My anecdotal experience is that Hispanics are following the same path as past waves of Catholic immigrants. I come from a large-ish family originating in those waves in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the last 10-12 years we have incorporated some Hispanic (mostly Salvadoran) limbs. The other families I know like mine are also experiencing this, with so and so's sister or brother or cousin marrying a 2nd generation Hispanic. Based on this trajectory I think in a couple decades thinking about Hispanics as an insular minority will be as outdated as the doing the same with Irish or Italians. Sure people will be proud of their heritage (which will be more and more mixed) and there will be a few cultural hand me downs but it won't be a major factor in how people vote.
And all of this is a good thing. It's the path from starting out in a Democratic machine when people arrive to becoming fully assimilated, individualistic Americans. Democratic strategy should be forward looking about this process, instead of doing the ethnic-identitarian pigeonholing.
In the safety of anonymous comments - totally agree, and I often say privately that Mexicans are the new Italians.
I especially like to say this because I am in the Northeastern US and encounter a surprising number of mildly racist Italian-Americans. Which is hilarious, from a historical perspective! ITALIANS policing whiteness - what a future we live in.
Agreed, and I also generally keep my thoughts on this to myself and/or anonymous discussion. There's a certain ickiness, like you're scratching the surface of some kind of quack race pseudoscience from the 1800s even though that's not remotely the intent.
But anyway, my cousin who I am close with married a 2nd generation Salvadoran and they have 3 children. Those children are all growing up speaking English in a middle class exurb. I would never in a million years presume to know how they will identify in adulthood personally or politically. However, to the larger point, it's really hard for me to imagine that it will be within these increasingly dated late 20th century categories and assumptions.
Why is it hilarious? You think blacks can’t be racist ? Anyone can be racist, it’s human nature. Not according to the unhelpful attempt to redefine the term of course but according to the useful old definition that we all understand perfectly well.
Agree anyone can be racist. The hilarity is being confused about whether you are part of the in-group. It's why Chappelle's "Clayton Bigsby" character was hilarious, for example! Same thing here.
To be fair, at least in the Denver metro area, the kitchen staff of many Asian restaurants is majority Latino and I'm doubtful they are assimilating to Asianness.
Based on what, exactly? Of course American society was absolutely racist in regard to the divide between whites and blacks at the time, pretty complete segregation, so there were probably places that Italians could go that blacks couldn’t, but there were an awful lot of places where Italians were not accepted. Basically they did the many of the same low-paid labor jobs Latinos occupy today, they were suspected of being criminals and anarchists and suffered at the hands of law enforcement. There was a long-standing notion that the reason southern Italians had darker skin and curly hair was that they had African ancestry from when Hannibal invaded Italy in ancient times.
My family immigrated from Southern Italy to California in the early 1900's to pick fruit. They squeaked in right before immigration from Italy was banned based on the reasoning that they are unsophisticated knuckle-draggers who could never properly integrate into society. (This kind of language was used on the floor of the Senate; they created a legal test based on characteristics like hairlines and skin color to determine how "Southern" a European was and if they could be admitted.)
Needless to say, my grandparents faced a ton of racism and, like many Italians at the time, anglicized their names, dropped their accents and tried their best to hide their ethnicity. When they had kids, they forbade speaking Italian at home. Post civil-rights era, a lot if Italian-Americans got back to their roots; so many had immigrated to California that they started having pride parades broken out by province. But for decades, they kept all the ethnic (and Catholic) stuff private and made their children ashamed of their culture.
My grandpa was very much of the "look at what American did for us, what a great country" mindset. Later, "poor people must be lazy because we got where we are by working hard in the Land of Opportunity." Then "we came here legally, why can't the Mexicans do the same?" Finally, "poor people are all minorities, so minorities are lazy." He (like so many of his friends and other members of my family) became a staunch Republican and tossed around racial slurs so casually that it became embarrassing to go out in public with him. I watched this evolution take place.
My family history very much informs my views about immigrants and the absurdity of expecting "Latinos" or "Asians" to vote as a pro-immigrant woke progressive bloc.
My ancestors migrated around the same time to NE PA to mine coal, and then work in factories in Trenton, NJ by WWII. Got a similar arc in my grandparents generation as well.
When you look at the political figures today who are a Italian, sure we have Nancy Pelosi but I think Doug Mastriano is more typical of your average Italian American’s worldview, among the boomer-age folks know in my east coast Italian family.
Yes, but if you lump everyone with an Italian surname into "Italian-American" you'll just get a cross-section of random white people. Personally, I still know my family in Italy and grew up with a lot of 'cousins' visiting from abroad. I even got my Italian passport. But a lot of people picked up the surname many generations back and have no connection to Italian culture and a lot of people lost their name via marriage or anglicized it.
My point, if I have one, is that the immigrant arc is more important than racial/ethnic identity. Matt is quite right that Democrats looked at Latino voters and assumed they would behave identically to Black voters. But as many people have pointed out, "Latino" is about as useful a descriptor as European and that they are mostly just acting like any other immigrant population. Someone like Mastriano isn't a right-wing nut because of his Italian identity, just as Ted Cruz isn't a right-wing nut because of his Hispanic identity.
Italy is still a very racist country today, let alone during the waves of Italian immigration. Ask Asian and Black people about their experiences travelling there.
Oh Italians were certainly discriminated against, but few of those white ethnics are famous for their diverse tolerance of other groups. The fact Italians were discriminated against doesn't mean they themselves are tolerant, if anything it's the inverse.
Asians are also famously intolerant of blacks—but maybe that’s just the first thing they learn upon reaching American shores, same as the European immigrants in early 20th century did? Actually Koreans/Japanese probably didn’t even have to come here, they may have picked it up from GIs after WWII and Korean war.
No, Asians in Asia are also extremely racist against black people. They are also racist against each other. It’s hard to convey to white people what “just between us Asians” conversations sometimes sound like.
