This Week in Blackness: On the Word, 'Negro'

Elon James White continues the new year with the 2nd episode of 'This Week in Blackness'. This episode focuses on the the word NEGRO. First Harry Reid dropped the word in closed door conversations and then it appears on the 2010 census form. Is the word NEGRO back to its full glory?

Gunfighter had a strong take on his blog ... and Elon James White brings an equally strong take to the story in the following video.





The best line is the last one --- "Michael Steele makes my commonsense hurt!"

What did you enjoy most about this TWIB episode?

Will 2010 Census Count All People of Color?

Villagers, did you know that we are less than a year away from the 2010 Census? This decennial count, mandated by US Constitution, of every single person in America is never easy, but this census has several unique challenges:

• The rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and heightened immigrant enforcement activities, have created real fear and distrust of the government;
  
• The foreclosure crisis and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have displaced millions of people, making it hard to do an accurate count; and
  
• As the first census after 9/11, the Census Bureau will have to deal with Americans’ privacy concerns about how their information is used

An undercount of the people of color who comprise a third of our society means a failed Census. As you know census data are used to determine representation in the House of Representatives and where district lines are drawn within each state. Census data is also used to decide how $400 billion in federal funds are distributed to state and local governments each year. This money builds roads, schools, and hospitals.

A number of Black bloggers participated on a conference call to discuss these challenges with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and census experts who represent some of the hardest communities to count.

Some of the pre-read material for the conference call included a transcript (here) and two PowerPoint presentations (here and here) from a recent event at The Brookings Institution.

Here is a list of the panelists that talked with our Black bloggers on the conference call earlier this week:

• Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), leads a coalition of civil rights organizations that will be working on-the-ground in regions with some of the highest percentages of undercounted communities in an effort to boost response rates of communities of color in the 2010 Census.


• Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, is a nationally recognized expert in Latino demographic trends and the census. Next week, NALEO will launch a campaign, ya es hora, to motivate Latinos to participate in the 2010 Census.


• Terry Ao, director of the Census and Voting Programs for the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC), is a noted Census expert, has testified before Congress on the issue, and sits on the U.S Department of Commerce’s 2010 Census Advisory Committee as a permanent substitute advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

The US Census is hiring over 500,000 workers to deal with this process. I encourage villagers to apply for these positions if you are unemployed or underemployed.

Kevin Ross (3 Brothers and a Sister) and I encouraged the US Census officials to use bloggers to help market the census with paid advertising ... not just public service announcements.

Anyhow, it was an interesting conference call. It is nice to see that organizations like LCCR and NAACP are reaching out to Black bloggers. What are your thoughts on the upcoming 2010 Census?

Immigration Impacts List of Top Ten Surnames in America

Can you guess what the most popular surnames are these days? My surname is Hicks. We ranked #155 in the country. I figured that Smith and Jones were still in the Top 10. I didn't know that Garcia and Rodriguez were on that list. This is another indication of the changing demographics of our country.

The top ten surnames are:

1. Smith - only one if five Smiths are Black
2. Johnson
3. Williams
4. Brown
5. Jones
6. Miller
7. Davis
8. Garcia
9. Rodriguez
10. Wilson

Click here to see if your surname is in the Top 500. Anyhow, the Census Bureau study found that while Smith remains the most popular surname, Latino surnames are increasingly edging out historically common Anglo names. The number of Latino surnames in the top 25 doubled to six, the study shows.

Immigration has been the major factor prompting the rise in the Latino population in the United States. During the 1990s, the number of Latinos in America grew 58 percent and accounted for 13 percent of the country's 281,421,906 million population in 2000; today the number of Latinos tops 44 million and they are close to 15 percent of the population. People of color, largely fueled by the Latino population explosion, now are the majority in California and are expected to be the majority of the U.S. population by 2050.

One of the other findings of the survey is that nearly 90 percent of Washingtons and 75 percent of Jeffersons in America are Black. I wonder what that says about our our early presidents, George and Tom?