Some member of Caribbean community are urging the U.S. Census Bureau to add a
Caribbean-American race category to the 2010 census.

Jessica Forres reports…



Hundreds of local residents are celebrating D-C’s 17th annual
Caribbean Carnival at Banneker Recreation Park. Among the vendors is
the U.S. Census Bureau. Representatives with the agency are passing
out information about the 2010 U.S. Census.

Chris Toussaint is originally from Trinidad and Tobago, but he’s lived
in the U.S for more than twenty years. He believes American-Caribbean race
category should be added to the census.

IT’S NOT THAT WE’RE TRYING TO SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM BLACK-AMERICANS
BECAUSE WE ALL BLACK PEOPLE, BUT WE WANT TO SAY YES AMONG THESE BLACK
PEOPLE, THIS PERCENTAGE IS FROM THE CARIBBEAN.

Judith Martin…who was born in the U.S.… disagrees. Her grandparents
are from Jamaica and Antigua, but she considers herself
African-American.

I FEEL WE’RE ALL ONE YOU KNOW THAT WE ALL BLEND IN AS ONE. I DON’T
CONSIDER US AS SEPARATE EVEN THOUGH WE’RE FROM THE CARIBBEAN.

Alison Assanah-Carroll is a spokeswoman for the Bureau. She urges
residents to fill out "other" if they don’t identify with a particular
group.

BY DOING SO IT CAN ACTUALLY ESTABLISH A GIVEN PATTERN AND HELP TO
DESIGN FUTURE QUESTIONAIRES RELATIVE TO HOW WE SEE THE DATA BEING
TABULATED OR REPORTEDBY PERSON’S WHO ARE SELF-IDENTIFYING WHEN THEY
RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONAIRE.

More than 300-billion dollars of government funding are awarded to
states and communities based on census data.

Jessica Forres WAMU 885 news.