Census has stopped field work, but improving outreach to ethnic communities has not

Editor’s note: The original version of this story included details and mapping of the location of Asian populations in the Sacramento region and was interpreted by some as providing information that would target vulnerable populations who have been wrongly blamed for the outbreak of the coronavirus. This was not our intent, nor the intent of the organization that has provided the resource. The goal was to help with outreach. We have reframed to make that more clear. We apologize for any misunderstanding.

Even though the U.S. Census Bureau has delayed field operations of its workers because of the measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, efforts to offer tools to enable more effective outreach are still ongoing.

They are, and part of that effort is to make sure the census as well as community organizers has help in communicating with disparate Asian and Pacific Islander populations.

Research organization AAPI Data has dived into this arena, to help map, for example, the Asian and Pacific Islander communities in Sacramento area. With this resource, community organizers will be better equipped to know the languages in those areas. It helps with facilitating the efforts such as making phone calls or knocking on doors, to educate people about the importance of the census, so as to gain a complete accounting of the populations.

The mapping helps with identifying Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in different census tracts and visualizing census data by city from 2010 to 2018 and how each group shifted in recent years.

Sunny Shao, researcher and doctorate candidate at University of California, Riverside, visualized the maps for key U.S. metropolitan areas with sizable Asian American and Pacific Islander populations. She said the mapping tool can be useful for business as well as for census planning, providing an avenue for outreach work to provide resources.

“Demographic data is always important for any organizations serving the AAPI community,” Shao said, adding she will constantly update the maps to reflect the constant changing population.

The Asian American community is the fastest-growing major racial or ethnic group in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. It is projected to become the largest immigrant group in the country, surpassing Latinos in 2055, and making up 38 percent of all immigrants in the country.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founding director of AAPI Data and professor of public policy and political science at UC Riverside, said the team wants to provide resources for community organizers to better understand and help those populations.

The number of Asians residing in south Sacramento has been growing, as do a large population of Hispanics and Latinos, followed by African Americans.

The surge of residents in south Sacramento was connected with the bargain rents along Stockton Boulevard made available in the early 1960s, said Robin Datel, Sacramento State University professor of geography.

According to Datel, the opening of Highway 99 in 1964 took a lot of traffic off Stockton Boulevard, the former highway between Sacramento and Stockton. Less traffic made old motels along the boulevard more obsolete, leading to a fall in property value. The cheap rent there became a good place for refugees to settle, Datel said.

According to city-level data from the Census Bureau, Chinese replaced Filipinos as the largest Asian group in Sacramento.

Sacramento records a Chinese population of 64,000 in 2018, followed by Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese and Hmong.

AAPI Data publishes demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for community organizations and government agencies to understand better key aspects of these communities.

David Lee, vice chair of the Census Information Centers Steering Committee, who is based in California, told McClatchy’s Kate Irby that he is “very concerned” the census will not be done on time.

The process is accessible online, by phone and through the mail, but he stressed the importance of in-person work to make sure ethnic and immigrant groups are counted accurately.

This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM.