Asian Americans and Affirmative Action

Many posts have discussed affirmative action,

From Pew:

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether colleges can continue to consider race and ethnicity in admissions, a new national survey of Asian adults finds that Asian Americans have mixed views of affirmative action and related issues.

On one hand, about half of Asian adults who have heard of affirmative action (53%) say it is a good thing, while 19% say it is a bad thing, and 27% say they don’t know whether affirmative action is good or bad. On the other hand, about three-quarters of all Asian adults (76%) say race or ethnicity should not factor into college admissions decisions.

Asian Americans and America

From The Asian American Foundation (TAAF)

The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) today announced the findings of the third annual STAATUS Index—”Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the U.S.”—the leading study examining attitudes and stereotypes towards Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the U.S. The inaugural 2021 STAATUS Index was one of the first national studies on this topic in 20 years.

The survey is a nationally representative study based on a sample of 5,235 U.S-based respondents aged 16 and over, conducted online between February 9 to March 13, 2023.

This year’s survey reveals that 1 in 2 Asian Americans feel unsafe in the U.S. and nearly 80% of Asian Americans do not completely feel they belong and are acceptDiscrimination and lack of leadership representation contribute most to Asian Americans’ lack of belonging in the U.S. Additionally, the survey revealed that young and female Asian Americans are least likely to feel they completely belong and are accepted.

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Key findings of the survey are listed below, and the complete STAATUS Index is available here.

Key Findings

1 in 2 Asian Americans feel unsafe in the U.S.; nearly 80% of Asian Americans do not fully feel they belong and are accepted.
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Discrimination and lack of leadership representation contribute most to Asian Americans’ low levels of belonging in the U.S., felt most acutely by young and female Asian Americans.

1 in 2 Asian Americans report feeling unsafe in the U.S. due to their race/ethnicity.

 

• 52% of Asian American respondents have felt uncomfortable or unsafe due to their race and ethnicity, along with 53% of Black, and 47% of Hispanic respondents, compared to 28% of white respondents.
• Asian Americans feel the least safe on public transportation (29%), followed by in their own neighborhood (19%), school (19%), workplace (17%), and their local market (17%).
• 12% of Asian American respondents feel unsafe where they vote.

Asian Americans—especially young and female Asian Americans—are among the least likely of all racial groups surveyed to feel belonging and acceptance in America.

• 78% of Asian Americans do not fully feel that they belong and are accepted in the U.S., similar to Hispanic (75%) and Black (76%) respondents; and compared to 43% of white respondents.
• Younger Asian Americans (17% aged 16-24 completely agreed to the statement about belonging and acceptance) and Asian American women (19%) are less likely to feel like they belong and are accepted.

Of those who do not feel like they belong

•  58% of Asian Americans say the top reason for feeling like they don’t belong is from experiencing discrimination directly due to their race.Asian Americans also say not seeing others like them in positions of power (43%) is another major reason for feeling a lack of belonging.
• Asian Americans feel like they don’t belong in the workplace (39%), in online spaces/ social media (39%), in their own neighborhoods (33%), and in schools (32%). 

Americans see China as a threat; view Asian Americans in different (and sometimes contradictory) ways. 

• 83% of respondents see China as a military/national security threat, 74% as an economic threat, and 44% as a health threat.‍
• Older and white Americans overwhelmingly (>80%) see China as a threat.
• Contrastingly, 79% of Americans do not believe people of Chinese descent living in America pose a threat to the U.S. Respondents also overwhelmingly (87%) are comfortable with Asian Americans’ employment in jobs that involve national security.
• Yet, nearly one-third of Americans see Asian Americans as more loyal to their perceived country of origin.
• Close to one-third (31%) think Asian Americans should be subject to additional scrutiny if they work in areas considered critical to U.S. global strategic competitiveness.

When asked what fueled anti-Asian violence: 

• 73% of respondents say it was due to blaming Asian Americans for COVID-19.
• 47% say that it was because people see Asian Americans as foreigners rather than Americans.
• 47% believe that the Chinese government is spying on America which led to the attacks.

Americans’ openness to improving their relationship with and understanding of AAPIs signals room for progress, cross-racial solidarity, and representation.

• 64% of all respondents believe that Asian Americans are somewhat or highly inaccurately portrayed in film/TV and 61% feel NHPIs are somewhat or highly inaccurately portrayed in film/TV.
• 69% of Asian American respondents felt that they were somewhat or highly inaccurately portrayed in film/TV.
• 26% of respondents said they could not name a famous Asian American figure and 32% could not name a famous NHPI person.
• When asked to name a famous Asian American figure, top responses were: Jackie Chan (who is not American), Bruce Lee (who died 50 years ago), Kamala Harris‍.

