Roberto Ramirez, chief of the Census Bureau’s Ethnicity and Ancestry Branch, said the census form’s question on race is not designed to count the number of people from all different backgrounds. It provides 14 categories plus one marked “Some other race,” with a box in which people can write in their group. People of mixed races can mark more than one box.

“The issue is that we don’t have enough space to include a box for every group,” he said.

Just as many Haitian Americans are interested in gaining recognition by being counted as such in the census instead of being grouped in “Black, African American, or Negro,” Arab Americans, Iranian Americans, Turkish Americans and others have sought to be counted beyond the “White” category.

Ramirez said the list of racial categories is a product of many factors. Programs designed to help certain groups that have suffered historically — American Indians, for example — are funded according to where the people who need those programs live. The racial information also is used in enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws, Ramirez said.

Those who check “Other” and call themselves Iranian, Syrian or some other national or ethnic group will be counted separately, not in the first census report due out in spring 2011 but in what are called special tabulations.

Ramirez cautioned against expecting an accurate count of Iranian Americans, Arab Americans or other groups from the census. “People need to be aware that there will not be counts of Iranians, there will be counts of people who wrote in ‘Iranian,’” he said.

As usual, Ramirez said, the 2010 Census will include experiments: alternative questionnaires given to fewer than 500,000 households to test other versions of the same questions. So some people, he said, will see such choices as Egyptian and Haitian on the census form. The results will be used as the Census Bureau writes the form for the 2020 Census.

A coalition of national and regional Iranian-American groups, including the National Iranian American Council and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), is urging members of its community to check the “Other” box on the census form and write in “Iranian” or “Iranian American.” Many leaders are urging Arab Americans to use the same box to write in their ethnic or national background.

“We’re treating it like a political campaign,” said Afshar, PAAIA’s executive director. “We’re going to make it hip and exciting,” with volunteers from secondary schools and colleges mobilized to get out the word, through social media and events.

One idea for the large Iranian-American community in Southern California: a beach party to which community members would bring their census forms to fill out. PAAIA could supply pencils and Persian pizza, Afshar said.

She said the campaign is as much a matter of pride as it is an effort to gain information about the Iranian-American community. Even Iranian Americans who grew up in the United States will go to the trouble of filling in “Iranian” instead of simply checking the “White” box, she said. “I am not surprised to find so many young Iranians, the second generation, who are so attached to their culture,” she said.

Samhan said that no matter what people choose to do about listing their ethnic background, the most important thing is that they participate in the census. “Our primary message is how important it is for every household to complete and return the form,” she said. “Our overriding message is to not be afraid of the census and to complete it as a civic duty.”

“Ultimately, it will help your family, your schools, your cities and your states,” she said.