White people have this internalized Christian view that “god made us all in his image.” When they see disparity, they believe in their hearts that it must result from external circumstances. By contrast, Asian cultures, in both south and east Asia, are steeped in “just world” beliefs. They see disparity mainly in terms of personal or group failings. They also believe strongly in merit and virtue being hereditary, hence the focus in marrying someone “from a good family.”
This manifests to white people as “racism” though it’s actually somewhat distinct. Bangladeshis are likely to blame poverty in Africa on Africans. But they’re also likely to blame poverty in Bangladesh in Bangladeshis. By contrast racist Appalachians don’t blame their poverty on themselves.
Asians in Asia aren't particularly known for their love of each other, in particular itinerant Chinese not in China. I doubt they had to do all that much learning.
I kind of assumed that everyone in this conversation would be familiar with the famous Dennis Hopper/Christopher Walken scene in True Romance, but perhaps not. Warning to the uninitiated, “problematic” to say the least.
Maybe, although I'm pretty sure they faced a shit-ton of anti-Italian prejudice. This could be something of an urban legend, but I've always understood (to cite one crazy example) that, in Boston area Catholic parishes, Italians were sometimes required to attend Mass in the basement chapel. They were forbidden from worshipping upstairs, with the Irish who had arrived some decades prior.
Yep. In Philly there weren't enough Irish to force such outcomes, but my ancestors were still unwelcomed enough that they either built or demographically overran already-extant parishes and turned them into Italian Catholic churches, often coexisting with the Irish Catholic church two blocks away. And then the Polish wave in the 1900-1920 period added Polish Catholic parishes.
On top of the preexisting British-Scottish-Scots Irish-German divides that gave us 1 Anglican, 1 Presbyterian, 1 Lutheran, 1 Baptist, 1 Methodist, and 1 Quaker church every six blocks.
In my experience, Philly has even more churches per capita than Boston or NYC.
A town near where I grew up in New Jersey, less than a square mile, had two volunteer fire stations because the Italians and Irish couldn’t get along long enough to share. They somehow managed with only one Catholic Church though, and a lot of the folks my age were half Italian, half Irish.
generally agree with but to play devil’s advocate, the social context of the 21st century is a lot of different:
* because of social progress over the last century, there’s less of a need to assimilate into whiteness.
* we had an immigration moratorium in the middle of the 20th century which also saw american ethnic culture calcify as the older immigrant generation died off. there continues to be a steady trickle of latino immigration into the us, and it’s not crazy to think we’ll see more if bad things happen in latin america. (i think this most shows itself in the fact that we’re like 70 years into there being a major puerto rican population in a lot of northern us cities and most of them still have a distinct puerto rican vote.)
* modern communication technology makes it easier to keep in contact with culture of the motherland. the booming popularity of latin music is probably the best manifestation of this, but you see this in other places too.
* also not really pc i guess, but a lot of hispanics can’t pass as white
I agree with your bottom line, and I wonder if left wing resistance to it stems from some sort of innate cosmopolitan preference for being around people of different experiences. Which if true, seems straightforward to address: just keep bringing more immigrants in, and let the later generations assimilate as they wish.
Economic trends back this up. Raj Chetty’s research shows that Hispanics and whites have similar economic mobility, and Hispanic immigrants get near parity with non-Hispanic whites within a couple of generations. That’s similar to the trajectories we saw with Italian and Irish immigrants.
By contrast, black-white income gaps haven’t narrowed at all since 1950.
Ha, you described exactly what my Dutch/English/Irish-descended self is doing - marrying an amazing, brilliant, and beautiful second generation Colombian woman. I can't even imagine what our kids' sense of identity will be, although I hope it includes some honoring of the traditions that our parents came out of.
I agree with you wholeheartedly but you are also stating why the demographics as destiny argument is and was so appealing. This diagnosis basically says we diverged from Europe on some elements of the state long ago for valid reasons, those reasons continue to be true and replicate themselves, and every year that passes we are more locked into our path. It’s a bit of a funeral for most of left liberal politics
As a recovering addict myself, I feel confident in asserting that Dems continue to be addicted to the high of moral superiority that comes with feeling confident your political opponents are drowning in their own racism. This creates a major blind spot where the only reason for supporting an R policy/opposing a D one is due to one’s racism/white supremacy. Of course this leaves one shocked if one goes to the effort of learning why a Latino voter might be uneasy with talk of open borders. What’s fascinating is that, when you look by racial group, Pew shows each group considers their racial identity to be of hugely different importance to their sense of self. Black people, and by extent Black voters, center their own “blackness” in their self-perception to a greater extent than do Latinos their Latinoness and a MUCH greater extent than whites. (Whites of all political backgrounds tend to have a taboo against building a sense of identity in their whiteness, for excellent reasons!!). It is perfectly logical that the more you center your racial identity in your sense of self, the more you see the actions of others through that lens.
"It is perfectly logical that the more you center your racial identity in your sense of self, the more you see the actions of others through that lens."
"Whites of all political backgrounds tend to have a taboo against building a sense of identity in their whiteness, for excellent reasons!!"
This would seem to be at odds with the large numbers of white progressives seeing the actions of others through a racial lens, no?
Yeah- whites actually do have two, diverging flavors of racial identity- self-declared “good white people” who differentiate themselves from the racist, bigoted heathens, and self-declared “real Americans” who differentiate themselves from the Godless, traitorous heathens. And those identities absolutely inform a self-confirming worldview. But it’s important to note that neither subgroup takes pride in just being “white.”
Have felt this way for a long time and its only intensified since Trump was elected.
It used to be a running joke between my wife and I that we were too "city" for the suburbs because we hated driving and Applebee's and liked public transit and walking, but too "suburban" for the urban affluent liberal set since we like watching domestic sports and own a big screen TV and eschew Whole Foods.
It's gotten more acute between the "wear masks everywhere forever, defund police, enforce no social norms or look to achieve any progress in the name of equity" urban set and the "gotta drive my F-250 with 3 concealed guns on me at all times in case MS-13 and/or antifa attacks the costco" exurban set.
With the internet flattening any regional deviations on politics, it can feel like this is a position without a home, except for in the comments of a center-left political blog.
