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> This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals,

• Retric 6y ago
  Poor people move around vastly more frequently and often end up temporarily sharing living spaces.
  • TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    Sounds like it's not discrimination against race then, but of economic status. The disenfranchisement of poor people.
    • viraptor 6y ago
      It's not mutually exclusive. Discrimination against a race does increase poverty. And poverty increases discrimination against a race.
    • learc83 6y ago
      Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented person living in their household though. People in that situation are much less likely to talk to government employees or to fill out census forms in the first place. So yes it's is undercounting poor people, but also disproportionately immigrants and relatives of immigrants.
      • WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        Poor white people aren't likely to have an undocumented - person of color - living in their household. I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. It's been my experience that Americans who are hyper-concerned with illegal immigration, aren't grinding their teeth over these nationalities.
        • learc83 6y ago
          There's definitely a double standard. But Canadians and Europeans make up less than 5% of the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US. So I still stand by my point that poor white people aren't likely to have undocumented people living in their household at all. Regardless of race. >I've known a number of local households that had undocumented Canadians, Brits and Germans. Also how many of those households were poor? There isn't nearly as much incentive for a poor Canadian, Brit, or German to come here as an undocumented immigrant because they'd be giving up guaranteed health care and far more permissive social services.
          • WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
            Let's consider this conversely. Do you feel that the tone, tenor and actions (of immigration resistance) would be different, in any way, if Euro descendants made up 95% of immigrants?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • Retric 6y ago
      It’s easy to discriminate if you allow proxy’s. Just find something that hurts them more than it hurts you and repeat. Race is already being used as a proxy for political affiliation. Using a proxy for Race as a proxy for political affiliation is less efficient, but still effective.
  • 0_____0 6y ago
    I came across a census worker in Portland who was doggedly trying to track down a former tenant of the house I was staying at. Having knocked doors I appreciate the hustle and tenacity the people on the ground for the census have.
  • rubyist5eva 6y ago
    Not all non-white people are poor.
    • Schiendelman 6y ago
      Please don’t strawman on HN.
      • rubyist5eva 6y ago
        I didn't strawman anything. Original question was asking about race discrimination and the response was about "poor people".
        • kube-system 6y ago
          The original question asked > Is it more to do with poverty than race
          • rubyist5eva 6y ago
            Fair enough, I misinterpreted the original question because the quoted part of the article did not reference poverty. Thank you.
    • RonaldRaygun 6y ago
      > Is it more to do with poverty than race? I believe they were specifically addressing this part of the parent comment. A benevolent reading of the reply would not point towards this rather blatantly racist interpretation of its meaning.
• bo1024 6y ago
  There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue. > The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic. Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.
  • TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation. You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.
    • jimktrains2 6y ago
      The constitution specifically says the census is a count of all "free Persons", not only citizens. Obviously SCOTUS will weigh in now, but I think it's important to realize the actual wording of what the census is.
      • kevinmchugh 6y ago
        14th amendment drops the "free"
• tsjq 6y ago
  Poverty, mainly. The article mentions: > If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.
• watwut 6y ago
  American blacks were more hit by corona virus for example. American black are incarcerated more often which affects whole community. Ex prisoners and their families have unique housing stability problems. Their family structure is different - more single women with or without children as males are not available. Also, more tight communities. Less of nuclear family more of extended family. White people live more segregated per socioeconomic class, black mix more. Blacks and white are segregated anyway, so whatever you do you are not reaching both.
• parsimo2010 6y ago
  Statistician (but not a Census statistician) here with a few answers: Black people have a higher than average non-response rate, even controlling for income, possibly due to a cultural mistrust of government institutions (for good reason). Recent immigrants may not be able to read the language the census was mailed to them in, and may also be hesitant to respond due to fears of deportation- the point of the census isn’t to hunt down illegals, and people here legally shouldn’t be deported anyway, but the current administration hasn’t done much to reassure people. These effects will apply in differing amounts to Latino and Asian communities. Finally, the bulk of the census is conducted by mail, and it takes a while to complete. Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses. This also disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online. Not all families have easy access to the internet, and some just can’t be bothered to take the time to respond. This again disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. To try to counteract these problems, the Census hires people to walk on foot and get responses from low coverage areas. But if you cut down on that effort, you’re going to miss some. One of the results of this could be that the census shows fewer poor people in some cities which will affect government funding decisions. But the tough part for a statistician is showing how much time is needed to walk around and get the coverage that you desire (and how many people you hire to do it). You can make some relatively small changes to your assumptions and get different answers. But cutting the time by a third is a pretty dramatic cut, so without looking at the details, I’m guessing that the coverage has decreased. That’s generally a bad thing since a census is supposed to be a full count of the population and not a sample. Edit: I’ll also tack on a more nefarious interpretation than just using the Census to cut federal aid money to some cities. The Census is also used to portion electoral college votes for presidential elections. Because of the communities that are affected by this undercoverage, states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican. So this could make it easier for a Republican president to be elected in the next couple elections (the votes for the current election will not change however).
  • 6y ago
• zaroth 6y ago
  Q: Do you have any sense for how many people might have been counted had the census efforts continued to Oct. 31? > It’s not going to be much. If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents. > Because of those things that those people have to deal with, you actually could have extended the time for another month on top of that and you’d only get marginal gains. The census was already in a tough position. It would definitely help to get as much time as possible, because as people become acquainted with how to deal with Covid, they can do the grassroots effort that’s needed to get people to participate. But it’s going to be a marginal increase. At the end of the day, the die has been cast for quite a while: There are going to be undercounts of communities of color. The only question is how large — and is it so large that action needs to be taken in the form of litigation or legislation.
  • laverya 6y ago
    I'd really like to know how large the undercount is estimated to be. Is it 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%? Because that changes how I think of this. If you've undercounted LA county population by 1,000 that's a completely different beast than 100,000.
• NelsonMinar 6y ago
  Among other things, safety for minorities. The census is supposed to be secret and never used for any sort of law enforcement, etc. But in our living memory that protection was abused. The US census was used to help round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps in the 40s. It'd be nice to think that could never happen again. But then you had the Trump people literally trying to put a citizenship question on the census despite every expert saying it was a mistake. The intent was clearly to intimidate (we have this in writing). The question ended up being left off but the damage was already somewhat done. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bureau-helped-relocate-japanese.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bur... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03/secret-use-of-census-info-helped-send-japanese-americans-to-internment-camps-in-wwii/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...