Minority groups discuss outreach to hard-to-count areas

From MS Public Broadcasting...

Battling For a Fair Count in The 2010 Census
Published by Phoebe Judge on 13 Jul 2009 8:19pm

Next year’s 2010 census will play a key role in how congressional districts are drawn and federal grants delivered. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports on what one group of local elected officials is doing to make sure that count is accurate.

Ten years ago the 2000 Census resulted in Mississippi losing one of its Congressional districts. At a conference held yesterday in Biloxi members of the Mississippi Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials tried to come up with ways to figure out how to make sure that the 2010 Census provides a more accurate count. Leroy Johnson is executive director of the community organizing group Southern Echo. He says the hard to count areas in the state are mainly located in counties with a majority of African American and minority populations.

“We lost a district because our communities weren’t counted and that lessened the power of the state of Mississippi. We want Mississippi to have all the power that it needs, and all the power it can to serve. It needs to have all the people counted.”

The US Census bureau provides data which shows which counties is the state were hardest to count in 2000 and it is those counties which received the smallest amount of federal grant money. Lula Cooley a community planning director for the city of Laurel, says local black elected officials have to work harder to take away the fear people have of giving up information for the Census,

“You know they feel like you are getting off into their business, that you are going to knock something out. It’s good to have people in the area to associate with. If the information is not there than it is affected from the community all the way to Washington D.C.”

Efforts to ensure Mississippi is fairly counted in the 2010 census are underway from advocates representing all of Mississippi’s growing minority populations.