Chilis > Ruby Tuesdays > Fridays > Applebees > getting hit by a bus > Olive Garden.
And really I should update my priors since all of the above are mostly down-market chains for small cities and the far exurbs. The suburbanites eat at Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs and their similar ilk, all of which feature food that goes from "fine" to "actually pretty good"
I'd say that's accurate for me, for my entire life where I've been politically aware, I've never felt comfortable with always identifying with one "team".
It bothers me that self perception tied to race is viewed negatively for some and positively for others. I'm proud of my ancestors: all four of my grandparents went to college in the 30s and 40s. My great grandfathers were a German farmer in southern Indiana, a German furniture dealer in upstate New York, a Hungarian electric plater from Queens and Scottish gas station and diner owner on the national road in Indiana. All hardworking, entrepreneurial couples. Go back 2 more generations further and you'll find soldiers on both sides of the war and Scottish transplants to West Virginia. Small farmers making a life in America.
Is this "white people" and "privilege"? probably yes, but it sure didn't feel that way behind the plow and building businesses. I feel like I can be proud of my family, heritage and culture while recognizing their good fortune. I don't associate really with white people generally, but I do associate with central European immigrants and old American small farmers. I think African Americans justifiably find commonality in the heritage of slavery and oppression of their families. I'd argue it's less about race more about relatively recent heritage. Recent African immigrants have a different heritage and the culture is distinct.
There is a healthy moderation of racial identity in the understanding of your family and community history, and finding communality in this. For example Germans in Germany are very aware of the common Nazi heritage in many families, and have responded by strong legal restrictions on those views. A culture is coping with it's past wrongs. In contrast, most white Americans are primarily post civil war immigrant heritage or fought for the Union, therefore they do not have deep guilt about slavery. Again in contrast African Americans remain deeply affected by the heritage of slavery and racism. People's self perception is largely reasonable, but doesn't fit a clean narrative of racial conflict.
Only Republicans talk of "open borders." But it is true that Democrats have not prioritized getting enough immigration judges to the border to process the asylum seekers. It would have been helpful if that was para of BBB that Republicand voted against.
I mean only Republicans characterize what we have as "Open Borders." Democrat do not support truly open borders or even less enforcement of existing border controls, though I will admit that the do not support proper funding of the existing system.
Yes Bryan Caplan does support real open borders, although implicitly he supports it only for those who find employment.
Yes, weird iconoclast person academic who isn’t in either party supports open borders is pretty sui generis and not really related to anything but what iconoclastic academics think.
He's a Libertarian and writes it (I think) only to virtue signal to other Libertarians without having to support any serious policy to reduce immigration restrictions.
It is frustrating to see local progressives assume that Indian, Korean, Chinese shopkeepers and professionals will be motivated to vote Democrat by appeals to protect undocumented immigrants from Central America and integrate public schools. Dividing the US into white and non-white doesn’t seem like an informative electoral strategy.
Wait, in my eyes in makes a lot more sense to speak about bipoc than people of color more generally - Blacks and Indigenous Americans didn't have the choice to immigrate and were systematically oppressed on scales no other group in the US can lay claim to. What's more, immigrants of color such as east and south Asians as well as Latinos are on average much more likely to accumulate generational wealth and integrate (aka the American dream) while Black and indigenous Americans are not.
I remember when Matt taught me that term on Twitter, saying pretty much what you did, me thinking it was a nothingburger tweet, yet he got ruthlessly dragged on it on there from his left flank.
"I don’t say “people of color”. People of color sounds like something you see when you are on mushrooms. Besides, the use of people of color is dishonest. It means precisely the same thing as colored people. If you’re not willing to say “colored people” you shouldn’t be saying “people of color”.
Besides, the whole idea of color is bullshit anyway. What should we call white people? “People of no color”? Isn’t pink a color? In fact, white people aren’t really white at all, they’re different shades of pink, olive and beige. In other words, they’re colored. And black people are rarely black. I see mostly different shades of brown and tan. In fact, some light-skinned black people are lighter than the darkest white people. Look how dark the people in India are. They’re dark brown but they’re still considered white people. What’s going on here? May I see the color chart? “People of color” is an awkward, bullshit , liberal-guilt phrase that obscures meaning rather than enhancing it. Shall we call fat people, “people of size”?"
"People of color" --- I'm mostly annoyed with the construction "People of X", which just hurts my ears. Just use a damn adjective! Where else is the construction used? I can only think of "People of faith". I realize that "colored" has loaded history, but if the NAACP can use it, I think it can be reclaimed.
For my money “X of color is even worse”. “Students of color”, “reporters of color”, “gamers of color” (yes, Kotaku has actually used that one), they’re all bad.
“People of color” never conferred a real advantage, just an illusion of advantage, which is probably not good if it keeps you from seeing things as they really are.
Uh, Thatcher never said anything about living "in a black and brown neighborhood." FrigidWind is rephrasing Thatcher's famous quote, "You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure."
That's an American stereotype, British race relations are very distinct as the country was essentially all-white until after the war, well after the decline of the domestic service sector
As a “brown” person this drives me nuts. But let’s not overlook the role of liberal white people in that. I always wonder why the brown people I see on TV as “representation” are so much more liberal than my Bangladeshi family and relatives. Then I realized: who decides which brown people get to speak for their race on TV?
What's made me saddest in the last decade or thereabouts when trying to discuss this with progressives...there's a strong desire not to give up the "demographic destiny dream", and that's very understandable. But it's been distressing to see cope of the specific variety "anyone who votes R was never progressive/D to begin with". A sort of misapplied internal-racism ideology which simply does not reflect actual election results, and stereotypes entire groups of diverse people. Turns out that democratic processes do not, in fact, inevitably deliver progressive victories - because the electorate isn't inevitably progressive. Feature Not Bug. If a persuaded bird in the hand is worth two mobilized birds in the bush, then that also applies to dis-persuaded ones...losing former voters is twice as bad. I think this is one of the strongest unearned R talking points, the whole your-vote-is-taken-for-granite thing which speaks to a certain kind of temperament. People just like feeling that they're actually listened to.
