Im-Politic: Latest Charlottesville Polls Suggest a U.S. Race Relations Muddle

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ABC News, CBS News, Charlottesville, Confederate monuments, Harris, Harvard University, Huffington Post, Im-Politic, Marist University, Mark Penn, Morning Consult, NPR, Politic, polls, race relations, The Hill, Trump, Washington Post, white nationalists, white supremacists

Keeping in mind how flawed they are, and keeping in mind that the wording of their questions matters a lot, several polls are now in (out?) on the intertwined issues of what to do about the nation’s various (and variegated!) Confederate monuments, and how Americans viewed President Trump’s response to the recent Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite the Right” rally, the counter-protests it attracted, and the violence that resulted – which of course produced the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. The findings seem pretty clear, if somewhat challenging to explain: Most Americans don’t want the statues etc, removed from public spaces, but at the same time, most Americans disapproved of Mr. Trump’s response to the controversy – which included a defense of keeping the monuments in place.

Huffington Post, a news outlet I rarely cite, just performed a useful service by compiling the results of seven surveys on the Confederate monuments question conducted this month by six organizations. In five of the seven (including the NPR-Marist poll I wrote about last Friday), majorities backed keeping the monuments exactly where they are. In one of the outliers, this position was backed by a big plurality (49 percent).

The only survey showing a widespread desire for change found that by a wide 58 percent to 26 percent margin, respondents supported “relocating monuments honoring the Confederacy from government property and moving them to museums or other historic sites where they can be viewed in proper historical context.” Unless it’s assumed that “proper historical context” would portray the Confederate cause in an overall less-than-flattering light, even this arguably moderate viewpoint doesn’t exactly demonstrate that most Americans view its links to slavery and treason as especially troubling. Which of course I find especially troubling.

It’s possible to explain how these opinions dovetail with the negative reviews drawn by the president’s Charlottesville-related words and deeds, but it’s anything but easy, as I’ll elaborate on in a moment. But first the actual findings.

The earliest survey on the matter yielded results that could be seen as ambiguous. It was the NPR-Marist poll, and it showed that by 51 percent to 31 percent, the public viewed the Trump “response to the violence in Charlottesville” was “not strong enough” (as opposed to being “strong enough). This poll, remember, came out on August 17, and was only asking respondents about the president’s remarks as of Monday, August 14 and Tuesday, August 15 – before his late Tuesday afternoon press conference, when he made much more controversial comments. So it wasn’t entirely clear of whom Mr. Trump should have spoken more “strongly” – if any group or individual.

Subsequent polls, however, have made clear that most Americans believe that the racial issues as well as that Trump performance lay at the heart of their criticisms. The first clue came in a CBS News poll that was released on Thursday, the 17^th. According to the pollsters, a strong majority disapproved of “Trump’s response to Charlottesville” attack and that “Disapproval of the president’s handling of events rose [in interviews conducted] following the [Tuesday] press conference.” Indeed, those interviewed by CBS Tuesday and Wednesday frowned on Mr. Trump’s remarks by a 58 percent to 33 percent margin. The Monday interviewees disapproved by a 52 percent to 35 percent margin.

On August 21, the Washington Post reported that a poll it conducted with ABC News found that that Mr. Trump’s Charlottesville comments earned a failing grade from Americans by a two-to-one ration (56 percent versus 28 percent). And three days later, a survey conducted by Harvard University and the Harris polling firm found that 57 percent of respondents viewed the Trump remarks as a missed opportunity to bring the country together, and 57 percent believed he should do more to promote racial unity. (And in case you’re wondering, 59 percent agreed that the President should be doing more in this respect.)

Moreover a similar Harris finding – that the Trump comments did more to divide the country than to unite it – was supported by data both from the CBS News poll and a separate Politico/Morning Consult survey released on August 23). 

Nevertheless, these polls all presented results that raise important questions as to exactly how their Charlottesville-related views are or aren’t influencing Americans’ views on race relations above and beyond the Confederate monuments controversy.

For example, despite the stated desire both for better race relations and for a greater presidential effort to bring them about, and even though Mr. Trump’s comments on Charlottesville were broadly unpopular, most of the polling evidence shows agreement with the President’s view that both sides deserve equal blame for the violence in that city. (CBS’ was the only poll I found with contrasting results.) Those two sets of views don’t easily jibe with the great dissatisfaction expressed with Mr. Trump’s comments ostensibly because they weren’t racially sensitive enough.

Moreover, fully nine percent of Americans, according to the Post-ABC poll, said that it is “acceptable” to “hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.” Another eight percent were undecided. (The NPR-Marist poll, held before the heated Trump press conference, found support for “white supremacist” and “white nationalist” groups at only half these levels.)

The best explanation I’ve found for these apparent inconsistencies comes from Mark Penn, a well known pollster who helps direct the Harvard-Harris operations. Penn centered on that Trump press conference and contended, “His arguing the point about the violence is a Pyrrhic victory as he still gets the blame for the polarization in the country. The voters are looking for a uniter and he is coming off as a divider.”

I fully agree that Mr. Trump’s big post-Charlottesville problem has been being too argumentative (on top of firing off inconsistent comments seemingly from day to day) and that most Americans want a unifier in the White House. Yet the polls and Penn’s observation leave me less convinced that a critical mass of the country agrees on what it wants this unifying message to be, especially when it comes to race issues.

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Im-Politic: A Common Sense Approach to the National Anthem

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1968 Olympics, Colin Kaepernick, Constitution, First Amendment, Im-Politic, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, national anthem, National Football League, professional sports, race relations, racism, Tommie Smith

Ever since pro football player Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers decided to protest racial injustice in America by kneeling during the national anthem, I’ve been asking myself why I’ve found his (and similar recent) actions so unimpressive, while remaining moved by the political actions of black athletes in the 1960s. And I’ve come to conclude that it’s not because I’m a fogeyish baby boomer who by definition believes everything was better back in the day.

I say this for two related reasons. But first, let me express agreement with those who have noted that Kaepernick’s gesture is completely protected by the First Amendment. Also, I’ve heard some arguments to the effect that athletes and other employees in many other industries routinely sign contracts holding them for public relations reasons to certain standards of behavior both on the job and off, and that as a result, the quarterback (voluntarily) surrendered some of his freedom of speech.

But both the 49ers and the National Football League deny that this has been the case.  And although I’m not a lawyer (and don’t even play one on TV!), I doubt that it’s constitutional for employers to deny or even curb the free speech rights of their employees unless exercising them can be shown to either interfere significantly with carrying out their responsibilities, or significantly harm the company’s image. 

Let’s get another matter out of the way, too. Although Kaepernick can’t be legitimately criticized for this, he and other football players pros who made national anthem protests can be knocked for timing last Sunday. I mean – on September 11? Seriously? The merits of the case aside, what could be likelier to forfeit public sympathy, especially among those not already with them?

But I would have been put off by the protests regardless of date – in contrast to my admiration for, say, Muhammad Ali and the two sprinters who bowed their heads and gave black power salutes when awarded medals at the 1968 Olympics.

The first reason has to do with the context. In the late 1960s, the involvement of athletes in politics was brand new, and taking non-mainstream stances was virtually unprecedented, especially for high profile performers. In fact, genuine courage was required – as made clear in Ali’s case when he was fined and  suspended from pro boxing simply for conscientiously objecting to military service during the Vietnam War. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos had no opportunities to cash in on their triumph in Mexico City by running track professionally, but they paid significant personal prices, too.

Although Kaepernick et al have caught non-negligible flack, athlete and broader celebrity involvement in political and social issues has now become so routine that many causes use their Congressional testimony as core elements of their strategy. Even better, athletes and celebrities who take left-of-center positions can count on strong support from the country’s media and entertainment establishments.

My second reason for disquiet with the current generation of athletic and celebrity activists concerns the targeting of the national anthem. Actually, I have some sympathy for the view that patriotic displays have no place at sporting events, and that however traditional playing the anthem has become, the fabric of American life would remain fundamentally unchanged if the practice was ditched.