• To improve their relationship with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, more than 60% of Americans would like more opportunities to interact with AAPIs and learn about their experience and history.

• 3 out of 5 Americans think that incorporating the Asian American experience into the teaching of American history is important.1 in 4 respondents thinks they share “a lot” of economic interests (26%) and core values (25%) with Asian Americans, signaling an opportunity to grow understanding & connections with AAPIs.

Ethnicity and Married Birth Parents

 Data Tools 6. The Geography of Traditional Families in America Charles Murray American Enterprise Institute April 2023

The ethnic differences in the prevalence of traditional marriage are huge. Among the nearly five million children in the ACS from 2014 to 2021, these were the percentages of children living with married birth parents broken down by the child’s ethnicity: 

Child’s Ethnicity Married Birth Parents 

Asian ............................82% 

White ............................62%

 Other or Mixed ,,,,,,,,,,,,50% 

Latino ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,43%

 Black ............................23% 

Asian children and black children effectively live in different familial worlds. The difference in living situations between white and black children is less dramatic but still extremely large.

Crime Pushes SF Asian American Voters to the Center

 

Asian Americans to Democrats: "we want safe streets, good schools and less progressive ideology." That's the message and 2024 warning from San Francisco. Footnote about our unfortunate experience at the end. @OutFrontCNN story features @JoelEngardio. Producer: @jasonkCNN pic.twitter.com/6Up96sGD5H

— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) March 23, 2023

Diverse Congress

Katherine Schaeffer at Pew:

A quarter of voting members of the U.S. Congress identify their race or ethnicity as something other than non-Hispanic White, making the 118th Congress the most racially and ethnically diverse to date. This continues a long-running trend toward more racial and ethnic diversity on Capitol Hill: This is the seventh Congress to break the record set by the one before it.

Overall, 133 senators and representatives today identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian or Alaska Native, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Congressional Research Service. This number has nearly doubled in the two decades since the 108th Congress of 2003-05, which had 67 minority members.

Our analysis of the 118th Congress reflects the 534 voting members of Congress as of Jan. 3, 2023. Portuguese American members are not included in the Hispanic count.

The vast majority (80%) of racial and ethnic minority members in the new Congress are Democrats, while 20% are Republicans. This split is similar to the previous Congress, when 83% of non-White lawmakers were Democrats and 17% were Republicans.

Racial and Ethnic Coalitions in Major Cities

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

Democrats in cities across America are having trouble holding their coalitions together.

In Los Angeles, the battle is over power in the form of representation on the City Council; in San Francisco and New York, it’s over affordable housing and access to public schools; across the nation, it’s over tough versus tolerant criminal prosecution and lenient versus punitive approaches to homelessness.

These tensions are, in turn, aggravated by white gentrification and have one thing in common: limited or declining resources, with shuttered businesses no longer paying taxes evident on downtown streets. An absence of growth prevents elected officials from expanding benefits for some without paring them for others.

Political tensions between African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and white communities in Los Angeles are now on full display as a result of the publication of a secretly taped conversation that exposed the crude, racist scheming of three Hispanic City Council officials and a Hispanic labor leader — who were, in the main, angling to enhance their power at the expense of Black competitors.

These zero-sum conflicts epitomize the problem for liberals struggling to sustain a viable political alliance encompassing core minority constituencies.

Life Expectancy Drops Again

Kate Sheridan at STAT:

Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the primary cause of the decline. However, increases in the number of people dying from overdoses and accidents is also a significant factor.

American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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This year’s life expectancy figure is 0.9 years lower than last year’s. Covid-19 accounted for about half of the decline, and a category encompassing accidents and unintentional injuries is responsible for another 16%. That category includes overdoses; in fact, about half of the unintentional injury deaths in this analysis were due to overdoses.
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Not every demographic group saw the same changes, the researchers found. Asian-Americans have the highest life expectancy of any group — 83.5 years — and only saw a 0.1 year decline from 2020. Meanwhile, Black Americans lost 0.7 years between 2020 to 2021.

But American Indian and Native Americans saw the largest loss of life expectancy of all — 1.9 years less than 2020’s life expectancy, and 6.6 years less than 2019’s. They also had the lowest life expectancy among the groups studied. (Historically, Native Americans’ life expectancy has been staying level even in years when the life expectancy of the entire population did increase, one recent study found.)

