An Ethnic Strategy on the Census

The African American woman who wandered into the makeshift help center at a Los Angeles church was ready to mail in her census form, save for one nagging question: “Where is this black box I’m supposed to fill out?”

Staffer Barbara Smith pointed to the survey’s section on race, which contained 15 white boxes, denoting race-related categories the U.S. Census Bureau is tracking. For the first time, people can fill in as many boxes as they think appropriate. The woman, who had been told to “check the black box,” looked surprised, Smith recalled with a smile. “She thought the box was actually black.”

There is, of course, no black box. “Check the black box” is just an advertising phrase, the centerpiece of a $1-million California campaign being conducted in the black communities of six counties.

Black leaders are trying to persuade residents of African American descent to check only the box denoting the black race even though their forebears may have been a rich mixture of Latino, Anglo, Native American, Asian American, Pacific Islander and African American. Leaders of other racial and ethnic groups favor the same course for their people.

The results of filling out more than one box could provide the first comprehensive look at an emerging, multiracial America. But it’s a look that many blacks and members of other minority groups would rather not take. They worry that the government will use mixed census counts to lessen their numbers and, ultimately, the gains they have made toward achieving equality with white Americans.

As minority groups have said during the entire census process, much is at stake politically and financially.

One benefit of checking a single box is to assure that, after the census, government officials who draw congressional, legislative and local government district lines during reapportionment will know precisely where members of an ethnic group live.

To create a district where a black candidate has a good chance of winning, for example, it is necessary to know the areas where blacks are a majority. Checking multiple boxes can make that difficult, if not impossible.

The same holds true when government officials target aid programs for specific areas. To target funds for a program that might be especially beneficial for Asian Americans, it would be necessary to know where they live.

An undercount a decade ago resulted in black neighborhoods’ losing tens of millions of dollars in federal funds that are allocated, in part, on a population basis.

Former Rep. Mervyn Dymally (D-Los Angeles), who is working to boost African and Caribbean immigrants’ participation in the census, put it this way: “Let’s not dilute the black vote right now. We have to change America right now.”

That sentiment is echoed by the Congressional Black Caucus and other African American leaders nationwide. Their call has helped launch numerous initiatives to boost the black census count, including the “check the black box” campaign in California, of which Smith and hundreds of other workers are a part.

But that message has leaders in the multiracial community seething.

“Continuing to put people in a single category that doesn’t represent their experience is tantamount to fraud and perpetuating racism,” said Ramona Douglass, past president of the Assn. of MultiEthnic Americans, an umbrella organization for multiracial groups nationwide. A member of the Census 2000 advisory committee, Douglass said she has complained to census officials about the effort.

Campaign Perpetuates Division, Critics Say

Such tactics promote the very racial divisions that civil rights organizations have spent decades trying to eradicate, she and other opponents say.

Advocates of a single response, on the other hand, argue that the census shouldn’t be treated as a heritage checklist. It’s an instrument used to determine political representation and federal funding, of which black Americans have never had their fair share, they said. Race information is also used to ensure compliance with the Federal Voting Rights Act and other laws protecting minorities.

“It’s not about the individual. It’s about collective strength,” said the Rev. Norman Johnson, who heads the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s arm of the black box campaign in Los Angeles. “We’re trying to make it as simple as possible.

Fueling the resolve of Johnson and other campaign leaders is the staggering undercount of 7.6% of black Californians--about one in 13--in the 1990 census. By comparison, 4.9% of the state’s Latino population, or one in 20, was missed.

Of the more than 181,000 blacks missed statewide, close to half lived in Los Angeles County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The state’s black communities, its leaders estimate, lost $167 million in federal funding. More teachers, school nurses and after-school care could have been provided in the past decade if more people had been counted, said Jan Perry, who runs the city of Los Angeles’ Complete Count Committee.

The “black box” initiative is “designed to communicate that we in the community have a stake in the outcome,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who helped organize the campaign. “It’s really to say to them: Don’t miss this opportunity.”

