San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The census taker: A city of contrasts
When you tell them, as we were instructed to do, that completing the census was important so that their community would be fairly represented in Congress and receive the federal funds it deserves for senior centers, public transit and the like, they would give me a long, cool look.
For six weeks I walked, drove, biked and bused around San Francisco, counting people for the 2020 census. I was part of an army of half a million enumerators whose job was to visit the tens of millions of households across the country that had not yet responded to the census — a massive undertaking the Census Bureau officially calls Nonresponse Followup, or NRFU.
I visited luxury highrises with uniformed doormen, lushly landscaped townhouses with rooftop terraces and pet spas, SROs where the hallways smelled of marijuana and urine, and public housing projects where the walls were scarred with graffiti and the yards littered with discarded appliances.
I met people from Spain and Sri Lanka, Japan and Jamaica, England and Eritrea, Nigeria and Nicaragua, China and Cuba; straight, gay and trans people; people who cursed me and slammed the door in my face, and others who thanked me for my service; people who didn’t know the name of their roommate, their spouse’s birth date or, in one case, their own age.
For those who believe that systemic racism doesn’t exist in this country, I suggest you take the No. 19 bus to BayviewHunters Point. As I got off the bus near the old naval shipyard, I felt as if I had entered an impoverished country. A jumble of ugly, lowrise buildings are haphazardly scattered across a weedy hillside with no apparent regard for form or function. Narrow paths, some paved and others dirt, crisscross the hills, connecting the buildings.
The scarcity is plain to see. Overgrown playing fields. Doorbells that don’t ring. Rusted fences and broken basketball hoops. Discarded TVs and abandoned bicycles.
I saw virtually no white faces, and the few I did see were either cops or Comcast workers. To President Trump and his ilk, this is just the luck of the draw. But to most people with eyes, ears and half a heart, it’s a reflection of a failed system, a system that keeps people of color trapped in substandard housing and hardscrabble lives.
A lot of folks didn’t bother to answer the door, and those who did were often not disposed to answer questions from a middleaged white guy with a clipboard. When I told them, as we were instructed to do, that completing the census was important so that their community would be fairly represented in Congress and receive the federal funds it deserves for senior centers, public transit and the like, they would give me a long, cool look. Take a look around, I could almost hear them thinking. How did the last census work out for us? And the one before that?
Although we were authorized to work as late as 9 p. m., I always tried to get home before sundown. But one night I got caught out in the Point, as residents sometimes call the neighborhood, as darkness fell. To make matters worse, the battery on my phone died so I had no idea where or when the next bus was coming. A group of young Black men were hanging out down the street and, I have to admit, I was feeling anxious. Fortunately, I was able to flag down a passing bus. I thanked the Black driver for stopping and thought to myself, would a white driver have done the same if the shoe had been on the other foot? I doubt it.
Our job as enumerators was complicated by the Census Bureau, which was constantly sending out mixed signals. One day we would get a message urging us to work longer hours, and even offering bonuses if we did, but the next morning I would be told there was no work that day because of an insufficient workload. Some days I would sign up for an eighthour shift and get only a handful of cases; other days I would be available for only a few hours and would be assigned more than 100 cases.
No doubt the disorganization was partly due to the pandemic, which delayed the start of the count by several months and made the process far more complicated than it would have been otherwise. And the uncertainty created by the Trump administration’s efforts ( ultimately successful) to end the count prematurely did not help. Still, the bureau had 10 years to prepare for the count, and it should have been better organized.
But despite all the frustrations of the job, I’m glad I did it. I feel like I made a small contribution to society and, besides, the pay wasn’t bad — 30 bucks an hour. But the best part of the gig was the opportunity to meet people I wouldn’t ordinarily meet. Take Spider Girl and TieDye, two little girls I came across playing on Harbor Road in Hunters Point. When I asked them if I could take their picture, they immediately crouched down on one knee, one hand planted on the pavement in front of them, the other outstretched behind them, as if they had been waiting all day for someone to ask them that question. They were ready for their closeup.
Peter Kupfer is a freelance writer, editor and photographer based in San Francisco. He is a former copy editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.