Asian Americans: Attitudes and Threats

Luis Noe-Bustamante  and colleagues at Pew:

Amid ongoing reports of racially motivated threats and attacks against Asians in the United States, a majority of Asian Americans say violence against them is increasing, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Most Asian Americans also worry about being threatened or attacked, with a third saying they have changed their daily routine because of these concerns.

Overall, about six-in-ten Asian adults (63%) say violence against Asian Americans in the U.S. is increasing, while 19% say there has not been much change and 8% say it is decreasing. This is down somewhat since last year, when 81% of Asian Americans said violence against them was increasing.

In an open-ended question that accompanied the 2021 survey, a majority of those who perceived rising violence against Asian Americans attributed it to former President Donald Trump, racism, COVID-19 and its impact on the nation, and scapegoating and blaming Asian people for the pandemic.

In the new survey, about one-in-five Asian Americans say they worry daily (7%) or almost daily (14%) that they might be threatened or attacked because of their race or ethnicity, while 51% say they worry sometimes, 18% rarely worry and 10% say they never worry.

Among those who worry rarely or more often, about a third of Asian adults (36%) say they have altered their daily schedule or routine in the past 12 months due to worries that they might be threatened or attacked.

A release from LAAUNCH and TAAF:

Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change (LAAUNCH) and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) today announced the findings of the second annual "STAATUS" Index—Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the U.S.—a comprehensive, annual assessment of American attitudes of Asian Americans. The survey reveals that nearly one third of Americans are unaware of anti-Asian violence despite a nearly 340 percent increase of attacks against Asian Americans in 2021 and one in five Americans believe Asian Americans are at least partly responsible for COVID-19.

The survey is based on a national sample of 5,113 U.S. residents, aged 18 and over, conducted online between February 10 and February 28, 2022. LAAUNCH and TAAF partnered on this year's STAATUS Index to illuminate harmful misperceptions of Asian Americans that are leading to the unprecedented rise in scapegoating and anti-AAPI violence.

"This year's STAATUS Index is very alarming as it makes clear that attitudes toward Asian Americans are getting worse, not better at a time when our communities continue to come under attack. The survey found Asian Americans are more likely to be blamed for COVID-19 than we were in 2021, more likely to be questioned for our loyalty to the United States, and that we are among the least likely to feel that we belong in this country. These results reveal just how deeply embedded anti-Asian sentiment is in America right now, fueled by generations of systemic racism that has pervaded every aspect of our society and culture," said Norman Chen, Co-Founder, LAAUNCH and CEO, TAAF.

"Although this year's Index paints a more sobering picture of the status of Asian Americans than our inaugural survey last year, having an accurate and shared understanding of how Asian Americans are perceived is the only way any of us—advocates, policymakers, business leaders, and everyday Americans—will know what solutions need to be pursued. We clearly have a tremendous amount of work to do to ensure Asian Americans are fully—and finally—embraced in this country, but I am hopeful that the more we all understand the depth and breadth of these issues, the harder we will work to rectify them," Chen said.

LAAUNCH and TAAF are working closely with leading AAPI scholars and research/data organizations, including AAPI Data and Stop AAPI Hate, to raise awareness about the Index's results and pursue actionable programming that tackles bias against Asian Americans. For example, TAAF's areas of focus include improving public education curricula so that AAPI history is better taught in schools, supporting more data and research on AAPI experiences, and promoting positive and diverse AAPI narratives in the media, film, and television—all efforts aimed at addressing the root causes of harmful anti-Asian attitudes.

"In 2022, 58% of Americans can't name a prominent Asian American and respondents most frequently identify Asian women and men in stereotypical roles like Kung Fu masters, criminals, geisha, sex workers and supporting roles. Prejudices continue to be reflected and perpetuated in film and media, which impacts how we view each other every day," said Eric Toda, Board Member, LAAUNCH and Advisory Council Member, TAAF. "However, 71% of Americans—especially our younger generations—want to see greater Asian American representation in TV and movies. While we have seen some progress with leading Asian actors in movies like Shang-Chi, Crazy Rich Asians, Everything Everywhere All at Once and popular series like Pachinko, we need to increase visibility of Asian Americans by considering how we are portraying Asian characters, writing multi-dimensional narratives, and casting Asian Americans into mainstream, leading roles."

LAAUNCH and TAAF plan to release the STAATUS Index survey annually to track changes in American perceptions regarding Asian Americans.

Key findings of the survey are listed below, and the complete STAATUS Index is available at www.staatus-index.org.

