The decennial census is one of the most venerable components of American democracy and a paragon of population enumeration for the whole world. However, as an integral part of the American political tradition, it has shared the very peculiar nature of the American polity. It then deliberately counted Blacks as fractional persons—the Three-Fifths Compromise—and now, it involuntarily undercounts the Black population disproportionately. This undercount, in addition to decreasing the fair shares of political representation and federal funds entitled to African Americans, has resulted in various biased statistics on them.
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