Black census campaigns are not the only minority initiatives pushing for particular responses on the race question. Taiwanese and Cambodian community leaders are urging their constituents to mark off “Other Asian” and write in their nationalities to ensure recognition. Native Americans have a vocal campaign to ensure that their numbers do not shrink by encouraging respondents who generally identify themselves as Native American to limit their choice to a single box.

“It’s a fear of the unknown. You have to respect that.” said Reginald Daniel, a UC Santa Barbara assistant professor of sociology specializing in race and ethnicity. “A possibility of a less wholehearted commitment to that community could result. . . . But the question is, are we at a point in our history where there has to be an expanded discussion of the fact that people may have multiple communities and multiple [racial] affiliations?”

How federal, state and local governments will tabulate multiracial responses from this year’s census also is an evolving formula, given the statistical nightmare of dealing with the minimum 63 categories of people that emerge from the newly devised race question. The White House Office of Management and Budget, under pressure from minority groups, released guidelines last month that say multiple-race respondents will be counted as minorities for the purpose of civil rights enforcement. If someone has checked two or more minority races, the race related to that person’s civil rights complaint will be counted, according to the rules.

The Census Bureau, meanwhile, has spent none of its $167-million advertising budget on explaining the new multiracial option.

“Because of heightened concerns and sensitivities, we did not attempt to advertise and give instructions, but we don’t on any other item, either,” said bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt in a recent telephone news conference. Information on the race question is available at census questionnaire assistance centers or through toll-free phone numbers the bureau has set up, he added.

Others Urge Multiracial Response

Although the lack of bureau outreach to mixed-race Americans and monoracial tabulations by the government could limit a true picture of the country’s ethnic landscape, advocates of multiple race responses said people should still mark all the census boxes they identify with.

Black census campaigns are wrong to discourage that, said Kimberly Cooper, a Pepperdine University graduate student of Irish and African American descent.

“They want us to check the African American box to get enough numbers. But there’s also a multiracial community that doesn’t have any representation whatsoever,” she said.

Single-response initiatives are “basically continuing the one-drop rule,” created by white slave owners centuries ago who considered anyone with even one drop of African blood to be black, said Thomas Lopez, president of Multiracial Americans of Southern California, which claims 300 members.

Then again, the original census counted Africans as only three-fifths of a person, said Black Entertainment Television talk show host Tavis Smiley.

“Today we have an opportunity to be counted as a whole person. We should take advantage of that” by checking one box, said Smiley, who, with radio show host Tom Joyner, last week completed a 42-city tour promoting black participation in the census.

State resources have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to some of the black census initiatives. But Jorge Jackson, director of the state’s Complete Count Committee, said they have steered clear of funding advertisements that talk about what to check.

That is not the “check the black box” campaign’s driving purpose, said project director Kristen Haggins. The program, which targets black residents of Alameda, Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, is privately funded through the California Endowment, she said.

“We’re looking for truly disenfranchised folks,” Haggins said, adding that hundreds of canvassers are knocking on doors in undercounted neighborhoods, coaxing residents to fill out census forms. It’s up to respondents how they fill them out.

The campaign’s “black box” name was designed as a “catchy phrase to unite our community,” Haggins said.

“It’s short, sweet and to the point,” Perry agreed.

But some of the campaign’s written advertisement and news releases suggest something more. “Just check the black box,” one flier pronounces. “Claim and celebrate your African roots.”

At the grass-roots level, encouragement to check the black box is more subtle. Smith and Leola Williams, who run the census help center at Crenshaw United Methodist Church, said that if asked, they tell respondents to include the black box in any multiracial response they give, rather than dissuade them from checking other categories.

Cooper, of Pepperdine, and USC senior Bobby Thompson, who is half black and half Korean, each said they marked two boxes to reflect their identity.

By checking only one box, multiracial people lose out on funding that caters to their specific needs, said Cooper, who is working on a master’s degree in education. She added that schools, which rely on federal formats to categorize their pupils, may not recognize the need for including multiracial curricula because their students are categorized as being of a single race.

Her family was identified on the last census as African American because there were no other options, she said. “Have we changed? No. Have our options changed? Yes.”

“Take this census as a learning process for the next decade,” Thompson said. “Next time, hopefully they’ll know how to do it better.”

Times researcher Sunny Kaplan contributed to this story.