by Victor Perlo

About the author: Victor Perlo is a member of the National Board of the Communist Party, USA.

In 1991 there were 259 million people in the United States. Of these, 69 million, or 26.6 percent of the total, were racial minorities. These figures, although linked to the 1991 reports of the U.S. Census Bureau, are more accurate than the official underestimation of the official census count, which significantly understated the actual population. It excluded the million-plus people in prisons and jails and other institutions, a sizable proportion of the homeless, and the half-million servicemen stationed overseas. Thus the estimate of 259 million people is 7.8 million more than the official census report.

Nearly half the additional 7.8 million are African Americans: about half the prison population, at least half the homeless, and a significant proportion of the...