But here’s what matters more, as I see it. National anthem-like protests had more merit decades ago, when channels of protest, even for prominent individuals, were much fewer and further between simply because the media universe was so small. You had the three major commercial broadcast networks, along second-tier operations like Metromedia (essentially the ancestor of Fox). You had three national newspapers, three weekly newsmagazines, a few publications like Life and Look that didn’t deal with hard news controversies and opinion quite so consistently, and that was it. National syndicates did offer commentaries from the likes of Walter Lippman and Drew Pearson and the team of Evans and Novak. But the op-ed page didn’t exist until 1970. So if you hoped to reach broad audiences, and weren’t already world or nationally famous, you were for all intents and purposes out of luck. And this was also true if your renown came from a career not associated with journalism or public affairs.

Need I explicitly mention you that we’ve come an awfully long way since then? Indeed, we’ve come so long that unless you’re actively seeking to avoid them, there’s almost no escape from commentaries about political issues, and about controversial social and cultural issues. And in this environment, it seems reasonable to me to view an event like the playing of the national anthem as a valuable and constructive opportunity. It’s a chance to capitalize, on occasions when large numbers of us gather together in person, to affirm our common American identity in ways diametrically unlike the current smash-mouth style of most current politics and opinionizing.

As a result, although no one is legally obligated to stand or sing, those who decide to kneel or otherwise demonstrate at that moment strike me as at the very best off-putting, and at worst not so much unpatriotic as unreasonably hostile to acknowledging anything positive about the nation’s history and achievements. And I’d like to think that I’d take this stance even if the protest supported a cause I favored.

So here’s my plea to Kaepernick and other athletes moved to continue national anthem protests, for whatever reason: Given all the other powerful platforms you have to make your points, could you keep at least this particular ceremony a haven from the constant din of our ubiquitous public conversation? Americans today are anything but short of ways and means of expressing our disagreements and divisions, genuine and concocted. Questions of constitutional liberties aside, how about preserving at least one occasion for expressing our common bonds?

Im-Politic: What the Hell Many Black Voters Really Have to Lose

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2008 election, 2016 election, African Americans, Bill Clinton, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Donald Trump, Employment, government jobs, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, race, race relations, racism, subsidized private sector

Even by the off-the-wall standards of this presidential campaign, one of the most stunning spectacles has entailed the reactions by many African-Americans (and many of their supposed leaders) to Donald Trump’s appeal for their votes. The Republican presidential candidate’s insistence that Democratic politicians like his rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, have failed blacks, and therefore don’t deserve the overwhelming support they enjoy, has been met with everything from howls of bitter laughter to outbursts of outrage. And this despite an almost non-stop litany of complaints from these same voices about how too many African-Americans still lag economically and face debilitating racism.

Major reasons for the blowback triggered by Trump’s appeal have already been widely highlighted – ranging from the claim that his pitch has ignored black progress that has been made to the sluggishness with which he has failed to disavow support from a former Ku Klux Klan leader and other white supremacists to (unproven) charges that his family’s real estate ventures discriminated against black tenant applicants. Then add to these Republicans’ reluctance to use government to solve this community’s biggest problems and what leading conservative lights often admit is the GOP’s decades-long failure to court African-American voters systematically.

As a result, it’s easy to see why so many African-Americans apparently have decided to overlook criticisms raised (often by African Americans) about the race relations record of Clinton and her husband, the former president. These include Clinton administration welfare reform and policing measures unpopular with much of the minority population, and both Clintons’ use of supposedly insensitive racial rhetoric during her 2008 Democratic primary race versus then Senator Barack Obama.

But there’s one possible factor behind African-Americans’ evident mass support for Clinton, and their equally evident alarm that Trump might win, that deserves more attention. And this consideration is especially important since it looms as a major barrier to future Republican success with blacks as long as the GOP remains the party of limited government, and no matter how lousy the economy or the state of much of Black America gets.

It has to do with African-Americans’ outsized dependence on jobs both in the public sector and in parts of the economy heavily subsidized by government spending. What the data shows is that American blacks have good reason to view government not only as a provider of many essential services and resources, but as an engine of jobs (and therefore financial stability) and opportunity. Perhaps equally important – this government role has grown steadily during the economy’s generally weak recovery under President Obama.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data could not make these conclusions clearer. Take its “public administration” jobs category. In 2002 (the first 21^st century year for which data exist), African Americans made up 10.9 percent of Americans over the age of 16 employed either in the public or private sectors. But their share of “public administration” jobs was much higher: 16.5 percent. Moreover, that category doesn’t include government groupings like “urban transit” (where African-Americans comprised 28.1 percent of all workers. Or the U.S. Postal Service (23.1 percent).

Blacks were also over-represented in the government-subsidized industries like healthcare services and social assistance agencies. There are no 2002 statistics combining the most conspicuous of these together. But African-American workers accounted for 16.7 percent of all the nation’s hospital workers that year, 15.1 percent of healthcare workers outside hospitals, and nearly one in five employees at social assistance agencies.

During the year the Great Recession ended, 2009, blacks’ share of all adult U.S. workers fell to 10.7 percent – indicating how hard they were hit by the downturn. But here’s their representation in the public and government-subsidized sectors:

Public administration: 15.6 percent (surely because public payrolls started shrinking)

Subsidized private sector total: 14.0 percent

Urban transit: 28.3 percent (an increase)

Postal Service: 20.3 percent (a decrease)

The cuts in government employment accelerated for most of the time through 2015 (the last year for which data is available). Thanks to the economic recovery, the African-American share of total U.S. adult employment regained a full percentage point, to 11.7 percent. But blacks’ share of falling government employment grew as well:

Public administration: 16.9 percent (despite the continued cuts in overall government employment)

Subsidized private sector total: 14.8 percent

Urban transit: 30.5 percent

Postal Service: 24.2 percent (back above 2002 levels)

Not that this African-American employment pattern is a first in U.S. history. Far from it. Especially in northeastern cities, new European immigrant groups used the patronage and overall powers won via political victories to employ their former fellow compatriots. These government jobs, in turn, became pillars of the nation’s rapidly growing middle class and the widespread prosperity it helped foster.

These data, however, also show what a mortal threat at least in principal Small Government conservatives and Republicans pose to government employment’s role in the advances the black community has achieved. The Right may have completely valid points in contending, for example, that this recipe for economic and financial success has left too many sidelined and outright failed too many others; resulted in huge opportunity costs even for the beneficiaries; encouraged attitudes of dependency; or (at best) run out its string for all the black wealth it has generated.

But especially to a population whose sense of economic security is understandably fragile, and whose faith in the career potential available in private industry is understandably limited, Small Government conservatism amounts to a proposal to exchange a bird in the hand for two in the bush. (On top of the reduced services implicitly promised to the less well-off.) So unless Republicans change their philosophy significantly, or more convincingly argue that African-Americans should take this kind of chance, the answer they’ll get from most blacks to Trump’s question, “What the hell do you have to lose” will continue to be “More than you can know.”

Im-Politic: Why Sanders Really Isn’t Bernie-One-Note

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African Americans, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Bureau of Labor Statistics, campaign finance reform, Center for Economic Policy Research, China, free trade agreements, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, manufacturing jobs, offshoring, poverty, race relations, sexism, trade policy, World Trade Organization

Truth in advertising: I have a lot of respect for Bernie Sanders and very little for Hillary Clinton. Still, here’s some data that I believe even many Clinton supporters will agree undermines her claim that her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination is a “single-issue candidate”whose obsessive focus on economic inequality and its roots in a money-drenched political system is ignoring crucial issues of racial and gender discrimination.

The data come from the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the private Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and they make clear the harm done to African Americans by decades-long American trade policies that the former Secretary of State has strongly backed for most of her career, and the Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont has consistently opposed.

According to a 2008 CEPR report, in 1979, blacks made up 23.9 percent of the workforce in American manufacturing, which is the part of the economy most extensively exposed to foreign competition. By 2007, this figure had sunk to 9.8 percent. And BLS data place this share at 9.7 percent as of last year.

Although there’s still by no means a consensus among economists concerning trade policy’s responsibility for manufacturing job loss, even this historically free trade-worshiping group of scholars keeps producing more and more evidence indicating that its share is considerable. So the above statistics make clear that African-Americans have taken an outsized hit both from Washington’s longstanding pursuit of trade agreements that have inevitably fostered production- and job offshoring, and from its equally longstanding failure to combat predatory foreign trade policies effectively.

The price paid by African Americans becomes even clearer when these percentages are translated into raw numbers. Based on the CEPR and BLS data, in 1979, 4.61 million blacks worked in U.S.-based manufacturing. Last year, this number had plunged to 1.49 million.

It’s important to note that some uncertainty surrounds this 2015 figure, because it’s based on one set of BLS data that peg the domestic manufacturing workforce at just under 15.34 million. These numbers come from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), which uses answers from American households. My figure for 1979 comes from CEPR’s number of blacks’ percent of the manufacturing workforce, and from BLS total manufacturing workforce figures based on BLS’ own Current Employment Statistics. These use answers from American employers. The CES numbers peg the domestic manufacturing workforce at just over 12.30 million for 2015 – considerably lower than the CPS figure.

I wasn’t able to find an absolute number of 1979 manufacturing workers per the CPS methodology (crowd-sourcing hint!) but it’s difficult to imagine that the overall trend of disproportionate black manufacturing job loss would change significantly. And if something like three-plus million African Americans lost manufacturing jobs over the last four decades, does anyone – including Ms. Clinton’s supporters – believe that the impact on black employment and wage levels – wasn’t devastating? Does anyone believe that these policy failures didn’t play a huge role in turning Rust Belt cities with big African American populations – like Flint, Michigan – from centers of industry into centers of poverty? And that family break-up and related social ills in the black community weren’t greatly aggravated by the employment crisis suffered by the only sector of the economy with an historical record of enabling millions of working class Americans to lead middle-class lives?  

Starting this exercise in the late 1970s, moreover, is important because that’s when the American economy began opening wide to foreign competition. It also makes possible showing how blacks in manufacturing fared during the 1990s, a period lauded by Ms. Clinton as an economic golden age flowered under her husband, President Bill Clinton. But it was also a time when President Clinton spearheaded the first great wave of post-Cold War American free trade agreements.

Between the first year of Clinton’s presidency, in 1993, and the last, in 2000, the black share of American manufacturing workers fell from 16.5 percent to 13.6 percent. That’s a 17.58 percent fall-off. During the same period, the share of the overall U.S. workforce employed in manufacturing declined from 17 percent to 15.1 percent. That decrease was a much smaller 11.18 percent. Moreover, these data are all from the CEPR report, so it’s apples-to-apples.

During the ensuing administration of George W. Bush, black manufacturing job loss was even worse (21.6 percent), though this performance in part represented the hammering the entire manufacturing workforce suffered between 2001 and 2007 (19.44 percent of jobs eliminated). But even these numbers reflect poorly on the Clinton record. For it’s increasingly agreed that much of this manufacturing jobs massacre resulted from Mr. Clinton’s late-1990s decision to back admitting China into the World Trade Organization. It signaled to offshoring-happy American multinational companies that they could send floods of factories and jobs to the People’s Republic without fear of new U.S. tariffs on their U.S.-bound exports if the volumes became overwhelming.

Nothing in this post should be taken for agreement with the fundamental Clinton camp portrayal of Sanders as a Bernie-One-Note. But even if they were right, economic inequality – and its roots in the dangerously large role of money in American politics that’s produced a wide range of shortsighted and downright destructive policies, including on the trade front – is one heck of a big, loud note.

For although there’s no legitimate doubt that racial and ethnic minorities, and women, face their own distinctive problems in American society and the U.S. economy today, it’s equally clear that Sanders’ priorities, if executed well, would go far toward solving the most serious problems facing all these groups – not to mention the entire population. