Census Spending Millions To Boost Minority Numbers

By FITSNews || Part of the record $15 billion that’s being spent on the 2010 Census is a whopping $350 million advertising budget that includes targeted campaigns aimed at boosting minority participation.

In fact, Census ads will run in 28 different languages and several spots are being produced with the goal of reassuring hesitant minority groups, like Arab-Americans.

From the AP:

… among Arabic-speaking residents, the shared experience of feeling under suspicion in post-9/11 America was stronger than any cultural differences in their backgrounds, said Jalal Sayed, an account manager with Allied Media Corp., which produced ads for those groups.

In one Arabic-language ad, the central image is of the main character joining a multicultural cast in mailing his census form. The purpose was to show that Arab residents weren’t being singled out for surveillance by the census agency, Sayed said.

“It’s a tough sell in my community frankly because this is the first census since Sept. 11 and there are all these fears and concerns about racial profiling that have gone on over the last nine years,” said Helen Hatab Samhan, executive director of the Arab American Institute Foundation and a member of a committee that is advising the census on its ads targeting minority communities.

Samhan and other advocacy group leaders gave the census bureau high marks in its efforts to reach minority communities, but said there were still gaps in the communications strategy that they had to fill.

One particularly glaring omission, she said, was the lack of advertisements targeting the native-English speaking Arab community.

Well, godd*mn.  Did government forget to cut advertisements for the Romulans and Klingons, too?

Anyway, as we reported previously, the cost of this year’s Census is more than three times the cost of the 2000 count – which was the first to use advertising.  The government is spending $46.93 per person this go-round, compared to $15.99 in 2000, $10.02 in 1990, $4.76 in 1980 and $1.22 in 1970.

Also, prior to the first person being counted, a government audit found that the Census wasted millions of dollars hiring temporary employees who didn’t do any work.  Also, the pre-count canvassing effort cost $88 million more than originally anticipated.