"
The American racial order--the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation's races and ethnicities--is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.
"The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama's election--not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices."

"Hate Whitey Day is actually one of my favorite holidays. It doesn’t have all the pressure to be perfect, like Christmas, or everybody getting along, like Thanksgiving. Just white people cowering in their houses/retreating to their heavily armed compounds in rural Oklahoma while America’s non-white population runs riot, more or less totally burning shit down. And the clean-up and re-building costs always add a bump to the January jobs report, as Matthew Yglesias has noted."

"Richard Alba argues that the social cleavages that separate Americans into distinct, unequal ethno-racial groups could narrow dramatically in the coming decades. During the mid-twentieth century, the dominant position of the United States in the postwar world economy led to a rapid expansion of education and labor opportunities. As a result of their newfound access to training and jobs, many ethnic and religious outsiders, among them Jews and Italians, finally gained full acceptance as members of the mainstream. Alba proposes that this large-scale assimilation of white ethnics was a result of “non–zero-sum mobility,” which he defines as the social ascent of members of disadvantaged groups that can take place without affecting the life chances of those who are already members of the established majority.

Alba shows that non–zero-sum mobility could play out positively in the future as the baby-boom generation retires, opening up the higher rungs of the labor market. Because of the changing demography of the country, many fewer whites will be coming of age than will be retiring. Hence, the opportunity exists for members of other groups to move up. However, Alba cautions, this demographic shift will only benefit disadvantaged American minorities if they are provided with access to education and training. In Blurring the Color Line, Alba explores a future in which socially mobile minorities could blur stark boundaries and gain much more control over the social expression of racial differences."

--- Surely the low-risk prediction is that Asians and Latinos will become "white", but that African Americans will remain s.o.l.?

"We start with a group of people living as slaves for 250 years... We take what should be their wages ... forbid them from marrying ... sell off their kids, some of whom are actually our kids. We forbid them to learn to read. ... We then are forced to grant them freedom, but we pass more laws ... to keep them from exercising any sort of political power ... Wide-ranging campaign of home-grown terror ... We burn down their schools ... so ardent in our enmity toward them that we actually attack education for poor whites, for fear that it may help blacks by mistake... Policies at virtually every level of government... [to keep] down the values of their homes, [keep] them from competing with us for jobs ... We do this for ... 300 hundred years. And then we develop a conscience, and for about 30 years we try to make up for what we've done, before deciding that [is] reverse racism. And then we [wonder] why ... a disproportionate share of black people can't live in a nice neighborhood."

"he examined census and fertility data to arrive at estimates of how many white Americans had African blood lines and how many fair-skinned blacks had crossed over the line to live as white. Stuckert's tables show that during the 1940s alone, roughly 15,550 fair-skinned blacks per year slipped across the color line--about 155,500 for the decade. Stuckert estimates that by 1950 about 21 percent of the whites--or about 28 million of the 135 million persons classified as "white" in the census--had black ancestry within the last four generations".

To put it the blurb "shorter" form: "Oppositional culture?  _What_ oppositional culture?"

Unquestionably the most depressing thing I have ever cited.

Not only has the black-white test score gap narrowed tremendously over this time (1978--2004), but the black level is now just about where the white scores started at. One would really like to hear this explained by, say, Charles Murray. (Well, actually, I wouldn't...)

"On an even lighter note, again literally, if there are any white folks out there with the surname "Smack," hailing from Worcester Country send a kite. Likely, I picked tobacco for you once. But I'm not mad. Much. Cousin."

Today's reminder that nothing I will ever do will really matter.

In which MY is correct: "Whenever I bring this up, people quickly rush to assure me that Goldwater didn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with white supremacists on the most important political issue of his time out of racism, instead at the decisive moment in his career he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with white supremacists out of principled constitutional reasoning that made it impossible for him to do otherwise. But this is actually more damning. You could imagine the founder of a movement being afflicted by an unfortunate character flaw that his followers lack. But the argument is that Goldwater didn’t suffer from a character flaw. Instead, having acquired a major party presidential nomination he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with white supremacists on the most important issue of the day because his sincere political ideology led to horribly wrongheaded conclusions."

"Augusta Boujey is nine years old. Her mother, who is almost white, was owned by her half-brother, named Solamon, who still retains two of her children."

A marvelously-written little post. The final sentence is worthy of Mencken: "This is who they are--the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn't "have had all these problems," this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a "Real American" with no demonstrable interest in "Real America" then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you."

On the National Review holding a symposium on black unemployment with all white symposiasts, none of them an expert on the subject: "That's fine, it's just amusing to see a magazine opposed to affirmative action exemplifying why such a policy might be needed. Rather than pick for the most qualified minds on the subject, it seems like they went with people to whom the magazine has social and ideological ties, and those people happened to all be white. It's certainly good that NRO is treating an issue like black unemployment seriously, but the symposium itself is a pretty good example of something that affects black unemployment in the real world: how black people, even those with impeccable qualifications, get overlooked based on formal and informal social networks rather than simply not being right for the job."

... in which Ta-Nehisi Coates schools the Freakonomics crowd in the concept of "sample selection bias".

...in which Coates, among much else, channels Mario Savio.

Comparing the military's integration of blacks and whites during the Korean War with the integration of women and men during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I really need to read Coates's book.

... is being shaken down by the police.

Preach it!

"Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance."

"Retire the Republican Party, give it an honorable place in American history for its long, successful run from Fremont to Eisenhower. And pass over what has happened since in silence."

Good piece on links between manufacturing, education, urban revitalization & social capital. Stupid title.

Henry Farrell contrasts the (mathematically beautiful) Schelling model of spontaneous racial segregation with the (astoundingly ugly) reality of how it was actually violently enforced in Chicago.

"matched up pairs of young men, randomly assigned them criminal records, then sent them on hundreds of real job searches throughout the city of Milwaukee"

John Judis reports on the political psychology of race. (I need to learn more about the implicit association test, because it's not clear to me what it really measures.)

"A leading Civil War historian debunks many of the myths of the old South being circulated by neo-Confederate ideologues"

About as pointed as you can get without stabbing someone.

!!!

"Dear White Pennsylvanians..."

"Would Barack Obama be the first black American president? Yes and no. He is not an African-American, but an African American."

"What do the Catholic bishop of Portland, Maine; the rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End of Boston; the president of Georgetown University; a ship's captain in the precursor of the Coast Guard; two nuns; a housewife; and a underachi

"All persons shall have the same rights as white persons - Congress of the United States, 1866. That was what you bought with your war, with (to repeat) your 600,000 dead, with the wrenching crisis of the Union: a new Constitution and racial justice. Only