No one can fairly claim that the interests of African Americans in Missouri are not prominently included in the preparation for Census 2010. U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, an African-American congressman from St. Louis, chairs the House Subcommittee that has oversight responsibility for the Census. Kelvin Simmons, an African American from Kansas City who directs Missouri’s Office of Administration (and will provide the keynote speech at the Nov. 10 Salute to Excellence in Business), chairs the committee in State government formed by Gov. Jay Nixon to make sure every citizen in the state is counted.
Whatever the local black community may think of Nixon, given his past record on school desegregation issues, be very certain that he wants Simmons to make sure that every single black person in the state of Missouri is counted next year. Nixon may or may not be proud of his state’s diversity and want to see it fairly represented, but he absolutely wants to see his state funded adequately by the federal government – and this is not possible without an accurate Census count, very much including our black citizens.
As Clay told the national convention of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity in Washington, D.C. recently, “Census results drive federal funding from hundreds of programs that amounts to more than $300 billion.” He emphasized, “That’s billion with a ‘b.’ That’s real money!” Clay also reminded the Kappas that in Census 2000, three million people were missed – and “most of them were black or brown.” Nixon, like any governor, is well aware of this fact, and his delegation of Simmons to chair Missouri’s Complete Count Committee reflects his best effort to get those missing black and brown people in Missouri counted next year.
Commissioner Simmons and Congressman Clay have their work cut out for them. African Americans have a well-earned reputation for reticence, for hesitating to “put our business in the street,” and this must be overcome if the black community is to be counted more fully in the Census. That is why Clay was stumping for the 2010 Census among the Kappas in August 2009, challenging these community leaders, “Our people are counting on Kappa to make sure that everyone is counted.” For this community’s understandable suspicion of the government and prying official questions to be overcome, we need to be speaking amongst ourselves – in our fraternities, sororities, churches, salons, barbershops, workplaces, sporting events – about the importance of the Census to us and the essential civic duty of responding accurately to Census questionnaires when they are mailed next March.
As Clay reminded the Kappas, “Our nation is at a crossroads, and the success of census 2010 is critical to our future. And it’s especially critical to African Americans and other minorities.”
Clay, Simmons and other black leaders in the Census effort also face obstacles in addition to the reticence and suspicion of this community. As Clay reminded the Kappas, the Census determines more than federal funding. It also is used to gauge “proper political representation at all levels of government,” and in this connection, not everyone in Missouri will be pulling in the same direction. Republicans will want to see their strongholds counted more accurately than the populations in the Democrats’ urban bases, and in the St. Louis region some entrenched political interests will want to see southern majority-white districts counted better than the majority-black north. Though here, too, governmental self-interest (for once) is on the side of African Americans, which is why we see the City of St. Louis challenge Census estimates every year, which amounts to City officials insisting that more black people live in St. Louis than the estimate suggests.
We have not forgotten the heroic efforts from many sectors to mobilize the black community to vote in 2008, and everyone understands that this effort was critical to the historic election of Barack Obama. A similar community-wide focus on Census 2010 needs to start now so that our consciousness is raised in advance of the March mailings of questionnaires. Also, we must remind Clay, Nixon and Simmons that we did not win Missouri for Barack Obama in 2008. Had it been up to Missouri, John McCain and Sarah Palin would be in the White House today. We simply can not accept a similar failure in Missouri in the execution of Census 2010.