Minority Babies Now the Majority

Time to celebrate!

The Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

Cool! Are there any potential downsides to this momentous achievement? Sure - but you know whose fault that is:

The contrast raises important policy questions. The United States has a spotty record educating minority youth; will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves?

For older Americans, the obvious solution to the problem of having so many young people who "don't look like us" is to encourage them to start looking like us - stop having Hispanics identified as "minority" and join the majority; encourage mixed-race people to identify with the majority. The only reason for a latino to resist the "white" label is that there are all kinds of goodies to be had with the "Hispanic" label.

Still, there are serious challenges ahead in particular with the low level of college degrees among current Hispanics (13% vs 31% of whites). "But there are bright spots" the article notes. You'd think that statement might lead into a description of, say, efforts by Hispanic business leaders to start pushing education and changing the Latino culture that's so dismissive of education. But then you'd be forgetting whose fault this is.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said the immigration debate of recent years has raised the political consciousness of young Latinos and he is hopeful that more will become politically active as a result. “We have an opportunity here with this current generation,” Mr. Vargas said. About 50,000 Latinos turn 18 every month, he said.

I'm feeling better already.

The Fourth Way

The start of the presidential election season - when a bevy of opponents battle in undignified jostling for their party's nomination and a hapless chief executive transitions the White House from executive mansion to re-electioncampaign headquarters - is often cause for lament that there isn't an alternative to this partisan bickering. But the alternative that everyone seems to want - a Third Way - a centrist course - is probably the worst. Studies have shown that the average conservative is dumber than the average liberal (it's an average, not you - calm down - think of all the left wing college professors) - but the dumbest of all are moderates. Being a moderate often means you lack the imagination and knowledge to take a real position on the issues.

But since both parties are messed up, what alternative is there? The best way is to pick and choose from the more extreme positions of each party - not too blend them together. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are always right and always wrong - but splitting each issue down-the-middle Solomon-like is no solution. Taking the best ideas from each optimizes policy. But that is really hard to do, since the result is alienating others on your side while failing to win over the side on the issues where you remain in disagreement.

Take an issue where the Democrats are clearly right - raising taxes. I would argue that taxes need to be raised on everybody - but especially the wealthy. Unfortunately, Republican ideologues will not hear of it. On O'Reilly a couple months back, both Ben Stein and Wayne Rogers - two conservative money guys - both assured O'Reilly that raising taxes on the wealthy will not cause any economic dislocation. Stein even pointed out that there is no correlation between higher economic growth and low taxes. [In fact, the opposite is probably true. Our finest growth occurred from 1947 thru the late sixties, when marginal tax rates were in the 77 - 90% range, and tax shelters were the norm - allegedly the most inefficient tax policy of all. And the 90's had overall higher growth than the 80's or (obviously) the 00's, despite higher taxes that decade.] But O'Reilly wouldn't hear of it - he prefers his ideological certainty that higher taxes just have to restrict growth over any facts that might contradict it.

The concept of a "living wage" is also a Democrat idea that should be our policy. How to implement that is not entirely clear - but certainly U.S. corporation ought to be sacrificing some level of profit and/or executive compensation so that American workers can afford to raise a family is a decent dwelling in a decent neighborhood. I'm not sure that I'm in favor of how Democrats would like to accomplish this - i.e., heavy unionization, as I feel labor unions are political animals unto themselves that ultimately harm the very communities and industries they infiltrate. But the main benefits of unionization - decent pay and fair and safe working conditions - ought to be national policy. Yet such a simple concept immediately runs afoul of modern Republican dogma that in order to compete in a global economy firms must operate unfettered by any considerations other than profit maximization.

Suppose a new kind of Republican candidate bargained with Democrats - offering a Living Wage policy for an end to the Diversity Regime? Tax increases on the wealthy in exchange for a big rollback in the Federal bureaucracy? Big investments in Green technology in exchange for rolling back restrictions on oil, gas and nuclear technology? Dramatic reductions in defense spending in exchange for a dramatic cutback on immigration, a border fence, and large-scale deportations?

I don't know if such deals could ever be pulled off, but I contend that exchanging policies like that would be far better than attempting to split the difference on any one issue.

Immigration and the Destruction of Community - in the NY Times!!!

The New York Times actually has an article on the sad loss of community when immigration and economic change intersect - specifically, in Santa Ana, California.

Fourth Street — also known as Calle Cuatro — has long been the center of Latino business in Orange County, the place where Mexican immigrants could find nearly anything they might have looked for in their homelands...But as the economy has soured, many of these stores have struggled to stay afloat. Some stores closed, others asked their landlords for a reduction in rent. At the same time, several property owners began pressing to create a group to improve downtown Santa Ana...The owners, who were mostly white, were determined to make it more welcoming to English-speaking clients and bring in customers from more affluent parts of Orange County. What they really wanted to do, opponents said, was scrub away any suggestion that it is an immigrant hub, in a city that is 85 percent Latino.

Oops - not what you expected? Too funny - a major sob-story on how a community is losing its identity to another invading ethnic group - but it's American Citizens who are the enemy, destroying the humble Chicano town. I'd recommend the whole article for a few laughs - here's a taste:

For those who worry about gentrification, Rudy Cordova is seen as a born-and-bred native. For those eager to revitalize the district, he is seen as a brilliant entrepreneur. Mr. Cordova, a 38-year-old son of immigrants, thinks of himself as somewhere in between. His children are learning Spanish, he said, but his son is attending far fewer quinceañeras than he did at his age. He knows today’s teenagers are unlikely to shop in the discount stores along Fourth Street that his parents once favored.[My God could things really be that bad!]

The alternative story - one that has been played out in one community after another as Mexican immigrants have transformed small towns into barrios across the country - is clearly not fit to print.