(It's been especially weird as "_________ people are not a monolith" has become an increasingly common soundbite.)
Progressives like the idea of demographic destiny for the reason Matt identified regarding Black voters: white Democrats can overrule more conservative Black voters on abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues, so long as they promise to protect them from Republican racism.
Of course progressives like this arrangement. Who wouldn’t want a huge bloc of votes from people they don’t have to compromise with? And for the same reason, they really resist the idea they’ll have to compromise with religious Latinos on abortion or with Muslim immigrants about what we teach kids in school about sex or gender.
I don't know if most even realize minorities in their own party are more moderate, when they are basically relying on testimony from members in academia and hollywood, basically tokenizing them. And that testimony can be pretty uncompromising.
I'll never forget a Hispanic actor on Bill Maher explaining why some hispanics vote R. Because "they hate themselves." Makes it pretty easy to unpeople them when you hear that.
Similarly I wish they would give up on the view that all these young people will keep voting D as they grow up. The hippies grew up and got mortgages and jobs and started voting more conservative. Gen z will do the exact same.
Thank you for reminding us of one of the few very optimistic things about the politics of the moment : racial depolarization. The US is facing very grave challenges to its domestic politics in the short term, but if it meets them successfully this welcome trend means the future may be bright.
Agreed. Frankly, if one of the "bad" outcomes is that more and more minority voters become Republicans, and as a result, the Republican party starts to worry about not being too racist, lest they alienate their minority bloc(s), so they, you know, start being less racist, this seems.... good for everyone?
It will be interesting to see how well the Republican party is able to "depolarize" racially given that white identity has become such an important part of its worldview and yet so many Latinos (and maybe in the future Asian Americans) are almost begging to join that coalition. Will the latter solve the puzzle by deciding they're white, or will whiteness become a less salient element of Republican thinking (e.g., eliminating all the Confederate imagery)?
I disagree. GOP might be the preferred home of the racist far right but it doesn’t follow that that’s an important constituency, despite the left’s efforts to brand the gop otherwise. Very few gop supporters consciously view themselves as racist and they had no problems supporting non white candidates (Ben Carson as you’d recall was the only one coming close to beating trump in the 2016 primaries). The gop certainly has strong anti democratic and authoritarian tendencies that are cause for serious concern, and it’s getting worse, but these are not racist even if racist dog whistles are used tactically in specific races. Non whites are already a growing percentage of gop voters and representatives at all levels and the trend will be sure to continue. The left wil do very well to stop telling itself ghost stories and face the real monsters that are no less disturbing.
I mean, come on. “Only candidate who came close” is pretty clear. To your point, no one came that close to Trump in the end, but in the early stages before everyone had dropped out Carson polled close and no one else.
"Will the latter solve the puzzle by deciding they're white"
That's has been happening for some time. E.g. from 2014: "More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White" [1] There have been other analyses along those lines. Pew has done some interesting surveys along similar lines (e.g. [2]). And FWIW, I'm pretty certain that European-decended Republicans will accept them.
Do Republicans even need to eliminate *all* Confederate imagery to pick up non-black votes? I'm pretty sure most Latino and Asian-American voters don't have that much more negative reactions to the appearance of the Confederate flag than most Anglo voters do.
That's a synecdoche for all the subtle and not so subtle centering of the white cause in America among Republicans. Like in, oh, any random five minutes of Tucker Carlson.
I want to pre-register my opinions about why Abrams is struggling to get the same share of the black vote as in 2018.
There is a fairly bitter divide between black women and low status black men. Marriage rates are low and illegitimacy is high. Many lower status black men are “on” child support for children they rarely see. The system tries to extract a portion of their income that country club Republicans would revolt at. Child support for three children in Georgia is ~45% of one’s income plus health care costs and work related child care costs. A person who makes $2500 a month can easily be on the hook for $1500 in child support. Try working full time and living on a grand a month and see how angry you become.
The system also polices single fathers’ private lives. If they want to exercise visitation, they often have to pee in a cup to prove they don’t smoke pot. The social workers and probation officers staffing this edifice of social control are often black women.
Higher status black men have the same reason to vote Republican as high status white men: lower taxes and fewer regulations. It’s unsurprising that 15-20% of black men will chose Kemp over Abrams. I do expect her to hold strong with black women.
My anecdotal experience is that Hispanics are following the same path as past waves of Catholic immigrants. I come from a large-ish family originating in those waves in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the last 10-12 years we have incorporated some Hispanic (mostly Salvadoran) limbs. The other families I know like mine are also experiencing this, with so and so's sister or brother or cousin marrying a 2nd generation Hispanic. Based on this trajectory I think in a couple decades thinking about Hispanics as an insular minority will be as outdated as the doing the same with Irish or Italians. Sure people will be proud of their heritage (which will be more and more mixed) and there will be a few cultural hand me downs but it won't be a major factor in how people vote.
And all of this is a good thing. It's the path from starting out in a Democratic machine when people arrive to becoming fully assimilated, individualistic Americans. Democratic strategy should be forward looking about this process, instead of doing the ethnic-identitarian pigeonholing.
In the safety of anonymous comments - totally agree, and I often say privately that Mexicans are the new Italians.
I especially like to say this because I am in the Northeastern US and encounter a surprising number of mildly racist Italian-Americans. Which is hilarious, from a historical perspective! ITALIANS policing whiteness - what a future we live in.
Agreed, and I also generally keep my thoughts on this to myself and/or anonymous discussion. There's a certain ickiness, like you're scratching the surface of some kind of quack race pseudoscience from the 1800s even though that's not remotely the intent.
But anyway, my cousin who I am close with married a 2nd generation Salvadoran and they have 3 children. Those children are all growing up speaking English in a middle class exurb. I would never in a million years presume to know how they will identify in adulthood personally or politically. However, to the larger point, it's really hard for me to imagine that it will be within these increasingly dated late 20th century categories and assumptions.
