How America’s anti-elitism might be creating a whiter White House – The Washington Post

2017/01/21 Leave a comment

Good analysis on the relative lack of diversity in the Trump cabinet, from a variety of perspectives:

As his Cabinet nominees were grilled by the Senate on the eve of his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump declared that “We have by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled!”

It’s a grandiose assertion, one that’s impossible to know. But by another metric, Trump’s nominees fall short: academic degrees.

As a whole, Trump’s picks to lead the nation’s government agencies have fewer advanced degrees than any first-term Cabinet in at least 24 years.

A third of the nominees in Trump’s 15-member executive team hold only a bachelor’s degree. A quarter obtained up to a master’s degree, and 40 percent achieved a law or medical degree. No one has a doctorate. Compare that to President Obama’s original Cabinet, which conservatives derided for being stacked with intellectual elites: Only two members held a bachelor’s degree alone. A third stopped their educations at a master’s degree, and more than half held doctorates, medical or law degrees — often from the nation’s most prestigious universities.

Certainly, education comes in many of forms. For some of Trump’s nominees, what they lack in classroom education has been made up for in relevant career experience. But there’s something uniquely important about schooling — it’s supposed to be America’s great equalizer, the traditional gateway to the higher levels of society. At least for people of color.

In 2008, it wasn’t lost on people that Obama’s nominated Cabinet was both loaded with academic credentials and among the most racially and ethnically diverse in history. Six of the 15 nominees belonged to minority groups, all of whom held advanced degrees. Obama himself has a Harvard law degree and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. (Bill Clinton’s first Cabinet included just as many minorities as Obama’s, and it was even more educated, with all but one Cabinet member holding doctorate or law degrees.)

Similarly, observers today say it’s no coincidence that Trump’s proposed Cabinet is both the least academically credentialed and the least diverse in recent history. There are just two minorities among Trump’s Cabinet nominees, an African American and an Asian American. Both of them have advanced degrees. (His would be the first presidential Cabinet since Ronald Reagan not to include a Latino member.)

Trump’s Cabinet also happens to be the wealthiest in modern history — illustrating how it’s possible for some to reach the top without racking up college degrees. That level of success without years of advanced education is nearly impossible for black and brown Americans, say sociologists, economists and political scientists who study the link between race, education and achievement.

“Rarely will we find an example of an uncredentialed black person in an elite position,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist at The New School in New York. “That black person is usually certainly qualified, if not overqualified, with regard to their education.”

The makeup of Trump’s Cabinet reflects a growing disdain in America for intellectual elitism and a distrust of scientific empiricism. Trump, the first president not to hold an advanced degree since George H.W. Bush, tapped into that sentiment in his unprecedented campaign by slamming the “Washington elite,” rallying against the “political correctness” often tied to academia, and misstating the facts on climate change and President Obama’s citizenship.

“As higher education has become more accessible to more diverse groups of people, the general population has become more distrustful of education and expertise,” said Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. “They think there must be something suspect about education, because how great can Harvard really be if someone like Barack Obama got there?”

“In this country, diversity has gotten tied up in the idea of a liberal academy,” she said. “The election of Trump is a critique and rebuke of that.”

Source: How America’s anti-elitism might be creating a whiter White House – The Washington Post

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Just How Many LGBT Americans Are There? – The Daily Beast

2017/01/16 Leave a comment

Noteworthy generational change:

Estimates of the size of the LGBT population have always been murky, bordering on mythological. The 1-in-10 figure first emerged out of post-World War II studies by the pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who reported that 10 percent of men were “more or less exclusively homosexual.” That number wasn’t perfect—and it’s been continuously revised—but it became a politically expedient tool in the Stonewall era.

Now, over 60 years after Kinsey’s death, new Gallup data shows that the estimated size of the U.S. LGBT population as a whole is getting closer than ever to the legendary “1-in-10” number—among millennials, at least.

Using Gallup data taken from interviews with over 1.6 million adults, demographer Gary J. Gates reported that 10 million Americans—4 percent of the population—now identify as LGBT.

That includes a record-high 7.3 percent of people born between 1980 and 1998 who now identify as LGBT—up from 5.8 percent in 2012. (This new data reinforces a 2015 conclusion from the Public Religion Research Institute—first highlighted by The Daily Beast—that “7 percent of millennials identify either as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,” based on a survey of 2,000 adults.)

But will that number ever reach 10 percent in the population at large?

“It’s not a completely unrealistic figure,” Gates told The Daily Beast. “Certainly it appears as if—given a little more time—it might, in fact, be [the case] that close to 10 percent identify as LGBT.”

Gates is one of the top demographers of the LGBT population in the United States, and the author of a widely-cited 2011 Williams Institute meta-analysis on the subject, which estimated that 3.5 percent of adults identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and 0.3 percent identify as transgender. He told The Daily Beast that the increasing size of the LGBT population estimate can largely be attributed to “people feeling more comfortable and more willing to identify [as LGBT].”

Source: Just How Many LGBT Americans Are There? – The Daily Beast

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Supreme Court to rule in immigrant’s revoked US citizenship – The Washington Post

2017/01/16 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to watch in the context of a Trump presidency. Similar issue as with respect to Minister Monsef’s country of  birth controversy: was it material to her family being accepted as refugees and later as citizens?:

The Supreme Court says it will hear an appeal from an immigrant who was stripped of U.S. citizenship for lying about the circumstances that brought her to this country.

The justices said Friday they will review lower court decisions that upheld a criminal conviction against Divna Maslenjak of Ohio. The conviction automatically revoked her citizenship.

The issue for the justices is how important her false statements were to her application to become an American citizen. Lower courts have disagreed about the standard.

Maslenjak is an ethnic Serb from Bosnia. She and her family were granted refugee status in 1999 and settled near Akron in 2000. She became a citizen in 2007.

She initially told immigration officials her husband had not served in the Bosnian Serb military.

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism, Revocation Tagged with ,

Proposed bill would allow undocumented immigrants to serve in military for citizenship | ABC10.com

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

The US has long had a process for immigrants to join the military and then have a pathway to citizenship. C-24 included a similar provision. This proposal takes it one step further:

A proposed bill would allow qualified young undocumented immigrants to serve in the military and earn citizenship in the United States.

U.S. Representative Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) re-introduced the Encourage New Legalized Immigrants to Start Training Act (ENLIST Act) this week.

The measure applies only to undocumented immigrants who were under the age of 15 when they were brought to the U.S. by their parents prior to 2012.

The ENLIST Act doesn’t guarantee children of undocumented immigrants would be accepted into the military. Applicants still have to meet strict military requirements including speaking English, passing a background check and having a high school diploma.

Denham first introduced the ENLIST Act in 2013. He served with many immigrants during his 16 years in the Air Force where he participated in Operations Desert Storm and Restore Hope.

Denham told ABC10, his history of serving in the military is one of the reasons which inspired the ENLIST Act. He stressed the importance of acknowledging immigrants’ long time role in the U.S. military.

“We have a history over the course of our country,” Denham said.

The congressman also said he’s pushing for immigration reform because the U.S. needs an overall immigration solution to the broken system.

“We need to have a broader discussion about Dreamers,” Denham said in reference to undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children and assimilated into American culture, as well as attended U.S. schools.

Denham explained the need to address what happens to this group after high school. While some may advocate for sending children of undocumented immigrants back to their country of origin, the congressman said the U.S. is the only country this group knows.

Source: Proposed bill would allow undocumented immigrants to serve in military for citizenship | ABC10.com

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The U.S. Army Just Made It Easier for Religious Troops to Wear Beards, Turbans and Hijabs | TIME

2017/01/07 Leave a comment

Just in time prior to the Trump inauguration:

U.S. service men and women who wish to wear a turban, beard or hijab for religious reasons will be able to gain approval thanks to revised uniform regulations that aim to better accommodate religious minorities serving in the military.

The revisions — outlined in a memorandum signed by U.S. Army Secretary Eric Fanning earlier this week — allow brigade-level commanders to approve religious accommodations, Reuters reports.

In the past, the authority to approve such accommodations rested with the Army secretary.

Lieut. Colonel Randy Taylor, the army’s director of public affairs and assistant secretary, said in a statement, “Our goal is to balance soldier readiness and safety with the accommodation of our soldiers’ faith practices, and this latest directive allows us to do that.”

Under the new guidelines, Muslim and Sikh servicemen will be able to wear beards, provided they are shorter than 2 in., rolled up or tied. Turbans, patka (under turbans), as well as head scarves or hijab for women, are permitted under the new rules. The memo also stipulates that hair braids, cornrows, twists and locks are also allowed.

“We are pleased with the progress that this new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity,” Harsimran Kaur, legal director of civil-rights-advocacy group the Sikh Coalition, told Reuters.

Previous Army uniform rules had clashed with religious clothing and grooming customs, making it difficult for soldiers to serve without compromising their religious beliefs and traditions. Many American Sikhs have protested the grooming rules, leading to several court cases.

Source: The U.S. Army Just Made It Easier for Religious Troops to Wear Beards, Turbans and Hijabs | TIME

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ICYMI: US Immigration fees jump for the first time since 2010, making it tougher for would-be Americans

2017/01/05 Leave a comment

immigration_fees_jump_for_the_first_time_since_2010__making_it_tougher_for_would-be_americansIn contrast to Canada, US CIS is a revolving fund, with all fees raised used for the citizenship program. In Canada, any increase in fees goes to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (general government revenues), with no direct link to the citizenship program expenditures:

For the first time since 2010, the Department of Homeland Securityhiked a range of administrative fees for citizenship applications — in a few cases more than doubling the costs of key services. Any new petitions filed after Dec. 23 will not be accepted unless they include the higher fees.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency charged with handling immigrant applications, said in a statement the proceeds will help cover detecting fraud, processing cases and a range of other administrative costs, in what USCIS called a “weighted average” price hike of 21 percent.
Experts say the stiffer bureaucratic costs means the path to becoming an American could become a heavier burden for many cash-strapped would-be citizens. However, USCIS justified the price hike by arguing the agency was almost exclusively funded through the fees paid by petitioners, and needed the cash infusion.

Still, USCIS Director Leon Rodríguez said in a statement that the agency was “mindful of the effect fee increases have on many of the customers we serve,” which is why it waited so long to increase fees.

Peter Boogaard, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, told CNBC that along with the new fees, “USCIS will also offer a reduced filing fee for certain naturalization applicants with limited means.”

Still, “these changes are now necessary to ensure USCIS can continue to serve its customers effectively,” he added.

US citizenship ‘as soon as possible’

The new pricing could have far-reaching implications for the vast number of immigrants that vie for U.S. citizenship on an annual basis. Each year, USCIS naturalizes hundreds of thousands of new citizens.

Source: Immigration fees jump for the first time since 2010, making it tougher for would-be Americans

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Here’s Why Democrats Must Not Abandon Identity Politics – The Daily Beast

2016/12/22 Leave a comment

Good piece by Craig Mills on identity politics:

Further, “white working class” seems to be the identity that matters when considering how Trump won. I hear continually this is the group we should concern ourselves with understanding to the exclusion of others. How absurd. I cannot recall any of those who exhort us to empathize with the white working class asking us to question their racist or sexist motives, as if this group’s decision-making occurs in economic isolation. Additionally, white supremacists who outright advocate for an all-white state supported Trump’s candidacy. If that is not identity focused, I’m not sure what is.

The reality is that both parties necessarily indulge identity to appeal to voters. Economic issues do not operate in a political vacuum, yet identity abandonment asks us to assume it does. Race and gender are outsized determinants that correlate closely with income, social outcomes, and yes, political power. It is unfair and unrealistic to ask holders of these demographic markers to suppress the very real roles they play in their political existences. Indeed, Bernie Sanders continues to struggle with black voters because he believes that if we address the economic component of what plagues many Americans, the rest will take care of itself.

The suggestion that subgroups abandon their identity to a larger goal is the ultimate identity grab: Fall in line, and we’ll sort it out when we win. Bull. Wrangling commitments out of politicians before an election is one of the few ways the electorate holds politicians accountable. Yet as Democrats seek short-term expediency, they are likely to dig themselves into a deeper hole. Such behavior is reminiscent of the 2010 midterm and 2012 general election. Then, many candidates distanced themselves from President Obama’s successes but still got buried politically. Voters notice such fright and flight. It signals lack of conviction in one’s policies and beliefs—hardly confidence inspiring to the marginal voter.

Finally, individuals care about a multitude of economic, political, social, environmental, and visionary issues that transcend individual identity. As proof, consider that Trump, who offended so many groups that comprise distinct political bases he attacked, outperformed Romney’s 2012 totals with blacks and Latinos and won the vote of white women. This should serve as an indicator that identity politics alone does not motivate voters but may be a factor. Voters of all persuasions want an acknowledgment of their concerns. Identity and economics need not be mutually exclusive in the political realm. To signal to large swaths of the public that their needs will have to wait until leaders solve the economic pieces risks alienating them and defection from the party.

Millennial, boomer, veteran, senior, female, black, Latino, gay, Muslim, white. These are but a few groups both parties court for a reason: Identity personalizes politics. Addressing income alone will not address badly needed police reform, education disparities, or a woman’s access to reproductive services. Neither will it address religious freedoms or climate change. Nor will it address the institutional structures that make dismantling barriers to fairness difficult. National parties and politics are messy because of the multiple interests—identities—they encompass. Until and unless we move to a multiparty political system, we must focus on speaking to those identities.

The world does not come with equality; it is something we must work to achieve. If we engage exclusively in economic politics and desert identity liberalism, we will not accomplish this. If the identities of the right matter, however, so do mine.

 Source: Here’s Why Democrats Must Not Abandon Identity Politics – The Daily Beast

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Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Forward.com

2016/12/20 Leave a comment

J.J. Goldberg on left and right-wing antisemitism and the political divide:

In effect, the walls of mutual hostility and suspicion that cut through the American body politic — and, in slightly different form, through the Jewish community — have left much of the public believing that anti-Semitism is a unitary problem that exists over there, on the other side, while they are unable to see the parallel problem on its own side. The denial is not just shortsighted but also dangerous. Both strains of anti-Jewish ideology have been responsible for multiple deadly attacks specifically targeting Jews and Jewish institutions on U.S. soil over the past quarter-century, since the uptick began. In fact, according to my own research via FBI data and online newspaper archives around the country, the two strands, far-right and anti-Israel, are both implicated in roughly the same number of such attacks during that period.

The line separating sharp, activist opposition to Israeli policy from hatred of its existence isn’t always easy to see. Nor is it hard and fast. Fifty years of the Israeli military ruling over millions of Palestinians without citizenship or political rights are generating a time bomb of Western-liberal frustration. Palestinian activists exploit the frustration to pressure Israel and advance their cause. It all becomes devilishly complicated: There’s hatred of Israel because of what it is. There’s also hatred fanned by what Israel does.

At the same time, there’s an element of right-wing American anti-Semitism that is not prejudice but actual policy opposition to the social agenda of the Jewish advocacy community. American Jews have worked in an organized fashion for the past century to promote a set of broadly liberal principles, including pluralism, minority rights, church-state separation and international engagement. Significant strains of conservatism object to some or all of those principles. Some conclude that the Jewish community is their adversary. Others avoid mentioning Jews, fearing they’ll be accused of anti-Semitism.

Here, too, the line between hatred of Jews and opposition to Jewish policy is not impermeable. There are conservative critics of Israeli policy who bridle at the taboo on open criticism and let their disagreements morph into hostility. Like Israeli self-defense, Diaspora Jewish hypersensitivity is sometimes capable of fanning the very hostility it is meant to deter.

Source: Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise From Both Sides. Just Not How You Think. – Opinion – Forward.com

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Americans are convinced by economic report claiming minorities are taking jobs away from whites

2016/12/19 Leave a comment

Good example of how baselines and charting can mislead, as well as feeding popular prejudices:

To start, the report asserts that of the more than 5 million jobs added since November 2007, the pre-recession employment peak, more than half went to Hispanics — a stunning proportion that accounts for four times their share of the labor force that year.

Economic Cycle Research Institute

Disproportionately large gains also occurred among black and Asian workers, according to the report. African Americans accounted for 25 per cent of the job gains, more than double their share of the labour force. Asians accounted for nearly 30 per cent of the gains, about six times their share of the labour force.

But white workers fell behind, the report said. Whites had fewer jobs than they did nine years ago — even though they made up more than 80 per cent of the labour force in 2007.

These stunning statistics were enough to drive many, including the report’s author, to conclude that white economic despair led to Donald Trump’s election victory.

“The shock of the election spoke to a kind of disconnect,” said Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, in an interview with the Post. “There is a huge cohort — you can call it whites, people in rural areas — who weren’t feeling the 5 percent unemployment rate. They weren’t feeling the stock market at new highs. They weren’t feeling a recovery that’s seven, eight years old.”

But other economists pounced on the report after the New York Times columnist, Eduardo Porter, highlighted it in his column. The statistics Porter cited paint too simplistic of a picture, they argued.

Economic Cycle Research Institute

“The implication is there are hundreds of thousands of white people who lost their jobs to blacks, Asians and Hispanics. Yet if you look at the unemployment rate differentials by race, you don’t see a huge increase in the white unemployment rate,” said Jonathan Rothwell, a Gallup economist.

The recession and its aftermath were not dramatically worse for white workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for whites — 4.6 per cent in 2015 — is lower than all racial and ethnic groups except Asians. In comparison, 9.6 per cent of African Americans, 6.6 per cent of Hispanics, and 3.8 per cent of Asians are unemployed.

And a far higher proportion of whites are employed than blacks; 59.9 per cent of the white labour force are employed compared to 55.7 per cent of the black labour force. The proportions of Hispanics and Asians who have jobs are just slightly higher than for whites — not nearly the alarming portrait painted by the Economic Cycle Research Institute.

All demographic groups experienced declining rates of employment between 2007 and 2015, but white workers’ plight is not as dramatic as ECRI implies.

“I don’t see any evidence that whites were disproportionately harmed over the last nine years,” Rothwell said. “The main concern I have with the [ECRI] chart is it’s potentially grossly misleading in terms of how it could be interpreted.”

Economic Cycle Research Institute

Rothwell and other economists pointed out that as the country becomes more diverse due to immigration and higher birth rates among minority groups, it only follows that those same groups would make gains in employment along with population.

“One would expect to see jobs shifting. Just as we see more kids going to public schools who are non-white, we would expect to see more adults in the labour force who are non-white, and it’s not any cause for concern,” Rothwell said.

Whites are also aging, and as Baby Boomers retire, the size of the white labor force remains relatively stagnant. The ECRI analysis compares a demographic group’s share of the labor force at a single point in time with the group’s share of job gains since 2007. In doing so, it overlooks the changes in the sizes of the underlying populations over time, said Alan Berube, deputy director at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.

Source: Americans are convinced by economic report claiming minorities are taking jobs away from whites | National Post

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USA ICYMI: Fight Continues to Close Citizenship Loophole for Adoptees

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Another example of people falling between the cracks through no fault of their own:

Today Adam Crapser calls Korea home, a home he hasn’t been to since he was just 3 years old. But a ruling just last month called for the Korean-born adoptee to be returned to his birth country despite having no connections or family in Korea, nor any understanding of the Korean language.

For the past year, Adam Crapser has been the poster child for the Adoptee Citizenship Act, as he has fought to stay in the United States. Adopted at age 3 by American parents, Crapser was abused by his adoptive parents who never made sure to file for Crapser’s American citizenship. Later adopted by another abusive family, no one ever took care of the paperwork necessary to get his citizenship complete, something that automatically occurs for children adopted internationally after 2000 thanks to the Child Citizenship Act. The loophole in the law has eft an estimated 30,000 adoptees vulnerable to deportation because their parents did not fill out the proper paperwork for their citizenship, according to the Adoptee Rights Campaign.

For Crapser, that meant coming under scrutiny after acquiring a criminal record, in part in an effort to retrieve belongings from his second family, who were convicted of a number of serious criminal charges due to their treatment of Crapser.

Crapser’s attorney on the case, Lori Walls, said Crapser’s story is similar to other cases she’s worked on and seen over the years. Walls began working with Crapser in 2015 after Crapser heard about the successful outcome for one of Walls’ other Korean adoptee clients caught in a similar predicament. In that case the outcome was more positive, but that adoptee’s criminal charges were also less severe than Crapser’s. Regardless, Walls said it’s a travesty that children brought to the United States and adopted by American parents should face such harsh penalty for circumstances beyond their control.

“The United States government facilitated these adoptions and it’s outrageous that the government is now deporting these people,” Walls said. “It doesn’t make sense that someone who entered as an infant or toddler is subjected to deportation proceedings as an adult.”

For that very reason, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., has been working to change the loophole through the introduction of the Adoptee Citizenship Act. If passed, the act would grant citizenship to adoptees whose parents and guardians failed to go through the proper channels to ensure their child’s citizenship.

“We’re talking about people who have no connection whatsoever to their birth country,” Smith said. “They’re subject to the laws of the United States if they commit a crime, but they shouldn’t be subject to deportation.”

For that same reason the Citizenship Act of 2000 was passed to provide adoptees with immediate citizenship upon adoption. However, the law didn’t retroactively cover children adopted prior to 2000.

Source: Fight Continues to Close Citizenship Loophole for Adoptees

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