Count Us In: Showing Up For the Census Right Now
The SF Urban Film Fest (SFUFF) along with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) hosted a panel conversation on June 30th 2020, that I had the honor of moderating, about the 2020 U.S. Census, “Count Us In: Showing Up for the Census Right Now.” The panel was part of YBCA’s ongoing Census project, Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America?, that includes a city-wide campaign led by the Art+Action coalition and commissioned by the San Francisco Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs to spur participation in the Census with the help of artists and community-based organizations.
Featured on the panel was Tyra Fennell, the founding director of Imprint City, Del Seymour, the founder of Code Tenderloin, and Robert Clinton, the city-wide Census project manager for SF OCEIA. Those organizations were invited on to the panel because of the centrality of their efforts to inform San Francisco residents about the importance of the Census, especially to historically neglected neighborhoods and undercounted communities.
SFUFF intentionally chose to focus on the Black community in San Francisco. This was a crucial choice because Black San Franciscans and the neighborhoods they predominately live in have been historically neglected and discriminated against — Black people in the Bay Area have been subjected to racial segregation, systemic racist treatment in policing and criminal justice, and other forms of racial injustice, and their neighborhoods have been subjected to disinvestment and demolition during the city’s redevelopment projects following WW2, and then decades of under-development. The ongoing result of this history is the loss of the Black population in San Francisco, which has been exacerbated by gentrification and the state-wide housing crisis.
We are in the middle of several international crises that highlight the importance of the Census for the Black communities in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The Census is happening while the city, state, and country is gripped by the COVID-19 crisis, which is disproportionately affecting the Black and Latinx communities in the Bay Area. Additionally, starting in late May, we have been experiencing, participating in, and bearing witness to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, sparked by the killing in late May of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officers. Getting an accurate Census count of all the residents of San Francisco, and especially of Black San Franciscans, is an important part of addressing the issues raised by the COVID-19 crises and the Black Lives Matter movement.
So, if you haven’t filled out a Census form yet stop reading and fill it out now.
The U.S. Census is decennial and the count began in January in remote U.S. locations. In March every household was supposed to be sent instructions on how to complete the Census by mail, phone, or — for the first time this year — online. March of this year was also the month when six Bay Area Counties issued shelter-in-place orders as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States after bringing havoc and death to several countries abroad. Getting an accurate Census count was already challenging because of many obstacles that get in the way of informing households and individuals about the Census and convincing them to fill it out. Some of those obstacles involve economic disparities and precarity, such as two or more households residing in a single residence, homelessness, or even a lack of a stable home address or access to wifi.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an additional and, in our lifetimes, unprecedented challenge to the successful completion of the Census. For example, one of the main programs of SF OCEIA is to facilitate an accurate count of the residents of San Francisco, but it can’t do that if it can’t reach all the people who are inaccessible by deploying Census workers to physically knock on doors because of the shelter-in-place orders. All the panelists remarked on the serious challenge that COVID-19 has presented to the city’s Census efforts but the severity of this crisis highlights the importance of getting an accurate count. The challenges include an enduring distrust of the U.S. government and its institutions, like the Census, caused by historical factors or serious personal concerns. Distrust of the federal government lingers for good reason and that reason is inextricably linked to race, the founding of the United States, and the Census.
It begins with the infamous three-fifths compromise of 1787 that counted enslaved Blacks as “three-fifths” of a person for the sake of apportioning state representatives to Congress, which added to the political power of slave-holding states and helped preserve that evil institution. From that moment on the Census has been wrapped up in American politics about race and citizenship; it has continuously been used to determine who belongs, who doesn’t, who is White, who is Native Americans, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American and so on, and often with very confusing language and results.
The history of the Census being used against non-White residents and citizens of the United States continues with the present administration’s failed attempt to repress an accurate count by adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, which was stopped by the Supreme Court. So often the Census has been used as a weapon against the U.S. democracy, its people, and to further racist and xenophobic ends. This contemptible history has birthed a mistrust that lingers in our communities and neighborhoods.
Despite its dubious history and the undemocratic, racist, and xenophobic uses it has been put to, the Census is a tool of democracy that has also been used in the fight for political power, the equitable distribution of public resources and services, and the public recognition of America’s diversity. The great effort of SF OCEIA, Imprint City, and Code Tenderloin to communicate to the residents of San Francisco and specifically the residents of the Bay View and Tenderloin about the importance of the Census and to encourage them to get counted directly stresses the great importance of the Census.
The Census is important or everybody. Thus not getting an accurate count is a major problem for municipalities at all levels and the communities and the individuals that live within them. Not only is it constitutionally mandated, it is also required for determining the number of representatives each state gets in the House of Representatives. Likewise, Census results are also used to draw each state’s Congressional districts, so it determines the number of representatives each area of the state gets. This means that Census counts are fundamentally tied to political power — between states and within states. Tied to the apportionment of political power by population is the distribution of federal and state public resources and services, as SF OCEIA reports, like the amount of funds each state receives for “schools, hospitals, roads, and social services,” and even down to the “locations for new roads, transportation lines, and businesses.”
When we fill out the census we are counted; when we don’t, we’re invisible and that lack of visibility — through the Census count — adds to the reasons why so many in the country feel like their lives don’t count. In fact, some, including the current occupant of this nation’s highest office, don’t want Black and Brown folks to be counted. It is a malevolent thing to promote willful ignorance about who makes up America. This willful ignorance is connected to other evasions of the truth, for example, about the full extent of COVD-19 cases and deaths and the fundamental ethical and justice claims driving the Black Lives Matter movement. Not counting all in America, not counting us, reinforces undemocratic and unjust civic invisibility and exclusion. It is another form of ignoring our personhood, our moral dignity, and right to be represented. The answer is for us to demand that we be counted in.
Watch and share highlights from the panel:
Dive into the full panel discussion:
Ronald R. Sundstrom is the SF Urban Film Fest Humanities Advisor, Professor of Philosophy & African American Studies at the University of San Francisco, & Black Philosophy Consortium Co-Convenor. For more information about SF Urban Film Fest, visit their website.
