September 28, 2023 (New York, NY) — This month, the U.S. Census Bureau (USCB) released data from the 2020 Census—an effort by the U.S. government to formally count everyone in our country, regardless of age or citizenship status, wherever they live every 10 years.
For the first time in our nation’s history, the USCB announced in January of 2020 that they would include “Sikh” as a write-in option to census question #9 (“What is your race?”), and that those who wrote in “Sikh” for this answer would be recorded as a distinct detailed population group under the “Asian” racial category as opposed to the “Asian Indian” category. At the time, the Sikh Coalition and other community voices warned that Sikhs were a traditionally hard to count population, and that including Sikh as a write-in option and a racial category would both likely lead to a severe undercount. Despite these concerns, we undertook a robust campaign to educate the Sikh community about the census and how to fill it out, including how-to videos, scam warnings, a detailed FAQ document, and more.
Unfortunately, with the publication of a new report from the USCB, our concerns about undercounting appear to have been well-founded: Per the 2020 Census data, only 48,321 respondents marked Sikh “alone,” and 70,697 marked Sikh “Alone or in any combination.” For the last 20 years, the most common and most credible estimate has been that there are more than 500,000 Sikhs in the United States. We continue to believe, based on our engagement with more than 350 gurdwaras from coast to coast, that the population meets or exceeds this number.
This undercount matters immensely because the U.S. government uses information from the census to allocate more than $600 billion worth of resources per year to communities across the country. An inaccurate picture of the number of Sikhs in different places could thus lead to poor policy decisions about how best to serve our sangats. For this reason, the Sikh Coalition will continue to remain engaged with the USCB and partners both in and out of government to communicate our alarm about undercounting and to fight for the equitable, appropriate allocation of resources for our communities wherever they are throughout the United States.
As always, the Sikh Coalition urges you to practice your faith fearlessly.