Why is it hilarious? You think blacks can’t be racist ? Anyone can be racist, it’s human nature. Not according to the unhelpful attempt to redefine the term of course but according to the useful old definition that we all understand perfectly well.
Agree anyone can be racist. The hilarity is being confused about whether you are part of the in-group. It's why Chappelle's "Clayton Bigsby" character was hilarious, for example! Same thing here.
The greatest Chappelle show segment!
Having recently moved to NYC it’s striking how literally true this can seem when you see how many Latinos are working at Italian restaurants.
Anthony Bourdain always maintained Latinos basically ARE the US restaurant sector. The whole damn industry would collapse without them.
To be fair, at least in the Denver metro area, the kitchen staff of many Asian restaurants is majority Latino and I'm doubtful they are assimilating to Asianness.
Bah, that's old hat. Latinos have been cooking in Vietnamese and Korean restaurants for years now.
I'm gonna guess the Italian immigrants were generally pretty racist at the time they came as well.
Based on what, exactly? Of course American society was absolutely racist in regard to the divide between whites and blacks at the time, pretty complete segregation, so there were probably places that Italians could go that blacks couldn’t, but there were an awful lot of places where Italians were not accepted. Basically they did the many of the same low-paid labor jobs Latinos occupy today, they were suspected of being criminals and anarchists and suffered at the hands of law enforcement. There was a long-standing notion that the reason southern Italians had darker skin and curly hair was that they had African ancestry from when Hannibal invaded Italy in ancient times.
My family immigrated from Southern Italy to California in the early 1900's to pick fruit. They squeaked in right before immigration from Italy was banned based on the reasoning that they are unsophisticated knuckle-draggers who could never properly integrate into society. (This kind of language was used on the floor of the Senate; they created a legal test based on characteristics like hairlines and skin color to determine how "Southern" a European was and if they could be admitted.)
Needless to say, my grandparents faced a ton of racism and, like many Italians at the time, anglicized their names, dropped their accents and tried their best to hide their ethnicity. When they had kids, they forbade speaking Italian at home. Post civil-rights era, a lot if Italian-Americans got back to their roots; so many had immigrated to California that they started having pride parades broken out by province. But for decades, they kept all the ethnic (and Catholic) stuff private and made their children ashamed of their culture.
My grandpa was very much of the "look at what American did for us, what a great country" mindset. Later, "poor people must be lazy because we got where we are by working hard in the Land of Opportunity." Then "we came here legally, why can't the Mexicans do the same?" Finally, "poor people are all minorities, so minorities are lazy." He (like so many of his friends and other members of my family) became a staunch Republican and tossed around racial slurs so casually that it became embarrassing to go out in public with him. I watched this evolution take place.
My family history very much informs my views about immigrants and the absurdity of expecting "Latinos" or "Asians" to vote as a pro-immigrant woke progressive bloc.
My ancestors migrated around the same time to NE PA to mine coal, and then work in factories in Trenton, NJ by WWII. Got a similar arc in my grandparents generation as well.
When you look at the political figures today who are a Italian, sure we have Nancy Pelosi but I think Doug Mastriano is more typical of your average Italian American’s worldview, among the boomer-age folks know in my east coast Italian family.
Yes, but if you lump everyone with an Italian surname into "Italian-American" you'll just get a cross-section of random white people. Personally, I still know my family in Italy and grew up with a lot of 'cousins' visiting from abroad. I even got my Italian passport. But a lot of people picked up the surname many generations back and have no connection to Italian culture and a lot of people lost their name via marriage or anglicized it.
My point, if I have one, is that the immigrant arc is more important than racial/ethnic identity. Matt is quite right that Democrats looked at Latino voters and assumed they would behave identically to Black voters. But as many people have pointed out, "Latino" is about as useful a descriptor as European and that they are mostly just acting like any other immigrant population. Someone like Mastriano isn't a right-wing nut because of his Italian identity, just as Ted Cruz isn't a right-wing nut because of his Hispanic identity.
Italy is still a very racist country today, let alone during the waves of Italian immigration. Ask Asian and Black people about their experiences travelling there.
Oh Italians were certainly discriminated against, but few of those white ethnics are famous for their diverse tolerance of other groups. The fact Italians were discriminated against doesn't mean they themselves are tolerant, if anything it's the inverse.
Asians are also famously intolerant of blacks—but maybe that’s just the first thing they learn upon reaching American shores, same as the European immigrants in early 20th century did? Actually Koreans/Japanese probably didn’t even have to come here, they may have picked it up from GIs after WWII and Korean war.
No, Asians in Asia are also extremely racist against black people. They are also racist against each other. It’s hard to convey to white people what “just between us Asians” conversations sometimes sound like.
White people have this internalized Christian view that “god made us all in his image.” When they see disparity, they believe in their hearts that it must result from external circumstances. By contrast, Asian cultures, in both south and east Asia, are steeped in “just world” beliefs. They see disparity mainly in terms of personal or group failings. They also believe strongly in merit and virtue being hereditary, hence the focus in marrying someone “from a good family.”
This manifests to white people as “racism” though it’s actually somewhat distinct. Bangladeshis are likely to blame poverty in Africa on Africans. But they’re also likely to blame poverty in Bangladesh in Bangladeshis. By contrast racist Appalachians don’t blame their poverty on themselves.
Asians in Asia aren't particularly known for their love of each other, in particular itinerant Chinese not in China. I doubt they had to do all that much learning.
That was one of those films I didn't expect to like, but caught it on a long flight, and thought it was pretty entertaining.
It was a very enjoyable movie which suffered the reputation-destroying injury of winning the Oscar for best picture, unfortunately.
I kind of assumed that everyone in this conversation would be familiar with the famous Dennis Hopper/Christopher Walken scene in True Romance, but perhaps not. Warning to the uninitiated, “problematic” to say the least.
