Thread: Black coalition pushes for 'unified' 2010 Census tally

Black coalition pushes for 'unified' 2010 Census tally

Updated 15m ago

ON THE RISE

The share of immigrants among the USA's black population is rising this decade:

Year - Total blacks - Foreign-born blacks - Share

2000 - 34.4 - 2.1 - 61%

2008 - 37.6 - 3.1 - 8.2%

Source: Census Bureau



AGENCY DEFENDS USE OF 'NEGRO' IN QUESTIONAIRE

This spring, more than 112 million households opening their Census forms will come face to face with the word that has gotten Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid into trouble: Negro. One of the Census questions about race states: "Black, African Am. or Negro."

Last week, theGrio.com, a news website on black issues, reported that young African Americans who may get Census forms for the first time this year are offended by the government's use of the antiquated word.

The Census Bureau says it has used the term on the form since 1950 and tests show that some blacks still identify with it the same reason it added "African American" in 2000, a time when a growing number of blacks identified themselves that way.

If testing this year shows that removing the term will not discourage people from responding accurately, the Census Bureau says it could drop it from future surveys. More than 56,000 wrote in "Negro" in 2000.

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

The campaign to get blacks to participate in the 2010 Census has forged an unprecedented bond between two groups that have not traditionally shared common goals: African Americans and black immigrants.

Civil rights organizations and advocates for the growing Caribbean and African immigrant population are setting aside differences and have formed the Unity Diaspora Coalition to push all blacks to fill out the federal forms. They vow to keep the coalition alive well beyond this year's Census — through the midterm elections, redistricting battles and all the way to the 2020 Census.

"We need the numbers," says Benjamin Afrifa, chairman and CEO of the African Federation, a group he founded in 2005. "The 2010 Census is an opportunity for us to go out there, mobilize the community. … We realize that we cannot do this in isolation."

The stakes are high. Blacks are among the most undercounted segments of the population, and Hispanics have outnumbered them as the nation's largest minority since 2003. The black immigrant population, meanwhile, has grown 47% since 2000 to 3.1 million.

The Census will be taken in less than three months. The results will help allocate seats in Congress to every state and more than $400 billion a year in federal money to communities. It will also provide the basis for the redrawing of political districts.

"When you look at certain communities here in Florida, in New York or Atlanta, a third or fourth of the people are immigrants," says Hulbert James, chairman of the South Florida Caribbean American Complete Count Committee and campaign manager for the new coalition.

Their presence can't be ignored by leading black activists, says James, who formerly was in charge of African-American and Caribbean affairs for the city of New York.

The coalition is spreading the Census message from Haitian festivals in New York and Miami and Nigerian community events in Houston to black churches in rural Mississippi and NAACP chapter meetings in Chicago.

"This generation of African-American and civil rights leaders is working much more closely together than before," says Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League and chair of the Census Advisory Committee. "There is strength in being unified."

Question of identity

The ninth question on the 10-question Census form asks people to identify their race. The black option lists "Black, African Am. or Negro." Many black immigrants do not identify with any of the labels, James says. "There is no Caribbean country and no African country."

As a result, many previously have left the race box blank and written in their national origin under the form's label of "some other race." Depending what country they're from, they may or may not be counted as black because Census scanners are programmed to assign write-ins to a race for only a limited number of countries.

In a nation where most blacks trace their origins to slavery, immigrants and refugees from the Caribbean and Africa are redefining what it means to be a black American. Jamaican and Haitians are the largest immigrant groups among those from the Caribbean, based largely in Florida and New York. Nigerians are the largest group among African immigrants.

Many black immigrants' homelands have a history of slavery, but they don't necessarily equate that with the U.S. legacy of slavery, Afrifa says. That's why immigrants cling to national origins rather than racial identities.

"Somebody from Jamaica may not identify themselves as African-American, black or Negro," says Melanie Campbell, executive director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation who helped found the Unity Diaspora Coalition. "This is about understanding that the black population is not monolithic but that we're all part of the American experience."

Push for more choices

Black immigrant groups are lobbying to add national origins to the Census taken every 10 years. The government previously added some for Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders but not for whites or blacks. "We don't have unlimited space on the form," says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census racial statistics branch, which is testing changes.

It's too late for any changes on the 2010 Census form, so the Unity Diaspora Coalition is urging black immigrants to mark the "black" box and to keep writing their national origins in the box labeled "some other race."

"We hope we will use this as a launching pad to address some of the apprehensions and concerns within the community," says Afrifa, who came here from Ghana in the 1980s.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/cen ... each_N.htm

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