Key Findings: 

• Despite a documented increase in attacks against Asian Americans, nearly one third of Americans are still unaware of the violence.31% of respondents remain unaware of the increased violence towards Asian Americans.
• 71% of Asian American respondents say they are discriminated against in the U.S. today.
• Asian American respondents rank stronger laws and greater protection (#1) and education (#2) as the top solutions to end AAPI-Hate.Non-Asian American respondents rank education (#1) and more interaction with the AAPI community to better understand Asian American experiences (#2) as top solutions.
• Americans are more likely to question the loyalty of Asian Americans and blame them for COVID-19 in 2022 than they were in 2021.One in five (21%) of respondents agree that Asian Americans are at least partly responsible for COVID-19. This is up from 15% in 2021.
• 32% of respondents agree Asian Americans are more loyal to their perceived country of origin than to the U.S., as compared to 20% in 2021.
• Asian Americans are among the least likely to feel like they belong and are accepted in the U.S., especially younger Asian Americans.Only 29% of Asian American respondents (vs. 61% of white respondents and 33% of Black respondents) completely agree that they feel that they belong and are accepted in the U.S., the lowest of all racial groups.Asian American youth and women rate an even lower sense of belonging and acceptance in U.S. society—just 19% of Asian Americans between 18-24 and 66% of Asian American women compared to 75% of Asian American men.
• 72% of Asian Americans who are born outside of the U.S. feel that they belong and are accepted in the U.S., while only 67% of Asian Americans born in the U.S. feel the same.
• Asian Americans still go unseen despite Americans acknowledging their economic and cultural contributions to the U.S.Over 70% of respondents believe that Asian Americans have benefited the U.S.
• However, 58% of Americans are unable to name a prominent Asian American. Up from 42% in 2021. The most prominent Asian named was Jackie Chan, who is not Asian American.
• Majority of Americans cannot name an AAPI historical moment more recent than World War II Internment.
• When asked to identify the roles of Asian Americans in the entertainment industry:10% of respondents said they often see Asian women portrayed as sex workers
• 29% of respondents said they often see Asian American men as kung fu masters and criminals.
• Encouragingly, 71% of respondents said they would like to see more Asian Americans in TV and movies, with younger and very liberal respondents the keenest.

Methodology

The results of the survey are based on a national survey of 5,113 U.S. residents, age 18 and over, conducted online in February 2022 by Savanta Research. Results are valid within +/-1.4% at 95% confidence level. The sample was weighted using population parameters (race, age, gender, education, and region) from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to reflect the national population.

Estimating the Size of Groups

Taylor Orth at YouGov:

When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed.

When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Amercians tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).

It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%).

A parallel pattern emerges when we look at estimates of majority groups: People tend to underestimate rather than overestimate their size relative to their actual share of the adult population. For instance, we find that people underestimate the proportion of American adults who are Christian (estimate: 58%, true: 70%) and the proportion who have at least a high school degree (estimate: 65%, true: 89%).

The most accurate estimates involved groups whose real proportion fell right around 50%, including the percentage of American adults who are married (estimate: 55%, true: 51%) and have at least one child (estimate: 58%, true: 57%).

Misperceptions of the size of minority groups have been identified in prior surveys, which observers have often attributed to social causes: fear of out-groups, lack of personal exposure, or portrayals in the media. Yet consistent with prior research, we find that the tendency to misestimate the size of demographic groups is actually one instance of a broader tendency to overestimate small proportions and underestimate large ones, regardless of the topic.

 

College Voter Turnout 2020

From the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts:

• At 66%, student turnout far exceeded the rate of 52% from the prior presidential election. This comes close to the national voting rate of 67% for all voters in 2020, as calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
• In past years, we’ve pointed to low “yield” rates as a problem—students were registering, but not following through and voting. In 2020, the rate of registered students who then voted hit 80%, an important milestone and signal that they are vested in their own futures and the health of democracy
• Maybe campuses attached class registration to voter registration. Maybe first-year students were eager to have their voices heard. For whatever reason, students ages 18-21 defied national patterns and prior student voting patterns and voted at slightly higher rates than older (30+) student voters.
• The highest voting rates were achieved at private baccalaureate degree-granting (BA) and private doctoral-granting (PhD) institutions, and indeed, voting rates at private BA institutions jumped 17 percentage points from 2016. These changes might point to differences in institutional and student resourcing and/or the retention of more affluent students (who vote at significantly higher rates than their poorer peers) in a difficult semester. They may also point to the liberal arts and sciences as a catalyst for voting
• Asian American student participation rose dramatically—a change also observed in the general population3 —although Asian American student turnout was still lower than other demographic groups. Although they participated at high levels and remain among the most consistently reliable group of voters, the increase in Black women’s turnout was significantly lower than was typical across demographic groups. Overall, turnout gaps were no larger between students of different races and sexes than they were in 2016.
• Biggest Gain: Asian-American students up 17 percentage points. Also Significant: Multiracial and White men boast increases of 16-17 percentage points. Largest Gap: Asian-American to White non-Hispanic: 20 percentage points. Most Consistently Reliable Voters: Multiracial, Black, and White women