Maybe, although I'm pretty sure they faced a shit-ton of anti-Italian prejudice. This could be something of an urban legend, but I've always understood (to cite one crazy example) that, in Boston area Catholic parishes, Italians were sometimes required to attend Mass in the basement chapel. They were forbidden from worshipping upstairs, with the Irish who had arrived some decades prior.
Yep. In Philly there weren't enough Irish to force such outcomes, but my ancestors were still unwelcomed enough that they either built or demographically overran already-extant parishes and turned them into Italian Catholic churches, often coexisting with the Irish Catholic church two blocks away. And then the Polish wave in the 1900-1920 period added Polish Catholic parishes.
On top of the preexisting British-Scottish-Scots Irish-German divides that gave us 1 Anglican, 1 Presbyterian, 1 Lutheran, 1 Baptist, 1 Methodist, and 1 Quaker church every six blocks.
In my experience, Philly has even more churches per capita than Boston or NYC.
And I'm sure the Italians just loved the Irish. Especially when the Irish were the police and running political machines.
A town near where I grew up in New Jersey, less than a square mile, had two volunteer fire stations because the Italians and Irish couldn’t get along long enough to share. They somehow managed with only one Catholic Church though, and a lot of the folks my age were half Italian, half Irish.
"a lot of the folks my age were half Italian, half Irish."
This is causes a lot of conflict to start, but resolves a lot of conflict in the end.
In America the one ethnic stereotype that's always allowed is that any particular ethnic group is overwhelming racist!
generally agree with but to play devil’s advocate, the social context of the 21st century is a lot of different:
* because of social progress over the last century, there’s less of a need to assimilate into whiteness.
* we had an immigration moratorium in the middle of the 20th century which also saw american ethnic culture calcify as the older immigrant generation died off. there continues to be a steady trickle of latino immigration into the us, and it’s not crazy to think we’ll see more if bad things happen in latin america. (i think this most shows itself in the fact that we’re like 70 years into there being a major puerto rican population in a lot of northern us cities and most of them still have a distinct puerto rican vote.)
* modern communication technology makes it easier to keep in contact with culture of the motherland. the booming popularity of latin music is probably the best manifestation of this, but you see this in other places too.
* also not really pc i guess, but a lot of hispanics can’t pass as white
I agree with your bottom line, and I wonder if left wing resistance to it stems from some sort of innate cosmopolitan preference for being around people of different experiences. Which if true, seems straightforward to address: just keep bringing more immigrants in, and let the later generations assimilate as they wish.
Economic trends back this up. Raj Chetty’s research shows that Hispanics and whites have similar economic mobility, and Hispanic immigrants get near parity with non-Hispanic whites within a couple of generations. That’s similar to the trajectories we saw with Italian and Irish immigrants.
By contrast, black-white income gaps haven’t narrowed at all since 1950.
Ha, you described exactly what my Dutch/English/Irish-descended self is doing - marrying an amazing, brilliant, and beautiful second generation Colombian woman. I can't even imagine what our kids' sense of identity will be, although I hope it includes some honoring of the traditions that our parents came out of.
I agree with you wholeheartedly but you are also stating why the demographics as destiny argument is and was so appealing. This diagnosis basically says we diverged from Europe on some elements of the state long ago for valid reasons, those reasons continue to be true and replicate themselves, and every year that passes we are more locked into our path. It’s a bit of a funeral for most of left liberal politics
As a recovering addict myself, I feel confident in asserting that Dems continue to be addicted to the high of moral superiority that comes with feeling confident your political opponents are drowning in their own racism. This creates a major blind spot where the only reason for supporting an R policy/opposing a D one is due to one’s racism/white supremacy. Of course this leaves one shocked if one goes to the effort of learning why a Latino voter might be uneasy with talk of open borders. What’s fascinating is that, when you look by racial group, Pew shows each group considers their racial identity to be of hugely different importance to their sense of self. Black people, and by extent Black voters, center their own “blackness” in their self-perception to a greater extent than do Latinos their Latinoness and a MUCH greater extent than whites. (Whites of all political backgrounds tend to have a taboo against building a sense of identity in their whiteness, for excellent reasons!!). It is perfectly logical that the more you center your racial identity in your sense of self, the more you see the actions of others through that lens.
"It is perfectly logical that the more you center your racial identity in your sense of self, the more you see the actions of others through that lens."
"Whites of all political backgrounds tend to have a taboo against building a sense of identity in their whiteness, for excellent reasons!!"
This would seem to be at odds with the large numbers of white progressives seeing the actions of others through a racial lens, no?
Yeah- whites actually do have two, diverging flavors of racial identity- self-declared “good white people” who differentiate themselves from the racist, bigoted heathens, and self-declared “real Americans” who differentiate themselves from the Godless, traitorous heathens. And those identities absolutely inform a self-confirming worldview. But it’s important to note that neither subgroup takes pride in just being “white.”
Right on the nose.
I feel like I am on "Team Slow Boring," where we clearly see everyone else's flaws and are, ourselves, flawless. 💅
Have felt this way for a long time and its only intensified since Trump was elected.
It used to be a running joke between my wife and I that we were too "city" for the suburbs because we hated driving and Applebee's and liked public transit and walking, but too "suburban" for the urban affluent liberal set since we like watching domestic sports and own a big screen TV and eschew Whole Foods.
It's gotten more acute between the "wear masks everywhere forever, defund police, enforce no social norms or look to achieve any progress in the name of equity" urban set and the "gotta drive my F-250 with 3 concealed guns on me at all times in case MS-13 and/or antifa attacks the costco" exurban set.
With the internet flattening any regional deviations on politics, it can feel like this is a position without a home, except for in the comments of a center-left political blog.
Chilis > Ruby Tuesdays > Fridays > Applebees > getting hit by a bus > Olive Garden.
And really I should update my priors since all of the above are mostly down-market chains for small cities and the far exurbs. The suburbanites eat at Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs and their similar ilk, all of which feature food that goes from "fine" to "actually pretty good"
I'd say that's accurate for me, for my entire life where I've been politically aware, I've never felt comfortable with always identifying with one "team".
