Census will show diversity

Opinion: May 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Lewis Diuguid

McClatchy Newspapers

Fifty years ago my mother went door to door in St. Louis for the U.S. Census. She knew the importance of the numbers in determining congressional representation and how federal dollars are apportioned. Mom was resolute about ensuring that black people weren’t left out. The current census with its new army of door knockers will collect more important data for the nation to digest.

Census workers started visiting residences Saturday. They’ll knock on doors of folks who haven’t mailed back the census questionnaires. The mail-in rate this year exceeds the 72 percent returns of 2000.

But more than the numbers, this census will offer a peek into the nation’s future. Michael Price, a demographer from the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville, said the census would start to reveal the face of America becoming more diverse and showing its age.

Age is driven by the baby boom generation, the 78 million of us born between 1946 and 1964, who will all be age 65 or older by 2029. That will create enormous problems for Social Security and Medicare, which left unchanged will become insolvent.

Majority status

The other major trend is that the younger age groups will radically shift the demographics of the country, giving minorities the majority status. A growing number of communities already are majority-minority.

“This is inevitable, and we’re going to be competing for resources,” Price told the Trotter Group of black columnists in Louisville.

What’s troubling is people of color in the U.S. have faced generations of discrimination, racism, poor education, poor health care, poor housing and awful job opportunities.

For everyone’s best interest, the oppression of people of color has to end if baby boomers and older people are to live comfortably in retirement and younger people are to enjoy fulfilling lives.

Robert L. King, president of the Kentucky Council on Post-Secondary Education and former chancellor of the State University of New York, explained that the country has to get better at educating and providing opportunities for minorities because their taxes will keep Social Security, Medicare and all public programs afloat.

In addition, many of today’s children will be caring for baby boomers. For people in that future to have the best care, those kids need a good education now.

“It’s a matter of social justice,” King said. “It’s also a matter of economic imperative for the United States.”

Dropout rates must come down, and the rate of kids entering and graduating from college must skyrocket. It is how the U.S. will remain globally competitive, said Nat Irvin, founder and president of Future Focus 2020 and management professor at the University of Louisville.

Change is coming

I am sure that tea party crowds on some level are sensing that change is coming. They are expressing it in an angst directed at everything Barack Obama is doing as the nation’s first black president. It’s being heard in their cries to “take back the country.” But from whom? The census will show the new majority is our unavoidable future.

Irvin said the cries foretell that “the future always arrives a lot earlier than people expect.”

Of the 131 million people who will be added to the U.S. population in the next 40 years, most will be people of color. These also are babies who will need the best care and services the population — though older — can muster.

“What this country desperately needs is a sense of urgency that our students complete high school and go to college,” King said.

“We have to get serious about educating this next generation,” Irvin said. “Everybody’s going to have to compete for talent.”

If the United States tries to maintain an apartheid system it will find itself left behind globally as nations such as China, South Korea and India overtake it. “We could literally have to buy talent from abroad,” Irvin said.

Diversity is the country’s strength if everyone is willing to look with unbiased eyes at the new census numbers and make the appropriate changes.

Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of The Kansas City Star’s Editorial Board. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.