Public Opinion on Higher Education and Race

Chris Jackson, Mallory Newall and Neil Lloyd report on anAxios/Ipsos Hard Truth Higher Education poll: 

Difference by race and ethnicity erupt when race is even hinted at regarding higher education.

The impact of race, particularly with white Republicans, is particularly apparent when questions are about university admissions.

White Republicans are almost half as likely (40%) to support admissions policies that have a racial connotation than one that omits that (69%).

Among white Democrats, there is virtually no difference from the admissions policy with a racial cue (82%) than the one that omits it (77%). Black Americans also exhibit little difference in support for the two different admissions policy statements (67% to 66%).

Racial cueing: “Allowing universities to base admissions on a range of factors, including test scores, potential, and if the applicant comes from a disadvantaged community.”

Nonracial cueing: “Allowing universities to base admissions on a range of factors, including test scores and potential.”

Half of Black Americans believe their race gives them a disadvantage when it comes to access and opportunity for higher education.

More than half (57%) of white Democrats feel their race is an advantage compared to only 12% of white Republicans.

A large majority of white Democrats (79%) and Black Americans (81%) believe that higher education needs to continue making changes to give minority Americans equal opportunities with white Americans. A majority of white Republicans (76%) think higher education has changed enough.

The impact of culture wars also emerges when people are asked if ‘someone like them’ would be comfortable on college campuses. White Republicans are among the least likely to say they would be comfortable at a university.

White Americans, particularly white Republicans, are less likely to say people like them would be comfortable in four-year colleges or post-graduate universities.

White Democrats, Black, and Hispanic Americans all register about the same levels of comfort. Asian Americans generally are slightly more likely to say they would be comfortable in four-year colleges or universities.

TOPLINE AND METHODOLOGY

Father's Day: Data on Families

Many posts have discussed data on marriage, family, education, and inequality.

 Tayelor Valerio at the Census:

The average age of U.S. women who gave birth for the first time was 26.9 in 2018, but many became parents much earlier: There were 1.8 million biological parents ages 15-22 and roughly half were living with a spouse or unmarried partner, according to the Census Bureau’s 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). 

From the National Center for Education Statistics:

In 2019, some 9 percent of children under the age of 18 lived in households in which no parent had completed high school, 26 percent lived in mother-only households, 8 percent lived in father-only households, and 16 percent were in families living in poverty.

 

Growth of Asian American Population

Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz at Pew:

Asian Americans recorded the fastest population growth rate among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States between 2000 and 2019. The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81% during that span, from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the last before 2020 census figures are released. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.

Hispanics saw the second-fastest population growth between 2000 and 2019, followed by Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) at 70% and 61%, respectively. The nation’s Black population also grew during this period, albeit at a slower rate of 20%. There was virtually no change in the White population.

 

Discrimination Against Asian Americans

  Daniel A. Cox and Jacqueline Clemence at the Survey Center on American Life:

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic news reports began documenting an uptick in violence and harassment against Asian Americans. Nearly a year later, the organization Stop AAPI Hate published a report documenting nearly 3,800 cases of hate crimes against Asian Americans over the previous 12 months. Data from California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism shows a 150 percent increase in hate crimes targeting Asians across major US cities between 2019 and 2020. On March 16, eight people—including six women of Asian descent—were murdered in the apparent targeting of Asian massage parlors.

This disturbing trend is no surprise to Americans who identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. According to the American National Social Network Survey conducted in the summer of 2020, nearly three-quarters of Americans who identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander (AAPI) believe their community experiences a lot of discrimination in the US. But this view is not universally shared by their fellow citizens. Only half of Americans believe that Asian people experience a lot of discrimination in US society. Much larger majorities of the public say Hispanic (66 percent) and black (71 percent) people face a lot of discrimination in the US.

