TCNJ

30 The College of New Jersey Magazine you identified yourself as Caucasian, you could say you were Polish, or English, or Scottish, or multiple ethnicities. Of course, New Jersey being New Jersey, people often responded with four, five, or six. advertisements, but I'm wondering how much of that actually went to Spanish-language media. I don't want to sound overly political, but when the former president pushed for a citizenship question on the census, it did nothing to help what we were trying to do. I go back to the adage from the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill — "All politics is local." The census needs to seek out more community groups, specifically in the Latino community, because we're going to be an even more diverse country in 2030. I would expect by then that New Jersey will become one of those states that has no white majority. We are close to being there. There are four states that no longer have that — California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. My connection to a small slice of people in New Jersey who have no legal status here is that they came to the United States for the same reason many of our own ancestors came: to forge a better life for themselves and, in many cases, to flee oppressive regimes. My great-grandmother came here in 1880 from Germany when the Austro-Hungarian empire was in shambles from the Franco- German War. Hopefully, by the next census, we will have dealt rationally with immigration and given people a pathway to a legal presence here. There was a new 2020 census question about ethnic background. If somebody were to say that they were Black, we would follow up with: "Would you share your ethnicity?" You could answer you were from Africa, from Barbados, from Bermuda. Or if " If I did not dedicate myself fully to counting heads, then why was I there in the first place?" Healey proudly wore his TCNJ gear on the job. Toward the end,we were directed to just do what we could to get a head count. On my last day, I was at a residence in Tewksbury Township that six enumerators had already been to. They had tried to get information about the residents from adjoining addresses, known as a proxy interview, but were either refused or people didn't know their neighbors. But no one had gone to the house next door on the right side or the house directly across the street. I went to both. At the house to the right, there was a woman playing basketball with her daughter. I showed my census ID and said, "Ma'am, we're trying to do a proxy interview to make sure all heads are counted. Would you have information about the family that lives next door?" It looked like it would be a large family — there were kids' toys strewn all over the place and lots of cars. "Yes,

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