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Artists On The Census: Daniel Pizarro

Arturo Pineda | August 27th, 2020

Artists On The Census: Daniel Pizarro

Arts & Culture  |  Census 2020  |  COVID-19

 

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Daniel Pizarro at a December 2019 meeting of Mayor Justin Elicker's transition team. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

This is part of a new series of interviews with New Haven artists about the 2020 U.S. Census. In installments, artists answer the same questions about the Census, which determines the amount of federal aid allocated to New Haven. To read more of these interviews, and learn about the role artists are playing in New Haven’s census effort, check out the Census 2020 tag.

Daniel Pizarro did not answer the 2020 Census right away. He put it off for weeks thinking about how to answer the race question. With less than a month to go until census counting efforts end across the country, he is now urging others to fill it out, even if it is not fully representative of their lived experiences.

Pizarro is graphic artist and art director with a practice centered on community-oriented work. He most recently led eight New Haven-based teen artists in the creation of digital artwork as part of Artspace New Haven’s 20th Annual Summer Apprenticeship Program: Youth Justice Design Collaborative. Pizarro modeled the curriculum after Black Panther Party’s independently funded Community News Service.

The U.S. Census Bureau has announced that it will stop counting census respondents on Sept. 30, a month earlier than previously planned. Any mailed in responses must arrive by Oct. 7 to be considered. Held every 10 years and mandated by the U.S. Constitution, the census is intended to count every person in the country and collect data for the proper allocation of federal funds and drawing of legislative districts. In 2002, the state lost a representative in its fifth congressional district following a lower count on the 2000 census.

It also determines how much money each state receives from the federal government. In other words, it directly impacts New Haven’s access to Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start early childhood education, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits, and other essential federal benefits programs.

New Haven leaves roughly $2,800 on the table for every person not counted. In 2010, some 40,000 New Haveners were left out. In early 2020, Mayor Justin Elicker expressed a concern that undocumented immigrants, fearful of the Trump Administration, will not fill out the census.

Have you completed the census?

Yes. I had been putting it off for a couple weeks until you called me. I couldn’t do the interview if I didn’t do it.

How do you identify personally?

I identify as a cis male. Even though cis isn’t a category. The form is very binary. But that's how I identify. I would also identify as Latinx.

Did you have any challenges completing the census?

One hundred percent yes. I think for Latinos the race questions are by far the most confusing one. Because of how the form itself was designed and developed. I think in general the question about race confuses a lot of people. For Latinos, we are categorically Latino as a race even though race is a social construct. How we identify ourselves in terms of how the census is labeling race excludes us. There is no racial category for Latinos. Latinos are a mix of racial compositions. We have our white European colonizer blood, and we have our ancestral Indigenous blood. We have our African blood as well to various degrees how much this shows up in your phenotype or how you present.

You know because it's like even though race is a social construct, right? We still have to deal with it. Right because we are still racialized as Latinos, where we are marginalized or oppressed. We don't live in a post-racial society, so we still got to deal with the label.

I checked off Other and explained it.

Have you completed a census before?

I think I had just turned like 18, right this was back in like 2000. I have done the census before and it was confusing for me then. I know we are under a Trump Administration and I know there was a lot of work being done under the Obama administration to correct the confusion around race. In the little research I did, I quickly found out the millions of dollars that were poured into that research under the Obama administration were essentially ignored and left out.

If you look at the history of the census back in 1930, Mexican was considered a race. There was clear intent of what the designers of the census wanted to do with that question. Who stands to benefit. If you look at the data, a lot of Latinos identify as white even though they don’t identify as white. They are more willing to lean towards whiteness than Blackness or indigeneity

When did you first learn about the census?

I think someone came knocking on our door reminding us to do it.

What do you think people in your family think of the census?

I did this experiment, and I've been wanting to do this for a while. So I asked my family what did y'all check on and the race question. I had a family member say, “You're supposed to check out white.”

This opened up a really interesting discussion. I was bothered by the confidence behind that response, right? We're supposed to check. And I was just like so I push back on that and I'm like, why is it the assumption that we're supposed to check off white right? I'm like, how about our Indigenous roots, how do we take that into account?

I got pushback from my family. It stirred a lot of things up because you know at the end of the day we got to confront our loved ones, right? You know, are we going to do racial justice work in the world but we can't even have a conversation with our family about it. There’s a chance we have to confront the topic of anti-Blackness and anti- Indigeneity, right?

Do you think there is a distrust around the census and the government collecting information?

Among the Latinx community that is a very real fear. Why would I tell you how many people are living in my house? Why do I want to give you my address? What if I am undocumented or other people in my house are undocumented. There's a there's a history of the U.S. Census leveraging that information to come after the Latinx communities.

In 1930 when Mexican was a race, Mexicans were given options about their race. The United States was like we’re going to give you citizenship but only those who were considered white were able to be given citizenship and certain rights. So knowing this, why would anyone check off Mexican?

What are some myths you heard growing up about the census?

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is going to come after you, right. The government, like Big Brother, is going to have your information and wait to use it. That’s a general fear across the undocumented community across the country.

How do you think the census could be improved?

The sex and gender questions needs to be changed. How are you going to ask people this gender question like this when there isn’t a clear binary. Well, can’t we just list all of the different identities but you stick to a binary for efficiency. So it's like it becomes this discussion about what's more efficient to keep track meaning that you leave a lot of people out.

I worked for the federal government and I designed forms for six years. Let me tell you, there's always bias behind whoever's design [is] right and how you navigate a person's experience to that form and how you explain things.

What would you like to be included in the next census?

I think I would want some basic questions about income. I think it is really important because I don't think it [the census] really captures wealth disparities and income levels.

I think it's important to also have an understanding of the distribution of wealth in our country because we talk so much about it. I’ve seen that really be highlighted because of Bernie’s campaign. Like he made it such a platform to talk about well when you come in equality in this country .Then we can say, “Hey 'all collected this data, like now you have to stand behind it and correct it.”

What would you tell people who are skeptical about filling out the census?

The scary part is that the government will be making on how to fund different communities regionally for the next 10 years based on this data. So if we don’t include ourselves, it may even hurt us more. It is almost a two-fold thing, where this is a hard thing to do.

Maybe that isn’t true for undocumented people because that scares me to also say like you've got to fill this out too when we’re under a Trump Administration that's actively trying to deport undocumented people, you know.

I'd also say that about the Obama Administration they deported more people than any other previous administration, right? So I can't say that with confidence that they should fill it out but for everyone else I would encourage them to fill out even if it is problematic.