Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics.

• Author: Persily, Nathaniel
• Position: Review

COUNTING ON THE CENSUS?: RACE, GROUP IDENTITY, AND THE EVASION OF POLITICS. By Peter Skerry.([dagger]) Washington, D.C.: Brookings. 2000. 248 pp. $25.95.

In a year that included a presidential election that was too close to call and a census marred by statistical controversy, questions of how to count each and every American preoccupied national politics. The questions were often phrased as ones pitting humans against machines, with charges of political manipulation launched by both sides in hopes of defending their favored method as the most complete and accurate of various alternatives. In the presidential election, hand counts versus machine counts translated into the legal conflict Bush v. Gore.(1) In the context of the census, "headcounts" versus sampling" emerged in court as a conflict between different branches and levels of government(2) and threatened to spawn lawsuits between any number of racial and political interest groups and their opponents.

In both the election and census cases, however, the legal disputes over different "counting" methods represented a deeper political competition between opposing partisan and factional forces. As such, consistency of argument between the different contexts of ballots and census forms usually took a back seat to the logic needed to win a particular legal or public relations battle. Those who argued against a manual recount of ballots usually demanded that only manual methods (census form mailback and personal follow-up procedures) be used for the census. Their opponents were equally inconsistent, demanding the use of machines (that is, statistical sampling) when it came to the census, but urging manual counting when it came to presidential ballots. Important differences between elections and censuses and their related procedures for counting votes and people are not difficult to unearth. The analogies do not match neatly: In one case the measurement controversy involves how to count the paper filled out by the respondent (i.e., the voter); in another it involves whether or not to rely solely on paper forms filled in by people. "Technology" appears in the election context to prevent human bias, but in the census to correct incompleteness resulting from undercoverage. As imperfect as the analogies may appear, however, they draw our attention to common problems of completeness and bias that plague any counting system that seeks to represent accurately millions of ballots or hundreds of millions of people.

Now that both controversies appear to have subsided, we realize that the choice of counting methods appears to have been much less significant than either side in either fight believed. The manual recount of presidential ballots subsequently conducted by newspapers indicates Bush probably would have won the presidential election even if the Supreme Court had not stopped the recount in its tracks.(3) And because the census appears to have been successful in reducing the undercount to its lowest level in American history, any need for statistical adjustment has diminished dramatically.(4) One cannot help but ask whether the sound and fury of either controversy, in the end, signified anything of lasting political importance.

In Counting on the Census?: Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics, Professor Peter Skerry answers that the census adjustment controversy signifies a harmful trend of "symbolic politics" devoid of any real substantive content. The book, which attacks the original plan for the 2000 Census, is the best researched and written on the subject. Skerry examines how the process of taking a national census evolved into a rhetorical and public policy competition between conflicting demands of "science," "rights" and "politics." He makes a persuasive argument that appeals to expertise based on unique technical competence or to civil rights of representation in the census obscure the politics of collecting census data. This effective critique of the rhetoric of rights and science surrounding the census may be lost in his passionate argument against statistical adjustment to correct the census undercount, but as a piece of social science, the book could not provide more in the way of useful references, rich history and a complete description of the ongoing debate. Lawyers might find the book disturbing, however. Indeed, because we fight atop the terrain of rights that Skerry finds so objectionable with regard to the census, the book is as much an assault on lawyers (particularly from the civil rights community) as it is an argument against particular census policies. Skerry derides the census component of the civil rights agenda as emblematic of a symbolic politics guided by organizations without members, closeted in courts and bureaucracies away from democratically accountable institutions, and providing few tangible political benefits for the supposedly affected communities. Because of the gauntlet it lays down to all those involved in the recent and future census battles as well as the helpful historical and social scientific analysis it provides, Counting on the Census is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the issues underlying the adjustment controversy.

This review proceeds in four parts. Part I summarizes the exhaustive history, causes and consequences of the census undercount that Skerry takes as his point of departure. He argues that such an undercount is, to a certain extent, unavoidable and that cures will cause more harm than the disease. Part II describes the argument against statistical adjustment of the census to correct for the pervasive undercount of racial minorities: the so-called differential undercount. Because he believes the differential undercount does not by itself constitute a serious public policy problem (even from the point of view of racial minorities), Skerry considers almost any attempt to use statistical methods to adjust the headcount as doing more harm than good. This strong opposition to adjustment is in tension with Skerry's larger argument that a discourse of science or rights obscures the baser instincts of politics that motivate the different sides of the adjustment controversy. If Skerry believes the census is "all about politics," then how can he be so convinced that the anti-adjustment position is objectively correct? Part III of this review criticizes Skerry for misunderstanding the place of the census adjustment controversy in the larger and hotter legal battle over the past decade for minority legislative representation. Litigation over census adjustment represented a fight for protection of civil rights because it constituted the first stage in what promises to be the most contentious decade of redistricting-related litigation thus far. Although Skerry rightly argues that census adjustment or lack thereof does not equal clear winners and losers in the redistricting process, he ignores the fact that the failure to adjust census data may prevent certain voting fights plaintiffs from even getting into court. The failure to adjust census data could place additional obstacles in the path of racial minorities that need to prove that their communities are sufficiently large to avail themselves of the protections of Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Part IV concludes with a discussion of the substantive importance of what Skerry decries as the "symbolic politics" of the census. I argue that controversies involving symbols, particularly in the context of legal conflicts involving race and equal protection, derive their meaning from the precedents they will set for larger bodies of law. It is unfortunate that Skerry's diatribe against public interest politics might obscure the methodical and reasonable articulation of the anti-adjustment position. The chief value of the book is its acknowledgement that politics rather than science or fights underlies important census-related decisions. Its chief defect is a reliance on a political predisposition to attack the motivation of adjustment advocates.

1. THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENTIAL UNDERCOUNT

   Each census represents a snapshot of the nation at a particular time. The picture of the nation that develops is fuzzier in some areas than others, sometimes overexposed or underexposed, and with a tint and color scheme that often differs from the nation it attempts to capture in its lens. No country has ever completed a perfect census.(5) The best any country can hope for is an estimate of the "true" population. Each step in the census represents a stage in this search for truth even though all involved share an awareness that there is no complete and objective number against which we can measure the precise magnitude of the errors that are made.(6) Perhaps Skerry's chief contribution is his lucid argument that Americans have come to expect too much from the census.(7) A 100% accurate count of a population in excess of a quarter of a billion people is impossible.

   1. Why the Census Misses Some Groups at a Greater Rate than Others

      The main problem with the census has not been inaccuracy; however, it has been bias. The inaccuracies of the census have not been randomly distributed. They have fallen hardest on certain segments of the population. Thus, observers and policymakers have often been less concerned by the undercount--that is, the number of people the census has missed--than they have been by the "differential undercount"--why the census has counted some classes of people more accurately than others. Historically, the groups that have fared the worst in the counting process were children, renters, residents of large cities, and racial minorities.(8) Because of the importance of race for both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, let alone the symbolic, historical and political exceptionalism of race discrimination,(9) the undercount of racial minorities and the impact of that undercount on minority representation...