Minority Majority

A few days ago, the Census Bureau announced that non-whites now make up 50.4% of America's birthrate. In other words, white Americans are no longer the majority. So what does this mean for the US? According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "the trend is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the country's political alignment, the nature of its workforce and on its economic future."

Minorities have been known to follow the Democratic Party. According to Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee of Princeton University, "in recent contests Democrats have garnered about 90 percent of the black vote, two thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian American vote." So now that the majority of America consists of the minorities, the Democratic Party has a much stronger future than the Republican Party, unless the Republicans start now to make themselves more appealing to people besides white Americans.

An increase in non-whites also changes the "nature" of the American workforce, which directly relates to America's "economic future" because these minority children will be the ones making the money for the older white generations during their retirement. This means that the older white generation will have to rely more on the growth of Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. for a secure future rather than their white descendants.

2011 was the first time in the history of America that the minority birthrate outnumbered the white majority birthrate, which was much earlier than anyone had predicted. What does this mean for the future of the United States? "[Immigration] is at the root of how we became the country we are today, and more importantly, it's our destiny," Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a professor at NYU, says to Neal Cohen of NPR. Is America en route to becoming a true "melting pot"?  

Marriage: Reason for Expanding Education Gap?

I just read an article from The New York Times called 'Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say' expecting to write a blog post on social class, but instead I am finding myself more interested in the idea the article expresses of marriage being a primary reason the gap keeps expanding.

Marriage has to do with the increasing education gap in two ways. The first is "the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people" (NYT). The studies in this article show that wealthier people are more educated than poor people; therefore to say educated people marry other educated people is to say that wealthy people marry other wealthy people, thus containing wealth in a small circle (for more on that idea, check out a previous blog post I wrote called 'The Circle of the Wealthy'). Poor people now have no way of breaking into the circle because they aren't part of that crowd.

The second connection between marriage, or lack of marriage, and the increasing education gap is the fact that lower income families "are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent" (NYT). The state of the single parent could be divorce or no marriage in the first place, but it all basically means the same thing. Single-parent households bring in less money than households with married parents. Consequently, single-parent households have less money to spend on education for their children, which adds to the gap.

So my question is this: how are single-parent households, where their status may or may not be their choice, expected to compare to households with a combination of two incomes?  

Same Crime, Different Punishments

After watching Stephen Colbert interview Michelle Alexander (a civil rights lawyer and author of The New Jim Crow), I am struck by what she says towards the end of the segment:

"Treat people of color as human beings worthy of dignity and respect and the same chances of life as people growing up in middle class, white neighborhoods who make the same kinds of mistakes but aren't asked to pay for the rest of their lives." 

This reminds me of the "self audit" we were asked to take in class a little while ago. One of the questions on the sheet asked us to either agree or disagree with the statement that if we were to get in trouble with the law, we would be sure that the police would let us off easy.

I agreed with the statement because I think that tends to happen a lot in the society we live in. The "people of color" that Alexander is talking about are typically given very harsh punishments— mainly time in prison— for minor, nonviolent crimes. The same crimes that are committed in societies such as the North Shore rarely result in harsh punishment, but rather a stern warning or a slap on the wrist.

The fact of the matter is that this is just not fair. Both groups of people are equally human, which means that we are both liable to make mistakes. One mistake for them means a reason for them to be discriminated against in the workforce or in society for the rest of their lives. One mistake for us means a quick sweep under the carpet. What does it say about the progression of America if there is still discrimination and a huge separation between race groups?