The power to change Congressional Districts

In case you don't get to the end: WE have that power. Complete the 2010 census. Write your country of origin in Question 8.

On the campaign, I had the pleasure of working with the African-American vote department. It was widely anticipated that an unprecedented turnout of black voters could help elect down-ballot Democrats in historically close districts and so have consequences beyond the Presidential race. While reviewing quantitative projections of such an effect, my friend Simeon, the AA vote deputy director remarked with so much excitement, you'd have thought we'd just won the election.

"Nigel! This is amazing!! Changing the composition of state legislatures? I mean, we're talking about the power to redraw Congressional Districts!!" Of course, he was right. He went on: "Nigel, who's looking at this??" All I could do was smile. "We are, Simeon. You and me, we're looking at it."

But actually, Simeon was only half right. Although the states, and therefore, state legislatures are given the power to determine how we are represented in Washington, the basis that underlies these judgments is the all-important decennial census. A credible source - the director of the CUNY Caribbean-American Research Center - told me that he thinks West Indians make up 2% of the US population. Yet only 1.8million or 0.66% of participants the 2000 census indicated a connection to the Region. But even if we go by census numbers, with almost half a percent of the 18+ citizen population, we're still underrepresented with only one member of Congress, only recently ending a decade and a half of no representation.

For many reasons, immigrant groups are undercounted in the census. As a community, we should aim for 100% participation in the 2010 census. We need to get the word out, especially to our out-of-status population that our responses are confidential and protected by federal law. Yesterday, I spoke with Felicia Persaud founder of CaribID 2010. They are encouraging us to use Question 8 to specify our country of origin.

This does not prevent us from specifying our race - whatever it may be - in Question 6. And if you do get the "long form" - don't exchange it for the short form - I beg you, fill it out. Unfortunately we are probably still far away from having Caribbean origin being collected as a checkbox on the short form (ie allowing designation as Black West Indian and Black non-West Indian, just as they collect White Hispanic and White non-Hispanic) rather than being buried as a free-response question on the long form. But last week we drew one step closer as Congresswoman Clarke introduced HR 2071 which will allow just that. Currently that bill is in Congressman Clay's Subcommittee on Census.

Why do we care? Why do we need to know how many of us and where we are? Well, for many reasons. For example, for Felicia her business is sustained by corporations deciding to advertise in the "ethnic" media, which of course is targeted based on available data. We need to be counted to help our friends who are working so hard for a rational immigration system. For me, as the title of this post suggests, I am concerned about our political representation - but let me save that for my next post.