Down for the count:
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy DOWN FOR THE COUNT WHY AMERICANS WONT STAND UP The 1990 census may or may not have been a failure. If its defects are compensated for by a statistical substitute...
...If its defects are compensated for by a statistical substitute it may yet tell us the things we want to know about ourselves...
...It presupposes many households quite unlike the conventional vision of the American nuclear family-households made up of unrelated people...
...The census form itself, for example, is based on a count of households rather than of persons...
...In analyses of voter turnout, the young, the less educated, and minorities are the groups with the highest number of non-voters...
...And the correlation between responses to the census and voter turnout numbers, state by state, tends to bear out this conclusion...
...The form is stamped in large red letters "DO NOT MAIL...
...Perhaps it is time to consider a reorganization-a confederation of regions, in each of which people feel rooted and connected and therefore willing to participate in creating and sustaining community...
...The primary reason for taking the census at all, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to determine how many representatives each state will have in Congress...
...Why is it necessary for a third- or fourth-generation American citizen to stipulate that he or she is Filipino orthathe or she is black, Eskimo, Aleut, Chinese, Hawaiian, Korean, Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Samoan, Guamanian but not that he or she is Russian, for instance...
...I returned the card to the somewhat mysterious Indiana address, writing righteously that I would have been glad to fill out the form and return it if I had received it...
...It is, I think, some twenty years since The Center for Democratic Institutions floated such a proposal...
...And while the census bureau is coping with that, we can look at what the census has already told us about ourselves...
...States with very large cities, therefore, naturally have lower returns than some others...
...Not thatlreally wanted to fill out the long one, but, after all, had I not demonstrated more interest than the ordinary countee...
...That mailing missed individuals, too, and I was a little hurt to be among them...
...It is not surprising that it shows up on the laid-back West Coast as well as in the whole tier of states to the south from Arizona to Georgia...
...There are categories like "unmarried partners," "housemates and roommates," "foster children," "adopted or unadopted stepsons/stepdaughters" which speak to the fragmented state of the family and the serial and temporary nature of many of its groupings...
...Alaska, for example, and South Carolina have returned somewhere between 44 and 55 percent-the lowest percentages in the nation...
...Temporary census-takers are going door-to-door...
...How many Congress persons may we have to represent us...
...seems less so now...
...People could not, of course, mail back forms they did not receive, and despite the substantial sums allocated to the census bureau and the years of preparation, "the first mailing missed whole apartment buildings, ZIP codes, even towns" (New York Times, April 22...
...But no, the form came-the short one...
...Why, for that matter, the preoccupation with Hispanics...
...Don't worry-they'll get you yet," said one recipient a bit churlishly, evidently looking on the census as a form "Tell you what - let's go back home and pretend we couldn't find each other...
...And is the census bureau not unduly interested in race and color...
...Is South Carolina so different from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida...
...Considering our correspondence, I rather thought it could have been the long one...
...That is, to make truly representative government possible...
...The conventional hypothesis, then, is that the same groups account for low returns in census forms...
...One can only assume that those who do not fill out the form do not think this important...
...And are the people of Alaska so unlike their brethren in the states populated by the same hardy pioneer stock...
...Said a friend of mine bitterly, "For seventy years I was simply an American-now I'm in some subcat-egory of citizenship...
...Their voter turnout may well be ascribed to their citizens' interest in local races...
...We can understand that certain groups are hard to count and that they are growing faster than the rest of the population-people of no fixed address, the homeless, undocumented aliens, migrant workers, runaway children...
...But one way or another the indications are that our sense of being part of one nation seems to be dwindling away...
...Statistical adjustment may be called upon to even out the numbers of the historically undercount-ed-inner-city populations, the black, the Hispanic, the poor...
...Sure enough, within days I received a card admonishing me to return my form forthwith...
...The country may have grown too disparate to command allegiance...
...But why are the number of returns from South Carolina and Alaska the lowest of all...
...It seems less so now...
...It may be useful to count newly arrived immigrants (and illegal aliens, if we can) but why is a resident of New Mexico or Arizona whose ancestors have been there for four hundred years suddenly "an Hispanic...
...Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont had a good voter turnout in 1988 but show very low returns on the census...
...What is happening, I think, is an evergrowing indifference to participation in any national political process...
...HOLD FOR PICKUP...
...But, as I study the comparable patterns, I think I see something else at work...
...We are not surprised at New York, Illinois, New Jersey, California...
...Being as skeptical of bureaucracy as the next person, I thought that would be the end of it...
...It seemed an unduly radical idea then...
...The poor returns on the census indicated that an increasing number of Americans simply don't want to be counted at all or, at least, to be bothered with census forms...
...No census form in my box when all around me neighbors were discussing theirs...
...At this writing the average of census forms mailed back is 63 percent nationwide-but the returns from individual states vary widely...
...of government persecution...
...The census bureau is working on the other uncounted now...
...So I await the census worker...
...How many state legislators...
...What is our state or city entitled to in federal funds...
Vol. 117 • June 1990 • No. 11
