Time International - 30.03.2020

12 Time March 30, 2020

“The Census is the master key,” explains
genealogist Rich Venezia. “Its importance to
American genealogy can’t be overstated. It
can be somewhat basic in the information it
provides while also distilling American his-
tory on a single page.”
Like a series of flip-book drawings, the
Census is at once static and dynamic. Begun
in 1790, with responses available to the pub-
lic through 1940, its rec ords are a reposi-
tory of granular information about American
households. Each dry data point it tracks—
birthplaces and marital status, immigration
and income—tells a detailed story. In
aggregate, those data points help us imagine
our ancestors’ lives in three dimensions and
to animate them, tracking their movement
through time and space and across the
American experience.

On June 2, 1900, Census worker David
Honey man came knocking on doors at a
crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower
East Side. In the
72nd household
he visited was a
10-year-old boy,
Latvian-born Abra-
ham Mendelsohn—
my grandfather.
Honeyman re-
corded that my
great-grandmother
Rosie Mendelsohn
had given birth to
nine children but
only four were liv-
ing. The entries for
many of her neigh-
bors telegraphed similar stories of heart-
break. Rosie is listed as being unable to read
or write (columns 22 and 23). Neither she nor
her husband Isaac, a shoemaker, could speak
English (column 24) eight years after they’d
arrived in America (column 16).
In the 1920 Census, my grandfather, a mar-
ried father and the only one of his siblings still
alive, had begun calling himself Albert. By
1930, he had four children, was an electrician
(column 25) and had applied to become a citi-
zen (column 23). In 1940, he reported an an-
nual income of $2,300, well above the national
average. For my family, the words and digits
in those Census columns are a tangible mani-
festation of upward mobility and assimilation.
All four of my grandfather’s sons graduated
from college; all had white collar jobs.
But many stories the Census tells are any-

thing but sanguine. Enslaved people were

enumerated in the earliest Censuses but were

never named, sometimes represented only by

a tick mark. In the 1850 and 1860 Censuses,

“slave schedules” included a list of the en-

slaved identified by age, sex and color. These

entries are sometimes the sole testament to

the existence of a living, breathing human

being. “It’s a very emotional document,” says

genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith, who hosts

the YouTube series BlackProGen LIVE! “ To

see marginalization actualized in our official

documents is what takes genealogy to a dif-

ferent place that many people are not com-

fortable going to.”

As a tool for capturing larger truths about

America, Census questions—as well as those

that are not asked—are inevitable reflections

of the priorities and biases of those doing the

asking. The 1880 Census, for example, asked if

anyone in the household was “idiotic” or “in-

sane.” Census efforts to measure America’s di-

versity have always been fraught, down to the

cringeworthy terms

used to classify peo-

ple, such as “Hindu”

as a clumsy catchall

for Asians. Other

than a 1930 question

on “Mexican” origin,

there was no attempt

to quantify Amer-

ica’s Latinx popu-

lation until 1970.

“What’s unasked,”

says Venezia,

“is unheard.”

In the recent

book The Plateau,

anthropologist Maggie Paxson writes of the

foundational question she asks as she tries to

get a read on what makes communities tick:

Who does what with whom? (As a genealo-

gist, I’d be remiss not to mention that she and I

are recently discovered fourth cousins.) How-

ever imperfect, the Census provides a snap-

shot of American life, telling us what those in

power thought was important to know—and

what wasn’t—about who was doing what with

whom at that particular moment.

Fill it out and you’ll be frozen in time

too—perhaps, if you’re lucky, as memorably

as a 15-year-old Wisconsin girl named Catha-

rine Cudney was in 1880, when four simple

words were entered in the “occupation” col-

umn by her name: “does as she pleases.”

Mendelsohn is a journalist and genealogist

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The Supreme Court,

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has a long history of

not living up to that

ideal, argues Adam

Cohen in his book

Supreme Inequality.

Instead, he writes, it

has frequently “stood

on the side of wealthy

campaign contributors,

rich corporations

and children born

into privilege.”

Learning from

the past

The drugmakers that

fueled the opioid

crisis will soon pay

billions in settlements.

“Unfortunately, if

recent opioid and

tobacco settlements

are any indication,

victims and their loved

ones may never see

a dime,” warns Kathy

Strain, an advocate for

grandparents raising

grandchildren born with

neonatal abstinence

syndrome or exposed

to opioids in the womb.

Critiquing a

movement

Mainstream feminism

claims to represent all

women, but according

to Mikki Kendall, author

of Hood Feminism,

it tends to focus on

those who already have

most of their needs

met. “All too often

it’s not about survival

but about increasing

privilege,” she writes.

CENSUS: RICHARD B. LEVINE—SIPA USA; SPRAGUE: GEORGE RINHART—CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

A Census 2020 information table at a

New York City street fair on Sept. 14