Stacking the Deck at the Census Bureau – Part 1
“Stacking the deck” means to arrange things against something or someone. It is based on a way of cheating in a card game by secretly arranging the cards so that you will win. It is also defined as a situation in which any evidence that supports an opposing argument is simply rejected, omitted, or ignored. It’s what the Census Bureau (CB) does best, all the way up to its director.
Try to imagine a friendly card game where each side has an equal chance of winning. Now try to imagine a not so friendly game where one side holds all the cards. That side would be the Census Bureau. The losers would be the multiracial community—or MOOM (Mark One Or More) POPULATION, as the bureau folks would say.
How do we know the CB stacks the deck? We know because they’ve been doing it to us for many years. We keep hoping that when a new Director comes in, as they do every few years, this practice of theirs will stop—but it doesn’t.
John H. Thompson is the current Director of the Census Bureau and he is no different from those who have come before him. In fact, things are worse. It used to take two or three people to get the answer to a question; now it takes four or five people to answer the simplest of requests. Why is this? I will try to posit a few answers.
The CB is a huge organization. Their management organization chart of who reports to whom is so long and overdone that it is almost laughable. OK, it truly is funny when you see all the layers of people who make up one chart of a government bureaucracy. Here are some of the titles from one several years ago:
Director
Deputy Director
Policy Coordination Office – Office of Risk Management and Program Evaluation
Associate Director for Administration and Chief Financial Officer
Associate Director for Communications
Associate Director for Field Operations
Associate Director for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
Associate Director for Demographic Programs
Associate Director for Economic Programs
Associate Director for Research and Methodology
Associate Director for Decennial Census Programs
Assistant Director for Economic Programs
Economic Planning and Coordination Division
Service Sector Statistics Division
Company Statistics Division
Economic Programming Division
Foreign Trade Division
Manufacturing and Construction Division
Governments Division
Customer Liaison and Marketing Services Office
Human Resources Division
Information Systems Support and Review Office
Application Services Division
Chief Technology Office
Assistant Director for Communications
Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs
Center for New Media and Promotion
Public Information Office
Administrative and Customer Services Division
Administrative and Management Systems Division
Finance Division
Budget Division
Equal Employment Opportunity Office
Acquisition Division
Office of Information
Security
Local Area Network
Technology Support Office
Computer Services Division
Telecommunications Office
Field Division
Technologies Management Office
National Processing Center
Regional Offices Population Division
Demographic Statistical Methods Division
Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division
Demographic Surveys Division
2020 Research and Planning Office
American Community Survey Office
Associate Director for 2020 Census
Assistant Director for Decennial Census Programs
Decennial Management Division
Decennial Statistical Studies Division
Georgraphy (sic) Division
Decennial Systems and Contracts Management Office
Assistant Director for Research and Methodology
Center for Survey Measurement
Center for Disclosure
Avoidance Research
Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications
Center for Economic Studies
Center for Statistical Research and Methodology
So, let’s say we want information about a question on the race and ethnicity portion of the 2020 Decennial Census. Where would we go in the Census Bureau? Associate Director for Demographic Programs? Associate Director for Decennial Census Programs? Regional Offices Population Division? 2020 Research and Planning Office? The problem is that either they really don’t know or they know, but aren’t telling us. First, we would be connected to at least five people who say the equivalent of “it’s not my job, man.” Then we would get routed to the person who can answer the question and we begin the tedious job of playing “telephone tag.” The person, like so many others in the CB, never actually answers their phone. IF you can get an email address for them, just go ahead and try to email them. Chances are pretty good that you will get an automated return reply telling you that this person is out of the office until sometime in March, 2015.
We really need an answer, so, for example, we start to think of creative ways to get to someone in the CB who can help us with understanding what the plans are for the multiracial population for the 2020 Census. We remember that the CB has a big committee called the National Advisory Committee (NAC) that is responsible for making recommendations on race and ethnicity for the decennial census! Bingo!
We go to our handy favorite Internet browser and google the NAC. There it is, useful information right from the CB. It reads, “Five separate committees advise the Census Bureau on decennial issues: the African American, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Asian, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) Advisory Committees.”
Wait a minute! What about the multiracial population?! Where is our committee? Oops, it seems the NAC of the CB forgot us. How can that be? Are we paranoid or has the CB rendered us invisible on the committee that is to decide our future? We research a little further and find this:
“The National Advisory Committee provides a continuing channel of communication between the Census Bureau and race and ethnic communities, focusing on: strategies to reduce the undercount, data collection and enumeration strategies, geographic and data products for American Indian and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, tabulation of race and ethnic data, data dissemination and outreach/promotion.”
According to that, they have left out White, African-American, and multiracial populations. What the heck is going on at the great big CB? We get lucky and find the name of the director for the committees and decide to try her. Surely she will get us to the right person if she can’t answer our little questions. We even find an email address! We’re on our way. Back and forth we go. We do find out eventually that some of our questions were answered in the transcripts from the last NAC meeting. We are promised a copy of those transcripts just as soon as they are ready “in about four weeks.” We happily agree to wait. Four weeks go by and nothing. We even get the dreaded “out of the office” email (see above).
We’ve had to play “stack the deck” with the CB so many times before this that we are weary. We decide to write to the Director, John Thompson himself. Surely he should know the kinds of roadblocks we run into with his agency. We write. No response. We wait and send it again. We know email can get lost, and we did send him a hard copy, but that could have been lost, too. We are now playing “the benefit of the doubt” game.
Then it happens. We get the phone call from the person who has been given the task of answering our questions. She sounds like a person who will actually get answers to our questions! Hallelujah!
It’s now four weeks later and she proved to be a dud—a public servant dud. We are no further ahead than when we started except that she is now copying five people on her emails to me. This is one way the CB stacks the deck against the multiracial population—by including jokers in the shuffle.
Susan Graham
