Census

Today I took part in the US census, which is being carried out primarily online for the first time. I don't know why but I love taking part in censuses, surveys, giving feedback. I think it has something to do with having not been able to vote in the country where I'm living for long periods of my life. I have always voted somewhere, just not where I'm living. After leaving the UK I was an overseas voter for the maximum allowed 15 years and then, just as that expired, I became a citizen of Canada and got to vote in a couple of elections. And then we moved here and I'm back to being an overseas voter. So give me anything - a survey on whether I liked the fish tacos, whether the car service exceeded expectations, whether the dentist blew me away - I will fill it out! And now I got the opportunity to be counted! I was ecstatic. 

The census form questions were pretty basic - how many people are living or staying at your address on April 1, 2020, list any additional people in the house for any reason, do you rent or own the house or live there for free, and for all the people you listed, give full names, explain how are they interrelated, and give their age, sex, and ethnicity. 

In the run up to the census there was a great deal of controversy about whether a citizenship question would be included. The Trump administration wanted the question, arguing that it was needed for an accurate count, and opponents argued that it would intimidate illegal immigrants and undocumented workers and therefore provide an inaccurate count. In the end the opponents won and there was no citizenship question. But having now seen the census form, I don't think it really would matter whether there was the citizenship question or not. I can't imagine illegal immigrants and undocumented workers will complete this census anyway.  The form asks for the full names of everyone listed and a phone number. Even though the website goes to great effort to explain that the collected information is  kept strictly confidential, I can imagine it feeling too dangerous for illegal immigrants to divulge such information in the current anti-immigrant climate. 

The census has one basic job: to count how many people live in each state. The US has taken a nationwide census every ten years since 1790. Originally, the goal was to ensure there was no taxation without representation (that bugbear with the English that in part led the colonies to revolt). The US constitution originally stated that  "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed, and three fifths of every other person." That last part essentially referred to slaves and was a compromise  struck between the southern slave-owning states and northern states who feared that the south would dominate in Congress if slaves were counted. It is somewhat ironic that the desire to maintain power in the northern states, the birthplace of US abolitionism,  ended up causing black people to be counted as less than a whole person. The 'three-fifths compromise' was repealed after the Civil War in 1868 and theoretically former slaves should have gained the right to vote at that point, but a long history of straightforward intimidation coupled with sly systemic methods to disenfranchise black voters continues to this day. 

A quick scan back through the 22 federal censuses that have taken place since 1780 shows that for the first twenty years, Virginia was the most populous state, but New York the largest city. Then both New York State an New York City were the most populous until 1970 when California became the most populated state. 

New York City, however, has remained the most populated city throughout the history of the US. A distinction that suddenly feels under threat. 

It is a strange time to be asked to think about counting people when the news is full everyday with the many different types of counts - numbers of confirmed cases, numbers of hospitalized, numbers of deaths. And it felt poignant to be asked about whether anyone else was present in our home when travel is impossible and we are forbidden from visiting each other. 

I saw some interesting graphs from National Geographic today comparing how different US cities handled the 1918 flu pandemic. It is eerily similar to what is happening now - a patchwork of different types of response across the 50 states. Back in 1918, as happened now, some states acted swiftly and closed schools, restaurants, churches, banned public gatherings, and limited the use of transportation. Other states were slow to enforce social distancing measures and continued to hold parades and other mass events even once the first deaths were reported. The states that acted swiftly cut transmission rates by as much as 50% compared to the states that didn't. That is cold, hard, data-based evidence. How is that precedent not enough to shut this country down? Why was there any delay in vast, dense cities like New York? It was particularly heartrending to read that, back in 1918, "New York City, which reacted earliest to the crisis with mandatory quarantines and staggered business hours, experienced the lowest death rate on the Eastern seaboard." 

At the time of writing, there are 52,000 confirmed cases in NYC.

But that is too depressing a way to end today's post. So on a lighter note, the latest efforts on the WhatsApp group to DO GOOD are actually pretty impressive. A call has gone out for everyone to use their 3D printers to make visors for health workers. It took me a moment to realize what they were talking about - were they asking people to go to their workplaces to use 3D printers? But no, this is Silly Valley after all. Turns out a lot of families round here have their own 3D printers at home for the kids to mess around with!