Came across this which I think most of us can relate to (using the Archive link as I don’t imagine many of us pay for National Review): https://archive.ph/2022.10.29-224958/https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/11/07/why-i-keep-getting-mistaken-for-a-conservative/
It bothers me that self perception tied to race is viewed negatively for some and positively for others. I'm proud of my ancestors: all four of my grandparents went to college in the 30s and 40s. My great grandfathers were a German farmer in southern Indiana, a German furniture dealer in upstate New York, a Hungarian electric plater from Queens and Scottish gas station and diner owner on the national road in Indiana. All hardworking, entrepreneurial couples. Go back 2 more generations further and you'll find soldiers on both sides of the war and Scottish transplants to West Virginia. Small farmers making a life in America.
Is this "white people" and "privilege"? probably yes, but it sure didn't feel that way behind the plow and building businesses. I feel like I can be proud of my family, heritage and culture while recognizing their good fortune. I don't associate really with white people generally, but I do associate with central European immigrants and old American small farmers. I think African Americans justifiably find commonality in the heritage of slavery and oppression of their families. I'd argue it's less about race more about relatively recent heritage. Recent African immigrants have a different heritage and the culture is distinct.
There is a healthy moderation of racial identity in the understanding of your family and community history, and finding communality in this. For example Germans in Germany are very aware of the common Nazi heritage in many families, and have responded by strong legal restrictions on those views. A culture is coping with it's past wrongs. In contrast, most white Americans are primarily post civil war immigrant heritage or fought for the Union, therefore they do not have deep guilt about slavery. Again in contrast African Americans remain deeply affected by the heritage of slavery and racism. People's self perception is largely reasonable, but doesn't fit a clean narrative of racial conflict.
Only Republicans talk of "open borders." But it is true that Democrats have not prioritized getting enough immigration judges to the border to process the asylum seekers. It would have been helpful if that was para of BBB that Republicand voted against.
I mean only Republicans characterize what we have as "Open Borders." Democrat do not support truly open borders or even less enforcement of existing border controls, though I will admit that the do not support proper funding of the existing system.
Yes Bryan Caplan does support real open borders, although implicitly he supports it only for those who find employment.
Wanna bet? https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960/
Bryan Caplan is now a democrat? The guy who is against school almost the entire state?
I mean, he’s no Republican!
Yes, weird iconoclast person academic who isn’t in either party supports open borders is pretty sui generis and not really related to anything but what iconoclastic academics think.
He's a Libertarian and writes it (I think) only to virtue signal to other Libertarians without having to support any serious policy to reduce immigration restrictions.
It is frustrating to see local progressives assume that Indian, Korean, Chinese shopkeepers and professionals will be motivated to vote Democrat by appeals to protect undocumented immigrants from Central America and integrate public schools. Dividing the US into white and non-white doesn’t seem like an informative electoral strategy.
I feel like the whole fabrication of 'BIPOC' is an attempt to forge a single large identity group that is aligned with progressives.
And to a less extent 'people of color'.
Basically just use terminology to lump all non-white people into a group that is on their side.
The purpose of BIPOC is to cut Asian-Americans out of the group. Nobody in electoral politics should use it.
Wait, in my eyes in makes a lot more sense to speak about bipoc than people of color more generally - Blacks and Indigenous Americans didn't have the choice to immigrate and were systematically oppressed on scales no other group in the US can lay claim to. What's more, immigrants of color such as east and south Asians as well as Latinos are on average much more likely to accumulate generational wealth and integrate (aka the American dream) while Black and indigenous Americans are not.
BIPOC seeks to create a hierarchy of non-white people by ranking them based on how white they are.
I remember when Matt taught me that term on Twitter, saying pretty much what you did, me thinking it was a nothingburger tweet, yet he got ruthlessly dragged on it on there from his left flank.
'People of color' I thought was a least somewhat cunning, and probably gave them some advantage.
BIPOC was a degeneration into academia-driven jargon nonsense.
Additionally, putting Black and Indigenous outside of, and -before- all the other POC was odd and just seemed to create a kind of hierarchy.
"I don’t say “people of color”. People of color sounds like something you see when you are on mushrooms. Besides, the use of people of color is dishonest. It means precisely the same thing as colored people. If you’re not willing to say “colored people” you shouldn’t be saying “people of color”.
Besides, the whole idea of color is bullshit anyway. What should we call white people? “People of no color”? Isn’t pink a color? In fact, white people aren’t really white at all, they’re different shades of pink, olive and beige. In other words, they’re colored. And black people are rarely black. I see mostly different shades of brown and tan. In fact, some light-skinned black people are lighter than the darkest white people. Look how dark the people in India are. They’re dark brown but they’re still considered white people. What’s going on here? May I see the color chart? “People of color” is an awkward, bullshit , liberal-guilt phrase that obscures meaning rather than enhancing it. Shall we call fat people, “people of size”?"
--George Carlin
"People of color" --- I'm mostly annoyed with the construction "People of X", which just hurts my ears. Just use a damn adjective! Where else is the construction used? I can only think of "People of faith". I realize that "colored" has loaded history, but if the NAACP can use it, I think it can be reclaimed.
For my money “X of color is even worse”. “Students of color”, “reporters of color”, “gamers of color” (yes, Kotaku has actually used that one), they’re all bad.
People of color is the granddaddy of all "people first" language.
I still remember trying to explain to a kid that "well yes, white is a color to, but that's not what they mean..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36v9GSOFMFc&t=2m59s
“People of color” never conferred a real advantage, just an illusion of advantage, which is probably not good if it keeps you from seeing things as they really are.
It is hilarious to hear Rishi Sunak referred to as Britain's first PM "of color" and more so if you hear his accent before seeing his picture.
Of course, when Thatcher said that she lived in a black and brown neighborhood she was referring to "the help."
Uh, Thatcher never said anything about living "in a black and brown neighborhood." FrigidWind is rephrasing Thatcher's famous quote, "You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure."
My comment was entirely facetious.
