Janine Jackson interviewed Liz OuYang on the hijacking of the 2020 census for the August 14, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (7/28/20)
Janine Jackson: The coronavirus pandemic had already added difficulties to the 2020 census. Now the Census Bureau says workers will only have until September 30 to solicit responses, despite having previously established a deadline of October 31. The maneuver follows the Trump White House’s insertion of two new political appointments into the Census Bureau, whose job descriptions it won’t make public, and Trump’s order in late July, calling for excluding undocumented immigrants from the census count used to apportion congressional representation.
Given the transparently political nature of these actions, headlines like one in the New York Times, expressing “worry” that they might lead to a “botched” count, seem needlessly delicate.
Here to talk about efforts to hijack the 2020 census and resistance to those efforts is longtime civil rights attorney and advocate Liz OuYang. She serves as a consultant on the census to community-based organizations, and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Liz OuYang.
Liz OuYang: Thank you. It’s unfortunate that I’m back for these reasons.
JJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, when we spoke with you, in November of 2018, the Trump administration was trying to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, over the vehement objection of, not just immigrant advocates, but statisticians and previous Census directors. The Supreme Court ultimately shot that down, though, I’m reminded, only by 5–4. But what we’re seeing now, and this executive order in particular, it’s just that same effort back again, right?
LOY: It is. The Trump administration is using its abuse of its executive powers in a way that’s even more direct, by orders to the Census Bureau to do certain things, which is just going to wind itself back in the courts again. But I think what’s even [more] appalling is just the continual attempt to try to instill fear among immigrants in completing the census. This is yet another attempt, after the communities successfully rallied against getting the citizenship question off the census, with less than two months or three months—we are in August, September, October—left to complete the census, he tries yet again to instill fear in people in completing it.
And what makes it outrageous—just simply outrageous, the abuse of power here—is that the Census Bureau’s own experts, their own seasoned, longtime employees, said in April of this year that they were not able to, because of Covid-19, complete the census in a timely and accurate way, so that they requested that the deadline for self-completion be extended until October 31. And then, for this administration, to not only, one, defy what the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 and try, with directives to the Census Bureau, to exclude undocumented aliens from the employment base, but then, also, to abruptly shorten the deadline, from the extended one to October 31, because of the challenges of Covid-19, and then move it up to September 30, which is approximately a month and a half away. When the Census Bureau’s own people said in April, there’s no way that they can do an accurate census, and so they wanted the deadline for self-reporting to be extended to October 31.
And they wanted the deadline for reporting to the president the apportionment numbers, from the end of December to April 30, 2021. That they would not have enough time to complete and get these results to the president, whoever it is, following this election, by December 31, and they requested a extension until April 30, 2021.
Liz OuYang: “To blatantly ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling, ignore the Census Bureau’s own employees’ determination that it could not be done in an accurate and efficient way, is amazing.”
And so to blatantly ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling, ignore the Census Bureau’s own employees’ determination that it could not be done in an accurate and efficient way, is amazing, especially because this is a survey that is the most cited for statistics. It is a national survey: Businesses, governments, locals, cities, state, federal, all base information and planning based on the 2020 census. As critical to that is redistricting. An attempt to politicize it so that people do not complete the census, so that political lines can be drawn to favor one party, and a complete obstruction of power and justice. And all in the name of representative democracy. There’s nothing more autocratic than this usurpation of power, that both the Supreme Court and the people were successful in getting the citizenship question off the census. It’s just outrageous.
JJ: And it sounds as though directing Commerce, which runs the census, to exclude undocumented immigrants, that’s just unconstitutional, isn’t it? I mean, legally, it’s a nonstarter. And I do want to say that that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact. But there’s no way that that passes constitutional muster. The Constitution and the 14th Amendment are pretty clear about this, aren’t they?
LOY: They are supposed to be a count of all persons living in the states. And you can turn a blind eye, but there are more than 11 million undocumented persons living in the United States. And they’re contributing to the statistics that lead to the growth of businesses, as to planning, etc. They’re very much an integral part of this country. Whether as essential workers to, you name it to keep this economy thriving. And so their numbers definitely should be counted as far as planning goes. So the Constitution is very clear that it is a count of all persons living in a state, and they are definitely persons.
JJ: It’s not like they didn’t think about it; they had thought about it, we’d been through the three-fifths of a person thing. There was an understanding that you needed to have an accurate picture of who was in the states, regardless of their citizenship status. It’s not like they didn’t think about it.
LOY: Right. And it goes again to accuracy, goes to civic participation, that all persons…. We’re interdependent. We are interconnected. The Census is supposed to be apolitical. And there’s a reason for that. We have to have reliable data. You have both Republican and Democrat businesses, you have, particularly now with healthcare, we are interdependent upon each other, and our survival, and our health, is dependent on a collective responsibility of everybody living in this country. And not to have an accurate count, it’s shooting ourselves in the foot.
JJ: Let me ask you just a little about the mechanics of it, because pushing up the deadline, that concretely means that some people, and not just any people, but those people who are historically undercounted, those that are hardest to reach: There’s the folks who knew just won’t get counted at all, if we shorten up the time.
