Down with the Count

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'There's a general feeling that people who work at the Census Bureau don't even have confidentiality pledges. That couldn't be farther from the truth,' insists Gerald Gates, chief of the Census Bureau's policy office. 'But if people don't trust the government, then they don't trust the Census Bureau, and we can't do our job.'

Fears about census privacy aren't just an American phenomenon, notes Carl Haub, a demographer at the private, nonprofit Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C. Haub says that West Germany's Green Party and others delayed that country's census from 1980 to 1987. Part anti-nuclear protest, part fear of the government counting ethnic populations, the issue was finally sorted out, and the counts resumed.

In the United States, anti-census sentiment tends to be less organized, but there are exceptions. 'This big, bossy, busybody government is trying to ask questions they have no business asking,' says George Getz, the Libertarian Party's press secretary. 'We believe it's an all-American thing to slam the door on a busybody, so when the census-takers come to my house, I just may slam my door on them, too.'

According to Getz, Libertarians oppose answering census questions beyond those that fulfill the basic function mandated in the Constitution. He also challenges census activists who insist that completing the forms will somehow empower downtrodden racial or ethnic groups. It will only lead the public further down a slippery slope of federal interference in private affairs, he argues.

'Some of these people who encourage their communities [to fill out census forms] are really race-baiters masquerading as government reformers,' he says. 'We object to groups who want to use this information to reward or punish people based on their official racial category.' Last November, the census bureau launched its first paid advertising, a $167 million nationwide print, radio, and television campaign created by ad firm Young & Rubicam to inspire people to fill out and return their forms. The slogans? 'This is your future. Don't leave it blank' and 'How America knows what America needs.'

In Chicago, they've added another aproach. The Complete Count Committee has hired Ivan DupeÈ, the thirtysomething president of DupeÈ Productions, a local music marketing company, to create young 'street teams' who travel to hip-hop clubs and other events, distributing T-shirts, flyers, and even tapes recorded by local rap groups that urge census participation-in an acceptably cool way. Their target is one of the most undercounted demographic groups, African American males ages 18 to 30.

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