Census Day: One Year Out
By Terry Ao Minnis
The year 2020 always promised to be a busy — even hectic — year, with both a decennial census and presidential election happening in the same breath. As much as groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC planned years in advance for a flurry of activity to engage and mobilize our communities, there was nothing that could have prepared us for what 2020 had in store. The COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty the previous administration introduced uprooted the taking of the census and the elections and resulted in the complete overhaul of many of our carefully-laid plans. Despite the confusion, the fear, and despair that marked 2020, we still achieved historic firsts, including the election of Kamala Harris, the first Black, South Asian, and multiracial female Vice President. In the face of chaos and uncertainty, we saw the perseverance of our community in rising to meet the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic and of political interference in the taking of the Census. We should take a moment, one year out from Census Day 2020, to reflect upon how we leaned on one another to improvise, adapt and overcome the challenges of the 2020 Census, while looking toward what we need to accomplish for the 2030 Census.
The census is required by the Constitution (Article I, Section II) to count all persons residing in the United States. The results of the census serve several vital purposes. Census data determine how political power is distributed, as they are used to reapportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to states according to population data.
Census results are also used to allocate nearly $1.5 trillion every year in federal funding to employment, education, medical, housing and other resources to local communities and families. Census data play an important role for governments, businesses, and other interested stakeholders (e.g., nonprofits like Advancing Justice — AAJC) in helping to use limited resources effectively and identify and address needs and concerns in the community..
Census data are especially important for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs) as it is the most comprehensive set of socioeconomic data points on our communities, particularly for detailed subgroups (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, and Bangladeshi), who are among our nation’s fastest growing and most diverse racial groups. Often viewed as homogenous, these communities include more than 50 detailed subgroups that can differ dramatically across key social and economic indicators.
This is why Advancing Justice — AAJC, along with the other Advancing Justice affiliates, work to eliminate the barriers that have historically resulted in the undercounting and underreporting of AANHPIs in the census. Advancing Justice has conducted extremely successful national, state, and local outreach and educational projects focused on the AANHPI communities for Census 2000 and Census 2010, and collectively did so again for Census 2020. Serving as the 2020 Census national resource hub for the AANHPI community, we provided educational resources to AANHPI communities such as a community engagement and communications toolkit, factsheets translated in 23 AANHPI languages, webinars, and more available at www.CountUsIn2020.org.
Our partners also led grassroots initiatives to increase community awareness of the census. For example, Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), which works to promote social justice by engaging Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities through culturally relevant advocacy, research, and leadership development, spearheaded a NHPI-specific census outreach campaign that was rooted in local communities and included translated materials and resources. EPIC shared graphics, videos, and events to get out the count in its community during an NHPI census week of action. To increase engagement and interest, the organization paired each day of the week with a theme that resonated with its community. Recognizing the need for solidarity between indigenous communities, EPIC partnered with Native People Count California to empower its indigenous siblings. This effort was crucial to increasing visibility of often overlooked NHPI communities.
The work of Adhikaar — an organization that champions the Nepali-speaking community — further exemplified the importance of grassroots organizations. Through its GOTC campaign, Adhikaar served thousands of community members and collected around 5,000 pledge cards, served 2,000+ Nepali-speaking community members, translated and reviewed 10+ census-related informational materials in Nepali, and completed 500 census forms during its census week of action.
Our community partners designed their GOTC campaigns around the well-researched and developed plan laid out by the Bureau. The 2020 Census officially kicked off in January 2020 in the remote Alaska Native village of Toksook Bay with the counting of the first person and household. But then in March 2020 — right at the moment that was supposed to be the crescendo to Census Day and the height of self-response engagement — the COVID-19 pandemic came to national prominence. The Census Bureau put a pause on its census operations in response to the pandemic to best assess how to move forward. From that, the Bureau developed a plan to address the public safety and health concerns of the pandemic, including a temporary closure of field offices and a delayed start to its field operations to follow up door-to-door with nonresponding households, pushing that work into late summer and into fall.
This change in schedule and timing, as well as the limited opportunities to engage with community members in-person, necessitated changes in how we mobilized for census participation. Because local partners needed to be kept abreast of the ever-changing landscape of the 2020 census in order to properly right-size their activities during the pandemic, we launched countusin2020.org/covid-19 to update people on the latest Census Bureau operational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. We translated these updates into 15 Asian American languages and continued to do so as new changes were announced.
Additionally, with the expertise of our telecommunications and technology program, we were well-positioned to engage social media and technology platforms to be forward-thinking and responsive to our communities’ needs at the intersection of our census, community engagement, and telecommunications and technology work, especially regarding misinformation and disinformation related to both census and voting.
Our partners quickly transitioned their existing GOTC infrastructures to handle the new pandemic environment. Grassroots organizations brought a sense of intimacy, community understanding, and creativity to the table when getting out the count during the pandemic. For example, when grocery deliveries increased during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, APIAVote-Michigan used this as an educational and mobilization opportunity by pairing grocery deliveries with census pledge cards and door-to-door education on the census. Organizations like Family Bridges addressed the additional stresses the pandemic caused by incorporating “wellness checks” into calls with elderly citizens during GOTC phonebanks. These examples underscore the increased care and empathy our partners had to exhibit in order to get out the count while preserving the well-being of community members.
We will have our first glimpse at the results of our collective census mobilization efforts when the apportionment data are released at the end of April. In a couple of months, the Census Bureau will also release its redistricting data, with the official release of the PL 94–171 data file planned for the end of September. These data releases will ramp up the redistricting process and the drawing of new lines at all levels of government.
In the meantime, groups should be organizing to engage in the redistricting process to ensure their communities’ voices are heard. They should also plan for the releases of data products so that they can help disseminate that information. Looking ahead, there will be plenty of work to do, like unpacking lessons learned from the 2020 census, furthering data disaggregation policies, working on the American Community Survey, and planning for the 2030 Census. But today, let’s take a moment and take stock in all that we were able to weather and overcome during 2020 and the taking of an unprecedented census!
Terry Ao Minnis is the senior director of census and voting programs at Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC.