LOY: And they’re the ones that need to be counted, because they’re the ones that stand the most to lose from a loss of money from federal programs that they may benefit from. We’re talking most specifically about small children. So many federal programs go to nutritional programs for children’s Head Start, CHIP, Title One schools, you name it. And similarly, there’s sizable money dedicated for programs regarding housing. So low-income renters are at risk. We’re talking about those with English-language issues, people from rural areas, urban areas, densely populated areas, hard-to-reach communities. Also, the areas hit hardest by Covid-19. African and Latino, poor communities, infant mortality rate, as a result of Covid-19, disproportionate to wealthier areas. And so they’re being hit doubly by Covid-19, and then, after an underreporting, not being able to receive critical services. And so to shortchange that, when community-based organizations have relied on that information, and broadcast to their community that you have until October 31, because of Covid-19, to complete the census, and now it’s being changed, and who’s going to get that knowledge out to the communities?
JJ: More confusion, more confusion.
LOY: More confusion, and more confusion leads to more distrust. There’s already a great deal of skepticism about, is this information going to be confidential, you know, what’s going to be done with this information, etc., etc. And with this administration, and its record of deceit, you just don’t know. Then to add to that changing deadlines and rules, not even midway: We’re talking less than two and a half months, originally. And then trying to, again, exclude undocumented from the census. It’s a deliberate attempt to instill fear in everyone being able to participate in the most basic of civic responsibilities, and that’s completing the census.
JJ: Let me just ask you a mechanical question that a lot of folks might not know about. If the census workers can’t, if they’re shut down from getting to talk to people from door knocking, or from getting people to self report, if that ends—they do use methods to kind of guesstimate the folks they didn’t get to, and that can introduce another level of erasure, right?
LOY: Erasure and inaccuracy. The more you try to use other mechanisms, besides self-response, direct self-response, then it increases the level of inaccuracy, especially in places like New York City, where it is so diverse. For instance, if people, because of Covid-19, are afraid to open their doors to strangers knocking on their doors, census enumerators, then one of the ways they do it is try to impute data. And they look at data in the area, socioeconomic data in the area; that’s one thing that they can look at, to try to impute who might live at this house. What race might live at this house, what age group might live at this house. And so you look at records, government records, but not everyone has completed certain government records, right, the level of imputation becomes less and less reliable. And it’s just unbelievable, because a survey that is most cited by scientists, by business, by government, is going to be fraught with inaccuracy. And planning is all going to be based on inaccurate information. And that can just open up such a Pandora’s box of error upon error upon error.
JJ: Well, we are outraged. We’re flabbergasted. But we’re also, in a way, not surprised, because this administration has telegraphed every move about this. They haven’t hidden their racist and nativist priorities. So let’s talk a little bit about the forces of resistance to these racist and antidemocratic efforts from the White House. There are lawsuits. There are legislators, there are groups, I mean, folks are ready to push back against this.
LOY: They are ready. There is, right now, and people should be supporting, efforts to get Congress to pass legislation that would make it very clear, because Congress has authority over the Census, to extend the deadline of the results being reported to the president, whoever it is, end of December, to put in statute what the original request of the Census Bureau employees, experts, were in April of this year, to extend the statutory deadline from the end of December to April 30. And then, subsequently, to get the numbers to states for the apportionment by the end of July. And so I hope that Congress will pass that and put this to rest. And in support of this legislation are four former Census Bureau directors, Republican and Democrat alike, who have said that it is impossible to complete the census, given Covid-19, by the end of December, and so these statutory deadlines must be extended, in light of the horrific situation our country is dealing with. People are focused on surviving, and not completing the census right now. And it’s a very difficult time. Yeah. And everyone recognizes that, but this administration.
JJ: Everyone but this administration.
Just finally, the word “erasure” gets thrown around. But this really is that; this is an effort to disappear some people, to take them out of the mirror that we hold up to the country. You really can’t underestimate the damage of that. Material damage, resource damage, but also a kind of psychic damage, a kind of damage to our knowledge and our self-understanding, if you will. This is about erasure.
LOY: And it adds to the divisiveness that this country does not need right now. We need to be united to fight Covid-19, we need to be united to fight institutional racism. And then to add this feeling of not counting, you’re not included, at a time when this country needs to come together. To add insult again to injury, the undocumented community is the one that are at the forefront, with other essential workers, other food providers, delivery workers, etc, making this country run during a pandemic. And then to say they don’t count, they’re invisible?
I think one thing that you also pointed to, Janine, is we are heading towards a depression, maybe; our economy in a major recession right now, because of Covid-19. This is not the time at all to squander resources, and the efforts this administration has gone through to waste so much time and money on lawsuits that are so obvious, but yet spending so many people’s resources to fight, is to me criminal. There are millions of people without jobs now, small businesses are folding left and right. And this administration is, in the face of it all, just wasting so many of our resources on something that is so black and white in our Constitution, and the efforts that it will go to politicize it is just shocking.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with civil rights attorney and advocate Liz OuYang. She’s a consultant on the Census to community-based organizations. If you haven’t already, you can fill out the census at My2020Census.gov. Liz OuYang, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
LOY: You’re welcome.
Print
CounterSpin | Radio Free (2020-08-28T18:50:26+00:00) ‘Not to Have an Accurate Count Is Shooting Ourselves in the Foot’. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/08/28/not-to-have-an-accurate-count-is-shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.