Letting postcards pile up before filling out Census

The doorbell rang. I had no idea who would show up unannounced to our home during a pandemic. I looked out the window. There was a silver sports utility vehicle. It reminded me of those unmarked state trooper vehicles that pull people over on the highway. No one realizes that they are cops until the red and blue lights start flashing.

My partner looked at the doorbell app on his phone which allows us to see who is at the door, where there is a camera. It was a masked woman wearing a lanyard around her neck that said, “U.S. Census.”

“Why is the Census here?” he asked.

“I think they come to your house if you don’t do it,” I said.

“I thought you filled it out. You said you were going to fill it out,” he said.

“I know. I didn’t get around to it yet,” I said.

“Well ... are we in trouble? Should I answer the door?” he asked.

“I don’t we’re in trouble. She’s probably going to ask you the Census questions. Do you feel like doing that right now?

“We might as well get it over with,” he wisely said.

And so that day, we completed the Census with the masked woman in about 15 minutes. We learned that day that if you don’t complete the Census, then a representative comes to your house and “helps” you.

I’ll admit that I had no problem evading the Census. I was OK with continually letting the postcards come to my house and promising myself that I would complete it, but essentially ignoring them, and putting them in a mail bin out of sight.

I knew there could be a penalty for not completing the Census — a $100 fine according to the American Bar Association. I also knew I had never heard of anyone being fined for evading the Census form.

Since 1790, the country has been tallying its people every 10 years. The U.S. Constitution has mandated this. The Constitution has also made it so that it’s easy to arrest Black people and charge them with minor crimes so they can be used in prison systems as slaves. It has made it possible to normalize slavery and involuntary servitude in 2020.

I had no desire to be counted by a government that seems to continually disenfranchise Black people. Time and time again we have been able to watch police, a government-run organization, shoot Black people such as 29-year-old Jacob Blake. We know that police officers can go into a Black woman’s home, such as Breonna Taylor’s, while she’s sleeping and kill her, and get away with

Despite my reservations about completing the Census, I’m glad we did because I want to do whatever I can to help Black communities receive the resources and services that we pay for as taxpayers.

it. This is how our government operates.

I’ve seen our government turn a blind eye to Black people in many industries: housing, criminal justice, transportation, education, health care, voting and election systems. I didn’t want to be counted by a system that I felt could eventually use whatever information I provided against me in the future.

The Census organization said it’s important to be counted so that my community could be eligible for federal funding. More than 300 federal programs use the Census data in some way to distribute $600 billion, and perhaps as much as $1.5 trillion. Being counted could let business owners know where to open stores. The results would impact childhood services for the next 10 years. The results also determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.

Black men and children under 5 years old were the largest racial/ethnic group that was under-counted in the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, according to the Thurgood Marshall Institute. Both of those demographics live in my house.

Despite my reservations about completing the Census, I’m glad we did because I want to do whatever I can to help Black communities receive the resources and services that we pay for as taxpayers. Our household is now part of the 88 percent of the households that have completed the Census.

TNS US 2020 Census