Hey You Non-White Kids, Get Off of My Lawn.

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2010&base_name=hey_you_nonwhite_kids_get_off

Hey You Non-White Kids, Get Off of My Lawn.


I've often noted that the changing geographic distribution of immigrants has a lot to do with the "I want my country back!" sentiment that has become so visible in recent months. At one time, if you lived in a suburb or a small town, you were unlikely to encounter people speaking a language other than English very often, if at all. Now that people all over the country see immigrants in their communities, many feel as though something has been taken from them.

But William Frey of the Brookings Institution (via Andrew Sullivan) points us to a fascinating piece of data that brings more depth to this picture. The ferment in Arizona, he explains, might have something to do with the fact that "the state’s swift Hispanic growth has been concentrated in young adults and children, creating a 'cultural generation gap' with largely white baby boomers and older populations, the same demographic that predominates in the recent Tea Party protests."

Arizona has the largest gap of any state between the percentage of seniors who are white (83 percent) and the percentage of those under 18 who are white (43 percent) -- a 40 percent gap. The national gap is 25 percent.

Frey also cautions us against assuming that baby boomers will be more friendly toward immigration. "The appeal of anti-immigrant, anti-Latino messages among boomers and seniors may seem surprising especially because the former are so closely associated with 1960s era liberalism and Civil Rights. Yet this stereotype hardly applies to all boomers and recent presidential elections have shown them to be either politically split or, in the case of white boomer men, veering toward the right."

Indeed. For every hippie grooving to Jefferson Airplane in 1969, there was a guy with a brush cut thinking about how much he'd like to punch a hippie. Your uncle who still talks about how he almost went to Woodstock may be a baby boomer, but so is Dick Cheney.

-- Paul Waldman

[sui generis]

1. in my neighborhood if I saw white kids on my lawn I'd be worried.

probably only there to burn a pink lambda on my lawn or inform me that I am going to hayull unless I get saved from teh gay.

I grew up in Germany half in military half "on the economy" (living as German), and I can say that "white" kids were by far in the minority in the military melting pot. I never even knew or paid attention to differences in skin color - it was just one big crazy zoo. Many multi-cultural families I grew up with had one parent a foreign dual national or naturalized, or citizen by marriage, and many of the kids from those families grew up speaking two or more languages, including myself.

It was only when I moved here at 14 that I learned how fucked up America really is, and not just "white people" wanting exclusivity, but the Ecuadorans look down on the Mexicans who don't get along with the blacks and they all stare at the gays and even sometimes gay couples and lesbian couples don't mix in the same neighborhood and we're left with something that's more of a junk drawer than a melting pot.

People here are so damn ENTITLED to their petty dislikes - skin color, culture, sexual orientation, faith. It's almost like we don't want to really see WHO other people are, just judge them with blanket rules and by their surfaces and stereotypes. Laziness.

[babylonsister]

2. I must say, I envy your upbringing. Must have been cool to

live in a real melting pot instead of a junk drawer, as you so colorfully put it. While I didn't have negative opinions about race or sexuality shoved down my throat, I was like you. What I saw was what I thought 'was' all over. My upbringing in the US didn't make me feel 'entitled', so I'm usually not a fan of broad brushes.

[azul]

4. Prejudices a cultural product of associations on the hidden mind?

Have you read this intriguing book, the Hidden Brain?:


" But many of the test subjects that you talk about in the book are schoolchildren being taught that racism is bad. Why does this kind of subconscious racism persist?

Because the hidden brain doesn't always learn what it's taught to learn. We can consciously teach people that certain attitudes are right or wrong, but that does little to alter the hidden brain. It's a much dumber system that learns much more through repetition and blind argument and making associations. When you're watching television, for example, the hidden brain is watching who is being shown in positions of authority. It's not something you need to think about on a conscious level. By the time a child is 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, he or she has seen thousands of these kinds of associations.

~snip

One surprising connection you make in the book is between racism and voting records. Are Republicans really more likely to be racist?

The research specifically makes a connection between racial bias and whether congressional districts vote Republican or liberal -- in that sense I do make that connection.

The research data shows that a significant number of Americans show biases that are pro-white and anti-black in the United States. It's true for Democrats and Republicans, but if you were to draw a map of where these people are in the country geographically and measure how much racial bias they have, there is a correlation between the degree of racial bias and political orientation. Districts with the highest racial bias vote Republicans, districts with the lowest racial bias tend to vote Democrat. There are other factors at play, but generally it holds true."

http://www.salon.com/books/neuroscience/index.html

[NV Whino]

3. Hey, lady, you want your lawn mowed or not?

[elias7]

5. When latinos overrun the country and put white christians in reservations...

native american justice will be complete.

thanks for the link...very much at the heart of the matter, I believe.