Democracy Data: The Story Behind the U.S. Census and How to Read It
dan book
Illustrated. 384 pages. MCD. $30.
The U.S. Census has inspired a surprising amount of poetry, notes Dan Bouk in his sweetly nerdy new book, Democracy’s Data. And I don’t think this is because “Census” rhymes with so many related words. Fences, defenses, Mike Pence stuff, etc.
Buk quotes Langston Hughes’ Alberta K. Johnson from a 1944 poem, with an anonymous bard warning to “stay away from the undertaker/lady, stay away from the census takers.” . “Madam and the Census Taker”: A black woman who claims her mother gave her her middle initial instead of spelling it KAY as officials say. (“You leave my name/Like that!”)
In Bouk and other scholars’ interpretations, this is a powerful protest against centuries of black people being misidentified, underrepresented, and completely erased from the public record. A historian who also studies computational mathematics, he is a fervent believer in the ideal of the census, but reveals in often mind-boggling detail how badly it failed society. Native Americans have long been excluded, especially by Baroque fashion and ethnic classification. This fueled fears such as the internment of Japanese Americans into internment camps and the deportation of Mexican immigrants.
In theory, counting population seems so basic and neutral. A math problem, but a “serious slog” he is one. But numbers are political, and representation and resources are at stake. Bouk shows how the Census has been the subject of partisan attention from the beginning. Years ago, at the local level, supervisors tended to hand out census work to “friends” and manipulate the numbers (“friends’ corruption,” he writes). , “much older than Facebook”). Most recently, the Donald J. Trump administration attempted to insert questions about citizenship status into the survey, but claimed civil rights advocates would discourage participation.
Although he specializes in bureaucracy and quantification, or as he puts it “Modern under the cloak of boredom” Buku himself has a poetic talent for wordplay. His first book on life insurance, called How Our Days Becamed Numbered (2015), may have been the best thing to happen to actuarial tables since Barbara Stanwyck. showed off her anklet In “Double Compensation”. In his grandparents’ new book, Bouk describes how the Census “created a statistical hole alongside a statistical whole,” starting with Encounter on the Crooked Stocking. It tells an “awkward” love story”.
He has his sights set on the 1940 Census.ever since Law passed in 1978records were kept private for 72 years, after which life expectancy was near (1950 accounts released in April, on sites such as Ancestors.comyou are invited to it).
The 1940 edition was text-rich, with over 30 questions (versus only 10 in the 2020 Census), plenty of context, and plenty of advertising material to encourage public participation. PR was necessary in the era of European dictatorships, but the fear that governments were compiling “dossiers” may seem strange in an era of data breaches and doxing.
At the time, the Census was a door-to-door “taker” collecting responses in easy-to-read writing, so there was a lot of potential for drama big and small. The data was then fed back to the Question Men and his (mostly female) card punchers who returned home to his office and spit it out as Protohis Big His data. Such a hands-on process was unimaginable in 2020 due to the pandemic and digital natives. I don’t answer the phone, Far from knocking.
Bouk’s central concern is this lost “door-to-door encounter” (where the investigator is invited for coffee, given a carton of eggs, grossly mistrusted, lied to, or betrayed). ) and how such interactions affected the census individually or in prominent clusters. “Negotiations and fine-tuning are not out of place,” he writes, but “are part of the data.” Counting America’s population seems akin to both conducting a symphony and watching a jazz ensemble go to town.
Bouk is as interested in what is hidden by both design and error as what official data records. The census counts households, not individuals, and each is expected to have a “head,” he recalls. What if your house is under a tent, on a boat, or on the street? a family that would have been difficult to track down in the census of Her former name was Liz, I recently went through a sex change, now known as LucasBook doesn’t remember which of them he designated as the head. )
We may be more tolerant of various arrangements, but the physical exhibits of the Census (maps, machines, broadsheets covered with handwriting, bound leather books, etc. are all shown here). most of them are permanently eroded. The fragility of digital data and growing mistrust of government make Bouk worried about the future of his entire operation, but he’s an optimist. The book’s straightforward title underplays its playful content. The “democratic data” is ruminative and plentiful. It makes the dull old census a feast for the senses.