Sparks fly over use of ‘Negro' by Census

Harry Reid just doesn't know how many people who do speak with a negro dialect he has offended. If Question 9 of the current US Census Form is offensive, it stands to reason Reid's remark is equally offensive.

Then again you never know when the double standard is going to be invoked.

Steve
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By MIKE TOLSON
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Jan. 13, 2010, 10:05PM


A tide of indignation has risen over Question 9, which asks for the person's race. Next to one of the 15 boxes that can be checked are three choices: black, African American or Negro.

Census officials have gotten an earful in recent days as black activists, politicians and community leaders have expressed displeasure over the decision to include the final word.

Even though “Negro” was on previous census forms, and despite the approval of its use this year by the bureau's African American Advisory Committee, demands are flying to ditch the forms and print new ones.

With questionnaires scheduled to be sent out March 1, that is not likely to happen. But the bureau has agreed to send out about 30,000 questionnaires without the word to test the response.

“Negro” has remained on the form because the population counters kept getting forms back with the word written in — more than 55,000 in the 2000 Census — even though it was included as one of the selections. That suggested that some blacks still preferred the term and had not noticed it as a third choice.

The point was to be as inclusive as possible, to make sure the racial demographics were as accurate as could be, the bureau says.

“The Census Bureau included the term ‘Negro' because testing prior to Census 2000 indicated that numbers of respondents self-identified with this term,” the U.S. Census Bureau said in a news release.

Feeling the heat
Not so long ago the word was considered benign, a means of racial identification much preferred to crude colloquial alternatives. For recent generations, the word is at best archaic and at worst is seen as racist, a holdover from Jim Crow days.

What may make sense to demographers does not wash to many who grew up associating it with segregation.

Even those involved with local census efforts are feeling the heat.

The head of Houston Counts, a city-sponsored committee which is partnering with the bureau to promote a complete count, met last week with an angry coalition of people opposed to the word, ultimately deciding not to defend the bureau's use of “Negro” and agreeing to participate in a town hall meeting on the subject tonight.

The upshot of it might be nothing more than a formal statement of protest, possibly endorsed by Houston city government, though activist Quanell X, who pushed for the meeting, is hoping for more.

“We are hoping that President Obama will listen to congressional leaders and pull the word ‘Negro' down because of its offensive connotations,” Quanell said. “I totally agree with those who are hurt and offended by the word, because I am hurt and offended, too. We have evolved beyond the word ‘Negro.'”

Margaret Wallace, the Houston Counts manager and head of General Community Outreach for the city of Houston, is sympathetic to the complaint.

“When (Quanell X) called me … and said he wanted to meet to talk about this being on the census form, I said, ‘No it is not. It can't be.' It was a shock to me that it did have that word,” Wallace said. “We are incredibly saddened because this was a chosen word, but we are not going to let this be a stumbling block to an accurate count.”

View not universal
Census officials were long aware of the potential land mine associated with including the word. Notes from a joint advisory committee meeting in 2006 reveal as much, mentioning that a representative from the African American Advisory Committee felt “Negro” was offensive and argued for more detailed black racial identifiers, such as Ethiopian, Jamaican and Haitian.

“Claudette Bennett, with the Census Bureau's Population Division, explained that there is a sizable population (about a half-million) that identifies with neither Black nor African American, but does identify with Negro, and observed that concepts such as Ethiopian and Jamaican are part of the ancestry question,” according to the notes. “Others from the African American Advisory Committee agreed with the use of the term Negro.”

Sentiment against using the word is far from universal among blacks. A number of African-American bloggers and intellectuals have endorsed the spirit behind the bureau's decision.

Pulitzer-Prize winning historian David Levering-Lewis went so far as to thank the Census Bureau “for giving us so much space to identify ourselves,” saying that "Negro" was a legitimate anthropological term that “has utility and historical validity.”

A ‘complicated' choice
R. L'Heureux Lewis, an assistant professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the City College of New York, wrote in his Uptown Notes blog that he was not surprised or concerned that the word was used.

“While I agree that Negro is antiquated and passé, I must also acknowledge some of our older brothers and sisters still identify with the term, which is why it has been kept on and was on the 2000 Census,” Lewis wrote. “The matter of label choice is a complicated one among all people, and this is particularly the case for black people. There has never been a consensus on nomenclature.”

The one thing that does bring consensus is the importance of a comprehensive count, regardless of how the population is counted.

“People came into our meeting angry,” Wallace said, “but I think they came to understand that this is something the city of Houston cannot solve, and that it's far more important to get a complete count. It is $1,400 lost to the community for every person not counted. That's far more significant than anger over a word.”