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[Lauren Brady:] I'm a math teacher here at Park East,
most of the students here are coming from Harlem,
be it East Harlem, West Harlem, South Bronx.
The people that they are seeing around them
and the percentages are not representative of the country
as a whole and some of them are unaware of that
and I think looking at something like Census data
to actually shine light on the fact that the percentages
within the country are different.
Some of them who don't necessarily realize it,
they're within a race that's actually minority.
Because of the fact that I decided to use a lot of data
from the Census and just in general a lot of the variables
that were coming up were comparisons across race
and comparisons across ethnic origins and I realized
that the students didn't distinguish between race
and ethnic origin, I needed to explain that to them.
That's when I went and let them make an assignment to read
through the Census questions, compare them,
how they transitioned from 1990 to 2000 to 2010,
what recommendations do we have for 2020,
let's actually write the letters to the Census Bureau
as a way of kind of empowering students
to get their questions addressed, to find out the truth
to demystify stereotypes.
[Aisha:] The letter I wrote
to the Census was about the questions.
Since I'm Puerto Rican, I felt - I was offended due
to the fact the Puerto Ricans was under ethnic origin.
Like Puerto Ricans, Dominicans they were just
under ethnic origin rather than race.
[Kevin:] In my letter,
I specifically talked about the word Negro.
The word Negro I believe has to go.
[Luis:] My letter was mostly about why is it
that Hispanics are not considered a category in race.
[Anizia:] In the letter, I addressed the fact the
on the Census they used the word Negro
to describe Black or African-American.
[Lauren Brady:] We heard back,
the fact that their folks were going
to come today and visit the class.
It really showed them this kind of community involvement
when you speak out and try to be heard,
it can actually make a difference and an influence.
[Nicholas Jones:] There's a reason that were here today
to help you understand but also to hear
from you why these are major concerns
because you're not the only ones asking these questions.
[Frank Vitrano:] I just want to talk for a minute
about what it means to take a census.
So of I asked you to count the number of students
in this class what would you do?
You'd look around, right?
There's about 360 students in this school,
how would you count them?
How about nationwide?
There's 55 million students in the country.
Every year over 400 billion dollars gets distributed
to states and local governments for various programs
that the federal government helps support based
on the population.
[Nicholas Jones:] So Brya wrote to us and said
for future Censuses the term Negro should be excluded.
Some people feel it's a derogatory term
and it's considered to be a race by only a few people
who have pre-Civil War thoughts about race and ethnicity.
So in 2010 we experimented with several forms
and had the term Negro removed and what we found is
that it had no impact on the way in which people reported
as Black or African-American.
I had an excerpt here from Jeffrey,
"We should make Hispanic a race because we all
as humans should be treated fairly and with equality."
And what we did on this form is we tried to find a way
in which all groups would be able to see themselves
but also recognizing that every single group
in the country can't be on one form.
And that's really the important part of being here,
is that the questions that you're asking are helping us
to change the portrait of America.
[Lauren Brady:] I think the students were able
to really enjoy the conversation and to see again,
you know when you speak out
and you can be heard, people are listening.
And it was a real - good real life, kind of, application.
Some of the students have discussed that they feel
that it has broadened the horizons in a way
because it's real factual data that they can trust
and they feel that they're learning some things
about the world around them before they are really emerging
into adulthood and to college.
[Bryanna:] So this is all important
because there's accurate numbers that we can find out about
and we can learn new things on a daily basis.
[Luis:] It's a lot of interesting facts that I get
to learn in here that in math - regular math -
I wouldn't get a chance to learn.
[Anizia:] It's more hands on to the real world than just sitting
in class, doing math problems.
[Armenia:] So to come to statistics class and learn
about that, what we're going out there, what we live in,
they don't teach us that out there.
We'll get it here, but if we don't take it with us
from where we are here, we won't remember it there.
[Aisha:] It just, like, applies to everything else
that you need in life.
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