ORLANDO, Fla. – Halfway through the extended effort to count every U.S. resident, civil rights leaders worry that minority communities are falling behind in responding to the 2020 census.With outreach efforts to motivate minority responses upended by a global pandemic, both the National Urban League and the NALEO Educational Fund are sounding the alarm that communities with concentrations of blacks and Hispanics have been trailing the rest of the nation in answering the census questionnaire.
The once-each-decade count helps determine where $1.5 trillion in federal funding goes and how many congressional seats each state gets.“Going into 2020, we knew the census was going to be extremely challenging.