The fractured politics of a browning America

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I overall liked the video. One thing I liked is how they explained the reactions a lot of white people in the US are going through as a human reaction, and then back that claim. The one issue I have with the video is how it seemed to still mainly focus on white reactions as time went on. I would have liked to see and hear how Hispanics and black people reacted as well in certain instances.

👍︎︎ 28 👤︎︎ u/Coesson 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2018 🗫︎ replies

"'Abolish ICE' is a good example. That is a policy that Democrats would not have been on board with in the 1990s."

ICE Established in 2003

Very nitpicky complaint of mine. This is a great piece. Quick and to the point, with scientific and statistical data, and expert commentary. I really wish more Video News was like this.

👍︎︎ 23 👤︎︎ u/p00bix 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2018 🗫︎ replies

Less than a minute in and it's already poorly researched. "A majority of births being non-white" only if we're considering all people with Spanish speaking parents being not white and basically a one-drop rule with racial purity.

If you want people to not be conservative, stop perpetuating this myth.

👍︎︎ 13 👤︎︎ u/toms_face 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2018 🗫︎ replies
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How a more diverse America makes you feel is the core division in our political and cultural fights right now. But to see why, you need to know how we’re changing, and how a changing country changes us. Here’s the big picture. The U.S. is at a demographic tipping point - a genuinely historic moment. 2013 was the first year that a majority of US infants under the age of 1 were nonwhite. By 2016, white deaths had outnumbered white births, but America’s overall population, it’s not expected to decrease. And that’s because the Black, Asian and especially Latino and mixed-race populations they’re also growing. They’re growing fast. By 2045, the Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic whites will be no longer be a majority. And also that foreign-born residents are going to make up a record share of the population. So when you show people these numbers about how America is changing, what goes through their heads, what is their response? I think people are hearing these changes as somehow a fundamental remaking of what America is, at least a lot of people are hearing it, and some of them are excited about it and some of them are not so excited. We see on average white Americans when they read about this majority-minority shift becoming more politically conservative. Jennifer Richeson is a psychologist who studies how people react to demographic change. She won a MacArthurGenius Grant for this work. And what she’s found helps explain a lot of what we’re seeing. For instance, when white political independents who live in the West were told that whites were no longer a majority in California, they became 11 percentage points more likely to support the Republican Party. That is a huge change. It’s important to say, this is a human reaction to demographic change, not just a white one. When presented with similar data on the growing numbers of Hispanics, Asian-Americans shifted towards more conservative views, Black Americans shifted towards more conservative views. Being told your group is shrinking or that it's losing power, it's scary for anyone. Losing numbers are associated with losing status, losing power, losing currency in the culture. There are lots of studies like these, but the one I find myself thinking about the most was done by Harvard’s Ryan Enos. What we did is we sent these two Spanish speakers out to catch a train at a certain time every day over a period of days. We sent out research assistants and they surveyed these people waiting on the train. And that little exposure was enough to move these attitudes in this survey. They're more likely to say we should send those children of immigrants back to Mexico. They're more likely to say we should decrease immigration from Mexico and they're even more likely to endorse that English should be the official language of the United States. We saw a version of this in the election then too, right? So in States and even in small areas of States in these counties, where the Spanish population changed very rapidly - we saw that these voters had moved towards supporting Donald Trump. And a lot of them actually looked like they were these people who had previously been Democrats. So here, then, is what we know: Even gentle, unconscious exposure to reminders that America is diversifying — and particularly to the idea that America is becoming a majority-minority nation — it pushes folks toward more conservative policy opinions, towards more support of the Republican Party. So what happens when those reminders aren’t gentle? Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they’re changes that, none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like. Our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like you've never seen before. When Obama was elected in 2008, there was all this talk of America moving into a post-racial moment. But the mere existence of Obama’s presidency made a lot more of politics about how you felt about race. It had this effect on health care, the stimulus package, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party. Hell, it even affected how people felt about Obama’s dog. So the dog is is kind of a fun experiment on a serious topic. Both Teddy Kennedy, a well-known liberal Democrat, and Barack Obama have the same dog. Their two dogs are actually related Portuguese water dogs. So let's see how people respond to these dogs when you tell one that it's Ted Kennedy and one that it is Barack Obama's. What happens is that when you tell people it's Barack Obama's racial liberals like the dog more racial conservatives like the dog less. Obama polarizes more because of who he is rather than what he says and does. And so Obama goes through great lengths in both campaigns to try to tamp down racial divisions to not talk about race. When he does talk about race, he does so in a message of personal responsibility. And there was something real here. A few decades ago a multiracial voter base, it couldn’t drive American politics like it can now. Obama won in 2012 with only 39 percent of the white vote -- previous Democratic candidates, they lost elections in big ways with a lot more support by whites. But by 2016, Trump also proved that a candidate who is explicitly talking to white fears about race could win. The Republicans now have a temptation to explicitly appeal to race. And you're seeing this throughout Republican primaries in the 2018 cycle and you're seeing the reverse on the Democratic side. Abolish ICE as a good example. That is a policy that Democrats would not have been on board with in the 1990s but their bases have moved and so the incentives have moved as well. Now to say American politics is in for turbulence is not to say we are in for dissolution or civil war. California went through these changes, it experienced this demographic shift and it didn’t fall to pieces. But leading up to that, there was a lot of friction. Voters passed racially-charged propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, they banned affirmative action, they restricted bilingual education. But we also know, right, there are States that have large populations of racial minorities — largely Black Americans but they're growing in Latinos — that are incredibly unequal in every way. Right, so the question is you know we want to think ‘Oh it'll work out, look at California.’ But it could work out and be Mississippi. As the browning of America continues, this cycle of hope about the future activating fears about the present, it’s just going to keep going. In that, politicians who can articulate a vision of this future that is inclusive and inspiring and nonthreatening — that very mixture Obama sought in '08 — they could reap massive rewards. But as long as much of the country feels threatened by the changes they see, there's also going to be a continuing, and maybe even a growing, market for politicians like Donald Trump.
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Channel: Vox
Views: 1,605,208
Rating: 4.4259729 out of 5
Keywords: demographics, changing, minorities, majorities, white, racism, Charts, Ezra Klein, obama, trump, change, hope, maga, Vox.com, vox, explain, explainer, american demographics, us demographics, demographic shift, us demographic shift, america demographic shift, america demographics, demographic projections, america demographic projections, us demographic projections, obama presidency, trump presidency, poc
Id: SbjciJvacXY
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 6min 51sec (411 seconds)
Published: Thu Aug 23 2018
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