Views of discrimination against Asian Americans vary among racial and ethnic groups. Even though Hispanic and black Americans believe their own communities experience a considerable degree of discrimination, they are far less likely to believe Asian Americans experience the same. Fifty-nine percent of black and 56 percent of Hispanic Americans believe Asians face a lot discrimination in the US. But when it comes to views of discrimination against their own race, the AAPI community is much more likely to say Asian people face a lot of discrimination today, with 73 percent saying so. Black and Hispanic Americans overall are more likely to believe their racial or ethnic group face a great amount of discrimination. Ninety-four percent of black Americans say black people face a lot of discrimination in the US and 79 percent of Hispanics say the same about Hispanic people.

White Americans in particular are less likely to say Asian Americans experience discrimination than Hispanic and black Americans. A majority of white Americans believe black (63) and Hispanic (58) people experience a great deal of discrimination, while fewer than half (44 percent) of white Americans say the same about Americans who identify as Asian.

Vice President Harris and Demographic Trends

 Kim Parker and Amanda Barroso at Pew note that Vice President Kamala Harris embodies several demographic trends:

Harris has a multiracial background. Her mother was South Asian and her father is Black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans who identify as two or more races are one of the fastest growing racial or ethnic groups in the country, along with Asians. Roughly 6.3 million American adults – 2.5% of the adult population – identified as being more than one race in 2019. The number has grown significantly since the census first allowed people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves in 2000. Among adults who identify as more than one race, relatively few (2.1%) are Black and Asian.
...

Harris is the daughter of two immigrants, one from India and one from Jamaica. The share of immigrants from Asia living in the U.S. has been on the rise in recent decades, following the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In 2018, Asians made up 28% of the U.S. foreign-born population, up from 4% in 1960. And starting as early as 2010, Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants among new arrivals.

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Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is White, which makes them – as a couple – part of a growing group of intermarried couples. In 2019, 11% of all married U.S. adults had a spouse who was a different race or ethnicity from them, up from 3% in 1967. Among newlyweds in 2019, roughly one-in-five (19%) were intermarried.
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When she married Emhoff – who is divorced and has two children from his previous marriage – Harris became part of a blended family. The American family has evolved considerably in recent decades, and today there is no typical “family.” In 1980, most children younger than 18 lived in a household with two married parents who were in their first marriage. By 2014, fewer than half of U.S. children lived in that type of household. Some 15% lived with parents in a remarriage, 7% lived with cohabiting parents and 26% lived with an unpartnered parent.
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Harris does not have any biological children of her own. A look at U.S. women at the end of their childbearing years reveals that 15% were childless in 2014, while the majority (85%) had given birth to at least one child. The childlessness rate was down from 20% in 2005 but still higher than the rate prior to the 1990s.
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Harris married when she was 49 years old, and while this is older than the median age at first marriage, it reflects a trend toward women and men waiting longer to get married. In 2020, the U.S. had its highest median age at first marriage on record – 28.1 for women and 30.5 for men. These numbers have crept up steadily over time. In 2000, the median age at first marriage was 25.1 for women and 26.8 for men. In 1980, the median ages were 22.0 for women and 24.7 for men.
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Harris and Emhoff are among a growing share of married adults whose spouse does not share their religion. Harris is Christian and attends a Baptist church, and Emhoff is Jewish. While most married adults in the U.S. have a spouse who is the same religion as them, that has become less common in recent decades. Among adults who were married before 1960 (and are still married), only 19% have a spouse who does not share their religion. For those married in the 1980s and ’90s, 30% are in an interfaith marriage. The share has continued to rise: 39% of adults who were married between 2010 and 2014 have a spouse who identifies with a different religious group than their own.

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Before becoming the first female vice president, Harris served as a U.S. senator. Elected in 2016, Harris joined 20 other women in the U.S. Senate in 2017. This marked a historic high for women; the number rose to 25 in 2019. Now, the Senate has 24 female members, including one Latina woman and two who are Asian-Pacific Islander. There are no Black women currently serving in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, women make up 27.3% of current members. This represents a historic high for that chamber.

Wealth Inequality

Briana Sullivan and Donald Hays at the US Census:

Wealth inequality between homeowners and renters continued to be remarkably pronounced in 2017: Homeowners’ median wealth was nearly 89 times larger than the median wealth of renters and not entirely because of home equity.

The 2017 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data shows continued disparities in wealth – the value of assets owned minus the liabilities (debts) owed – revealed in last year’s report on household wealth in 2015.

Biggest contributors. Just two assets — home equity and retirement accounts — accounted for 61.7% of households’ wealth in 2017.

The median value of home owners’ wealth in their homes was $118,000, and the median household retirement account balance was $65,000.

