Armenian Population of Glendale Must Figure out Census for Themselves
The Big Fat Armenian Family Challenge urges Armenian Americans to post pictures of their family with the hashtag #BIGFATARMENIANFAMILY on Facebook and Instagram. This is one of very few efforts to increase Armenian representation on this year’s census by writing in “Armenian” on Box 9. With only 45 tagged posts in total, the most recent being on April 2nd, this great idea for outreach has fallen short of its goal.
In Glendale, a city known for its Armenian presence with famous restaurants like Raffi’s Place and many other Armenian-owned small businesses, public funding for their community takes a massive hit. Left with no public outreach about the census due to COVID-19, the Armenian community faces even more issues of undercounting.
It is estimated that there are 1.5 million Armenian Americans residing in the United States, however fewer than 500,000 are actually recorded by the Census according to HyeCount.org, a website advocating for Armenian American representation on the 2020 Census. More adults in Glendale speak an Indo-European language(predominantly Armenian)than English at home. In census years past, mail-in options excluded Glendale’s high foreign-born population, of which many do not speak English. This accounts for almost half the population according to census data.The fact that there was no Armenian translation option easily available is only one of the factors in them being significantly undercounted historically in the community.
The Armenian American community has few sites with Census outreach. The most popular being HyeCount, which is a website that strives to get the Armenian population represented. This effort was in collaboration with the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) to promote Census response rates. This encourages the Armenian-American community to not only participate in the 2020 Census but to identify their family as Armenian, in order to allocate public funds for them more accurately. While the format of the website is minimal, it does its part to educate Armenians on how they can impact their community by giving themselves proper representation.
“The Census is important for public funding such as schools, roads and hospitals,” Dr. Raffi Petrosian said. “I was born in Armenia and my parents were born in Iran. I consider myself Middle Eastern and I put down Armenian as my ethnicity on my form.”
Public gatherings about the census were scheduled to be available at cultural centers and churches in Glendale but then coronavirus hit the nation, canceling all these events. Without any Census outreach, those with a language barrier to completing the Census are left on their own to decipher the form.
“Before COVID-19, we were going to have mobile questionnaire assistance operators in areas with low-responses historically,” local census representative Megan Mellybye said. “Now we will likely not have these operators, but instead we will only have the follow-up personnel going door-to-door at some point.”
Currently the follow-up personnel, also known as the Nonresponse Followup (NRFU), have been delayed from May 13- July 31 to Aug. 11-Oct. 31 currently. However, this date is tentative to change much like everything else in America right now.
This year the census’ move to an additional online format had the potential to bridge the gap of responses due to both COVID-19 and language barriers. Not only is it more cost-effective to have an online option, it should also be more accessible to the general public. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
“In addition to English, the 2020 Census has the online and phone self-response questionnaires available in 12 core languages. We offer additional language support in 48 languages including Braille and American Sign Language,” US Census Bureau Media Specialist Patricia Ramos said. “These resources that include online video guides use the English questionnaire as the base questionnaire to respond on.”
While there is language support for Armenians, this page is not easily accessible from the home page. For the majority of users, they start at the questionnaire page as is written on the mail-in form and linked through social media advertising. The questionnaire page has a dropdown menu with only 13 languages offered, the closest to Armenian being Arabic. Why wouldn’t there be an easily accessible way for all 59 languages?
Trying to find the page with all the different translation options is a difficult task for anyone but nearly impossible for non-English speakers. I had trouble finding it and English is my first language. It is not accessible from the home page and drop-down menus. Once you are able to find the option for an Armenian translation there is a video that explains the process in Armenian, instead of an online Census form written in Armenian. More than half of the population of people aged 18 years or older in Glendale speak an Indo-European language at home, 53% according to census data. This is where Census outreach is critical, an average person won’t know about outreach (even if it was available currently) or language translation options.
Coronavirus is affecting all types of businesses and schools for months and potentially longer than a year. In terms of the census, it could potentially skew Armenian representation in Glendale and the U.S. for another 10 years.
Glendale’s Census response rates have fallen nearly 20 percent as compared to data from 2010. With a stronger presence of Armenians in Glendale than in any other place except Yerevan (Armenia’s capital), Glendale is the city where their census representation matters the most. Without any public events or outreach they are left to do their own bidding, even during the digital age we live in today.