That's an American stereotype, British race relations are very distinct as the country was essentially all-white until after the war, well after the decline of the domestic service sector
As a “brown” person this drives me nuts. But let’s not overlook the role of liberal white people in that. I always wonder why the brown people I see on TV as “representation” are so much more liberal than my Bangladeshi family and relatives. Then I realized: who decides which brown people get to speak for their race on TV?
Diversity means "people who hold the same views as me, but with a different skin color"
Based on the Warren campaign, the people claiming to speak for races aren’t speaking for very many voters.
It's also the fact that the people on TV personally benefit immensely from those policies. This article in the Atlantic explains it really well: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/supreme-court-harvard-affirmative-action-legacy-admissions-equity/671869/
What's made me saddest in the last decade or thereabouts when trying to discuss this with progressives...there's a strong desire not to give up the "demographic destiny dream", and that's very understandable. But it's been distressing to see cope of the specific variety "anyone who votes R was never progressive/D to begin with". A sort of misapplied internal-racism ideology which simply does not reflect actual election results, and stereotypes entire groups of diverse people. Turns out that democratic processes do not, in fact, inevitably deliver progressive victories - because the electorate isn't inevitably progressive. Feature Not Bug. If a persuaded bird in the hand is worth two mobilized birds in the bush, then that also applies to dis-persuaded ones...losing former voters is twice as bad. I think this is one of the strongest unearned R talking points, the whole your-vote-is-taken-for-granite thing which speaks to a certain kind of temperament. People just like feeling that they're actually listened to.
(It's been especially weird as "_________ people are not a monolith" has become an increasingly common soundbite.)
Progressives like the idea of demographic destiny for the reason Matt identified regarding Black voters: white Democrats can overrule more conservative Black voters on abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues, so long as they promise to protect them from Republican racism.
Of course progressives like this arrangement. Who wouldn’t want a huge bloc of votes from people they don’t have to compromise with? And for the same reason, they really resist the idea they’ll have to compromise with religious Latinos on abortion or with Muslim immigrants about what we teach kids in school about sex or gender.
I don't know if most even realize minorities in their own party are more moderate, when they are basically relying on testimony from members in academia and hollywood, basically tokenizing them. And that testimony can be pretty uncompromising.
I'll never forget a Hispanic actor on Bill Maher explaining why some hispanics vote R. Because "they hate themselves." Makes it pretty easy to unpeople them when you hear that.
Imagine trying to learn about white people from white progressives.
Similarly I wish they would give up on the view that all these young people will keep voting D as they grow up. The hippies grew up and got mortgages and jobs and started voting more conservative. Gen z will do the exact same.
Double-like.
Thank you for reminding us of one of the few very optimistic things about the politics of the moment : racial depolarization. The US is facing very grave challenges to its domestic politics in the short term, but if it meets them successfully this welcome trend means the future may be bright.
Agreed. Frankly, if one of the "bad" outcomes is that more and more minority voters become Republicans, and as a result, the Republican party starts to worry about not being too racist, lest they alienate their minority bloc(s), so they, you know, start being less racist, this seems.... good for everyone?
It will be interesting to see how well the Republican party is able to "depolarize" racially given that white identity has become such an important part of its worldview and yet so many Latinos (and maybe in the future Asian Americans) are almost begging to join that coalition. Will the latter solve the puzzle by deciding they're white, or will whiteness become a less salient element of Republican thinking (e.g., eliminating all the Confederate imagery)?
I disagree. GOP might be the preferred home of the racist far right but it doesn’t follow that that’s an important constituency, despite the left’s efforts to brand the gop otherwise. Very few gop supporters consciously view themselves as racist and they had no problems supporting non white candidates (Ben Carson as you’d recall was the only one coming close to beating trump in the 2016 primaries). The gop certainly has strong anti democratic and authoritarian tendencies that are cause for serious concern, and it’s getting worse, but these are not racist even if racist dog whistles are used tactically in specific races. Non whites are already a growing percentage of gop voters and representatives at all levels and the trend will be sure to continue. The left wil do very well to stop telling itself ghost stories and face the real monsters that are no less disturbing.
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but Ben Carson didn’t win a single state, so I’m not sure what “came close” could possibly mean here.
I mean, come on. “Only candidate who came close” is pretty clear. To your point, no one came that close to Trump in the end, but in the early stages before everyone had dropped out Carson polled close and no one else.
"Will the latter solve the puzzle by deciding they're white"
That's has been happening for some time. E.g. from 2014: "More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White" [1] There have been other analyses along those lines. Pew has done some interesting surveys along similar lines (e.g. [2]). And FWIW, I'm pretty certain that European-decended Republicans will accept them.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/more-hispanics-declaring-themselves-white.html
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/24/the-ways-hispanics-describe-their-identity-vary-across-immigrant-generations/
Do Republicans even need to eliminate *all* Confederate imagery to pick up non-black votes? I'm pretty sure most Latino and Asian-American voters don't have that much more negative reactions to the appearance of the Confederate flag than most Anglo voters do.
That's a synecdoche for all the subtle and not so subtle centering of the white cause in America among Republicans. Like in, oh, any random five minutes of Tucker Carlson.
I want to pre-register my opinions about why Abrams is struggling to get the same share of the black vote as in 2018.
There is a fairly bitter divide between black women and low status black men. Marriage rates are low and illegitimacy is high. Many lower status black men are “on” child support for children they rarely see. The system tries to extract a portion of their income that country club Republicans would revolt at. Child support for three children in Georgia is ~45% of one’s income plus health care costs and work related child care costs. A person who makes $2500 a month can easily be on the hook for $1500 in child support. Try working full time and living on a grand a month and see how angry you become.
The system also polices single fathers’ private lives. If they want to exercise visitation, they often have to pee in a cup to prove they don’t smoke pot. The social workers and probation officers staffing this edifice of social control are often black women.
Higher status black men have the same reason to vote Republican as high status white men: lower taxes and fewer regulations. It’s unsurprising that 15-20% of black men will chose Kemp over Abrams. I do expect her to hold strong with black women.