I'm reading TCW's Self Portrait in Black and White right now and I find it beautiful and calming, though it's on this very fraught subject. I can't help but feel like all this is so dumb. I'm a very pale person but didn't know it until my first winter in Chicago after a childhood in Southern California.
After a week at the beach, my skin is several shades browner than it was in late July. Skin color culture, country of origin: all interesting, but only have the value we invest them with.
I'm having some trouble reconciling the graph of 1990-2020 and the text assertion that nothing much is really changed demographically between 2010 and 2020.
As best I understand your point, the changes from 1990-2000, and from 2000-2010 are real demographic changes, but the change from 2010 to 2020 is almost totally an illusion created by changes in the questions between those latter years.
And it's purely random coincidence that every line on the chart is pretty linear through all 4 data points, even though the changes between the first three points is due to real demographic differences, and the remarkably similar changes in the final points are due to methodological not demographic differences.
And that there was some unexplained factor occurring around 2010 which caused long term historical trends to stop and be replaced by essentially flat lines of relatively constant demographics since then (masked by methodological changes which falsely appeared to continue the long term trends).
Does this not raise any questions that need further exploration for you as an analyst, before taking it as established fact to build arguments upon? Like do birth and death rates and family sizes or immigration rates, show a striking knee around 2010 which could explain the asserted flattening of the long term trends since then?
I am not expressing alarm nor excitement at demographic changes (or the omission thereof), just finding that the assertions made seem to need more serious explanation than just textual expressions of subjective "confidence", an interpretation or speculation which could potentially be affected by socio-political bias. Where is the evidence of *data* changes in the underlying drivers mentioned above, which could explain the (allegedly obscured) 2010ish flattening of longer term trends (going back even before 1990)?
Good article. I often wonder how much of this theory’s popularity is because you can use it as an excuse to keep on branding as “the party for nonwhite people to vote” without the hard work of actually talking to the many nonwhite people who are swing voters (it also must be tempting to ignore the major reality that many nonwhite people are swing voters)
Freddie DeBoer wrote that it seemed to him that it was no longer fashionable among people on the left side of the political spectrum to talk about demographic destiny due to a growing realization that it is probably all bunk for precisely the reasons you have elucidated.
A recent example from the media debunking the idea:
Plus the obvious, exhaustive and very recent coverage of Trump's rise in popularity in minority support (off the top of my head the stuff from Michael Lind, David Shor and the NY Times was very good). What interests me is how the narrative is increasingly being questioned and yet some (like Rubin) seem determined to cling to it. Are they ignorant of the questions being raised?
Three cheers for your last paragraph.
I'm reading TCW's Self Portrait in Black and White right now and I find it beautiful and calming, though it's on this very fraught subject. I can't help but feel like all this is so dumb. I'm a very pale person but didn't know it until my first winter in Chicago after a childhood in Southern California.
After a week at the beach, my skin is several shades browner than it was in late July. Skin color culture, country of origin: all interesting, but only have the value we invest them with.
I'm having some trouble reconciling the graph of 1990-2020 and the text assertion that nothing much is really changed demographically between 2010 and 2020.
As best I understand your point, the changes from 1990-2000, and from 2000-2010 are real demographic changes, but the change from 2010 to 2020 is almost totally an illusion created by changes in the questions between those latter years.
And it's purely random coincidence that every line on the chart is pretty linear through all 4 data points, even though the changes between the first three points is due to real demographic differences, and the remarkably similar changes in the final points are due to methodological not demographic differences.
And that there was some unexplained factor occurring around 2010 which caused long term historical trends to stop and be replaced by essentially flat lines of relatively constant demographics since then (masked by methodological changes which falsely appeared to continue the long term trends).
Does this not raise any questions that need further exploration for you as an analyst, before taking it as established fact to build arguments upon? Like do birth and death rates and family sizes or immigration rates, show a striking knee around 2010 which could explain the asserted flattening of the long term trends since then?
I am not expressing alarm nor excitement at demographic changes (or the omission thereof), just finding that the assertions made seem to need more serious explanation than just textual expressions of subjective "confidence", an interpretation or speculation which could potentially be affected by socio-political bias. Where is the evidence of *data* changes in the underlying drivers mentioned above, which could explain the (allegedly obscured) 2010ish flattening of longer term trends (going back even before 1990)?
Good article. I often wonder how much of this theory’s popularity is because you can use it as an excuse to keep on branding as “the party for nonwhite people to vote” without the hard work of actually talking to the many nonwhite people who are swing voters (it also must be tempting to ignore the major reality that many nonwhite people are swing voters)
Freddie DeBoer wrote that it seemed to him that it was no longer fashionable among people on the left side of the political spectrum to talk about demographic destiny due to a growing realization that it is probably all bunk for precisely the reasons you have elucidated.
A recent example from the media debunking the idea:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/myth-majority-minority-america/619190/
A not so recent example (from 2016!):
https://prospect.org/civil-rights/likely-persistence-white-majority/
Plus the obvious, exhaustive and very recent coverage of Trump's rise in popularity in minority support (off the top of my head the stuff from Michael Lind, David Shor and the NY Times was very good). What interests me is how the narrative is increasingly being questioned and yet some (like Rubin) seem determined to cling to it. Are they ignorant of the questions being raised?