Mike Gonzalez writes for the Washington Examiner about the census’ role in battling the political left.
Any day now, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate a new director of the U.S. Census Bureau, replacing President Joe Biden’s man, Robert L. Santos. Whoever Trump’s nominee will be needs to grasp how vital the job is for the long-term unity of the United States and for the need to free people from the Left’s balkanizing mission.
Conservatives’ eyes often glaze over when one brings up the periodic enumeration of people mandated by the Constitution. But here’s a reason for conservatives to sit up and start taking notice: The Left really cares about the census.
The Left sees us not as a unified nation with common purposes and aspirations but as a federation of different groups. Some of these groups are dominant, and others are subordinate. This fits neatly into the Marxian “oppressor v. oppressed” template that today’s Left promotes so heavily.
This is why generations of leftists have focused on the census, from race-based activists to downright communists, from W.E.B. Du Bois to Raul Yzaguirre and Linda Sarsour. The census creates groups and identities, and activists instill grievances in members of some groups, hoping to achieve societal change.
How does it work? The “Hawthorne Effect” postulates that men and women change their behavior when they know they’re being observed. When the census creates a racial or ethnic category, say “Asian Americans,” or the “Middle-East North Africa,” or MENA, that Santos now wants to introduce, some of its members will alter their behavior to respond to group dynamics.
The census also gives the categories the government’s imprimatur and thus valorizes them. “One encourages what one recognizes and dissuades what one does not,” was how the great, late social scientist Nathan Glazer put it.
The census is thus not just a boring, routine counting of the nation’s inhabitants. It has almost magical, conjuring powers.
