A census may seem to be mere numbers, but the crowd gathered in Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building underscored the personal trials involved in the process.
At an event intended to encourage participation in the 2010 census, about 75 Harlem residents grilled a panel of local government officials. Many cited unfortunate previous experiences with census-takers in their neighborhoods and questioned the commitment of area officeholders to disseminate census information among locals.
“Why is there no federal representative sitting here tonight?” one woman from Harlem asked.
Yet some local elected officials did join the panel, such as New York State Assemblyman Keith Wright, who represents Harlem. State Senator Bill Perkins, whose district includes West Harlem and Morningside Heights, also attended a portion of the program titled “Census 2010: It’s in Our Hands.”
Wright, along with National Institute for Latino Policy President Angelo Falcon, CC ‘73, Assistant State Attorney General in Charge Guy Mitchell, and Census 2010 Program Coordinator Allison
Cenac highlighted the historic undercounting of low-income and minority groups. An eight-person team of census officials in attendance passed around a map of Manhattan, which showed that Harlem ranks as one of the borough’s “hardest to count” locations.
“We have a 40 percent participation rate, which is just poor, poor,” said Wright, a Democrat who has represented central Harlem in Albany since 1993.
E. Curtis Williams, a 64-year-old retiree who said he has lived in Harlem his whole life, implored the panel to “talk to the right people in the community,” and “sit down and find solutions to problems” posed by the “difficulty” of some Harlem neighborhoods.
Wright emphasized the connection between census counts and the distribution of federal and state funds to the area. “We need a two-pronged approach, with contributions from the government and the community,” he said, and added that “You got to be able to get what you pay for.”
He provoked a murmur from the crowd when he mentioned that upstate New York towns and counties benefit from including incarcerated Harlem residents in their census counts.
Falcon, who is also an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, explained that Harlem’s census counts can be improved if area residents are notified shortly before the census is conducted early next year. He said that the Census Bureau’s planned “media blitz” would go a long way towards increasing awareness, but said that “developing community partners and faith leaders, people who are trusted in the neighborhood,” as ambassadors for the census takers would make an even greater difference.
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