Newsroom Archive

The U.S. Census Bureau's five advisory committees on race and ethnicity will hold their annual meeting in Alexandria, Va., Nov. 2 - 3.

The current committees were established in 1985 to serve as liaisons between the Census Bureau and the American Indian and Alaska Native, African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic populations. The committees' primary focus is to advise the Census Bureau on how to better serve these populations by offering advice on such topics as race and ethnic tabulations, partnership programs, advertising, language programs and recruitment. The Committees' activities relate to the remaining elements of Census 2000, the planning and design of the 2010 decennial census, and the American Community Survey, a large monthly survey scheduled to go nationwide in 2003.

The committees are composed of representatives of the general public, as well as members of national, regional and local organizations. During their November meeting, the committees are scheduled to welcome several new members.

New members on the African American committee are John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, and Gwendolyn Holmes, assistant vice president for consumer lending at Hancock Bank in Gulfport, Miss. Jon Melegrito, the executive director of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, and Dr. K.V. Rao, associate professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University, are new members of the Asian committee. The Hispanic committee's new members are Susana Gomez, assistant director of the AFL-CIO's Civil Rights Department, and Ana Sol Gutierrez, senior consulting engineer and director of Strategic IT Consulting at Computer Sciences Corp.

Four new members of the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders Committee are William Afeaki, the director of the Utah State Office of Pacific Islander Affairs; Jobie Yamaguchi, deputy to the chairman of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands; Dr. Faye Untalan, associate professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences and Epidemiology, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii; and William Emmsley, Jr., chief executive officer of the Samoan Service Providers Association.