While many households owned these assets, others did not: 38.2% of households did not own a home and 42.7% of households did not have a retirement account. This gap of ownership in two key assets contributes to wealth inequality.

• Bank accounts. Some commonly held assets made up a small portion of household wealth. In 2017, 93.7% of households had bank or credit union accounts. However, the accounts made up only 8.9% of total household wealth.
• Home Ownership. Home equity did not fully account for the difference in median wealth between homeowners and renters. Households that owned their home had a median wealth of $269,100, substantially more than that of those who rented their homes ($3,036).  Even when home equity was excluded from total wealth, the median wealth of homeowners was $109,000, a staggering 35.9 times more than the median wealth of renters.
• Health insurance. Households with people who did not have health insurance all or part of the year had dramatically lower median wealth ($18,750) than households in which all members had coverage for the full year ($140,500). Those without insurance also had 50% less in their checking accounts and 74% less in their retirement accounts.
• Marital status, age and gender. Unmarried female householders (those who own or rent the home) of any age had a median wealth of $28,290. That represented 75.9% of their unmarried male counterparts’ median wealth of $37,290 and only 12.1% of their married counterparts’ median wealth of $233,100.Such disparities between genders and marital status persisted over most age groups.
• Race and Hispanic origin. Relative to Black and Hispanic householders, non-Hispanic White and Asian householders had higher median household wealth.Non-Hispanic White householders had a median household wealth of $171,700, compared with $9,567 for Black householders and $25,000 for Hispanic householders. Asian householders had a median household wealth of $157,400, which was not statistically different from the estimate for non-Hispanic White householders.
• Education. Higher education was linked to higher median household wealth. Households in which the most educated member held a bachelor’s degree had a median wealth of $198,000, compared with $34,460 for households in which the most educated member only had a high school diploma. Those with graduate or professional degrees had just over twice the median wealth ($396,900) of bachelor degree holders.
• Employment. Households in which at least one member was unemployed or worked part-time during the year had less wealth. Households in which at least one person had a full-time job for the entire year had a median wealth of $114,200, compared with $81,150 for households in which one or more members had a part-time job during the year, and $19,490 for households in which one or more people were unemployed.

 

Prop 16

 

California's Proposition 16 would have California's public agencies and higher education institutions to consider race, gender, and ethnicity when deciding on contracting, hiring, and admissions. The measure would have reversed Prop. 209, which banned such preferences in 1996.,

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed:

The vote was 56.5 percent against Prop 16. All of which raises the question: Why in a diverse, politically liberal state did people vote against affirmative action?

Supporters of the status quo -- or no affirmative action -- were quick to say that the vote proves that the current system is working well.

Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, has been involved in the fight against affirmative action since the campaign for Proposition 209, the measure that banned it in the state. She was co-chair of the No on Prop 16 Committee.

She noted that the campaign for Prop 16 had far more money than the campaign against it. And that politicians lined up to support it.

"I think California voters voted their conscience on the issue," Heriot said. "People think everyone votes according to their race and sex. Californians reject identity politics."

She added that the University of California system remains a very diverse system. When examining the total number of students it enrolls and graduates, 40 percent are Black and Latinx. She is correct over all, but figures at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles do not support her thesis about the system.

To that point she says, "students were more likely to go to the university campus where they can be competitive and so grad rates have increased."

Yukong Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, said, “The resounding rejection of Proposition 16 demonstrates again that we are on the right side of the history."

Fighting for the Asian American vote was a key part of the campaign against Prop 16. While there were prominent Asian American backers of the measure, Zhao noted that many Asian Americans feel that affirmative action in effect legalizes discrimination against them. At Berkeley this year, 42 percent of freshmen are Asian, 21 percent are Latinx, 17 percent are white and 4 percent are Black.

Zhao had a message for politicians in other states. "Going forward, I’d like to warn liberal politicians in California and nationwide: focus your efforts on devising effective measures to improve K-12 education for Black and Hispanic children, instead of introducing racially divisive and discriminatory laws time and again. You have failed in California in 2014, as well as Washington State and New York City in 2019. Asian Americans will fight fiercely and defeat your racist policies wherever and whenever tried," he said. (The reference to Washington State refers to a push to undo a measure similar to Prop 16 there. The reference to New York City involves a proposal for the high schools that award spots based on standardized test scores.)

Immigration Data

Many posts have discussed immigration, naturalization, and deportation.

Abby Budiman at Pew:

• The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Immigrants today account for 13.7% of the U.S. population, nearly triple the share (4.8%) in 1970. However, today’s immigrant share remains below the record 14.8% share in 1890, when 9.2 million immigrants lived in the U.S.
• Most immigrants (77%) are in the country legally, while almost a quarter are unauthorized, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on census data adjusted for undercount. In 2017, 45% were naturalized U.S. citizens.
• By race and ethnicity, more Asian immigrants than Hispanic immigrants have arrived in the U.S. in most years since 2010. Immigration from Latin America slowed following the Great Recession, particularly for Mexico, which has seen both decreasing flows into the United States and large flows back to Mexico in recent years.
• Looking forward, immigrants and their descendants are projected to account for 88% of U.S. population growth through 2065, assuming current immigration trends continue. In addition to new arrivals, U.S. births to immigrant parents will be important to future growth in the country’s population. In 2018, the percentage of women giving birth in the past year was higher among immigrants (7.5%) than among the U.S. born (5.7%). While U.S.-born women gave birth to more than 3 million children that year, immigrant women gave birth to about 760,000.
• Immigrants convicted of a crime made up the less than half of deportations in 2018, the most recent year for which statistics by criminal status are available. Of the 337,000 immigrants deported in 2018, some 44% had criminal convictions and 56% were not convicted of a crime. From 2001 to 2018, a majority (60%) of immigrants deported have not been convicted of a crime.

Bush, Reagan, Discrimination, Founding Principles

 Farhat Popal and Christopher Walsh at the George W. Bush Presidential Center:

Attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders grew so bad in the early days of the coronavirus that the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council launched a website to track them. In its first two weeks, the STOP AAPI HATE website received over 1,100 reports of physical assault, verbal harassment, and shunning of Asian Americans...

Current events highlight the pitfalls of sacrificing precision in order to create “bumper sticker” talking points that crudely shape public perception for political purposes. Sadly, this is a tactic used across the political spectrum, but that doesn’t excuse it. The American people should hold their leaders accountable on such issues, regardless of political affiliation, and not allow “whataboutism” to compromise principles. And while it’s unrealistic to attribute a single cause to any rise in discrimination related to the global pandemic, having clear, consistent, empathetic, and trusted leadership is a factor.

While such leadership qualities foster stability in any time, their importance increases in a crisis because societal tensions are higher. Used together, they steer frightened and frustrated people away from fear, suspicion, and paranoia.

Look at the example of President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Angry people were channeling their rage through unacceptable violence against Muslim-Americans. Six days after 9/11, President Bush appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., flanked by Muslim American religious leaders, and offered a strong rebuke of this persecution.

In doing so, President Bush stripped away any cloak of “patriotism” that some individuals might have used to justify bigotry and violence, stating, “Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.”

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.President George W. Bush, September 17, 2001

Unfortunately, leaders aren’t always quick to acknowledge and repudiate violations of our founding principles.

More than 40 years after Japanese Americans – having been stripped of their dignity and rights as citizens – were released from World War II-era internment camps, President Reagan offered reparations from an ashamed nation. He stated: “We gather here today to right a grave wrong… 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race...”

USA: Older and More Diverse

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau today released estimates showing the nation’s 65-and-older population has grown rapidly since 2010, driven by the aging of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The 65-and-older population grew by over a third (34.2% or 13,787,044) during the past decade, and by 3.2% (1,688,924) from 2018 to 2019. The growth of this population contributed to an increase in the national median age from 37.2 years in 2010 to 38.4 in 2019, according to the Census Bureau’s 2019 Population Estimates.

“The first Baby Boomers reached 65 years old in 2011,” said Dr. Luke Rogers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch. “Since then, there’s been a rapid increase in the size of the 65-and-older population, which grew by over a third since 2010. No other age group saw such a fast increase. In fact, the under-18 population was smaller in 2019 than it was in 2010, in part due to lower fertility in the United States.”

At Fast Company, Connie Lin points out other Census data:

• The U.S. is becoming more racially diverse: The U.S. population was about 60% non-Hispanic white in 2019, a record low for the country, [down from 64% in 2010 -- .ed] and experts predict non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in 25 years. Meanwhile, Hispanic and Asian populations grew by 20% and 30%, respectively, from 2010 to 2019, and the Black population grew by 12%. While the white population grew by 4.3% compared to 2010, the number of non-Hispanic whites fell by more than half a million people from 2016 to 2019.
• The face of America is changing fast: In 2019, for the first time ever, nonwhites and Hispanics were the majority for people under the age of 16, signaling a demographic shift that experts expect will continue over the coming decades.