A Race Reflection 25 years after 9/11
Having your existence publicly acknowledged is still a struggle if you are Black, and Trump Proposed Census Changes will make that even worse
9/11 Missing Persons Flyers, David Finn / Library of Congress
by Dr. Tanya Hernández
For anyone who worked near lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11, the daily commute to work was marked by the ubiquitous presence of missing persons flyers taped to any available surface. In the midst of the devastation, friends and families held out hope that doctors, nurses, or first responders might recognize in the posted flyers the face of an unconscious or unidentified survivor receiving treatment. However, after hope for survivors faded, the flyers became a way to publicly reflect each victim’s existence and thereby accord them dignity. Many of these original paper flyers were preserved by institutions like the September 11 Museum as defining artifacts of the tragedy. Being publicly acknowledged as having existed matters.
Twenty-five years later, the struggle to be publicly acknowledged continues, albeit in a different context. The Constitution mandates that every 10 years, our residents be counted in a census survey for purposes of apportionment of congressional seats so that states can have an adequate number of legislative representatives account for their needs in lawmaking. Yet Black people have been undercounted on every census since our first in 1790. Today that means that fewer congressional seats are allocated to the states in which Black people are undercounted, thereby depriving entire states of adequate representation. Moreover, Black census undercounting demolishes any possibility of a true multiracial democracy because if you are not counted you do not matter to the nation-state.
When our democracy was attacked 25 years ago, we asserted the importance of acknowledging each victim and thereby according them dignity. The Trump administration's current attempts to undermine an inclusive and equitable census should be met with the same demand for the respect of human rights.
Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. She received her A.B. from Brown University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Professor Hernández is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and Fulbright Scholar whose work in that area has been published in numerous outlets. Her most recent book from Beacon Press is Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and The Struggle for Equality. Currently under contract with Beacon Press, is her next book The Global Erasure of Blackness: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census (Under) Counting. She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University; a Faculty Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and as a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Professor Hernández is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics.
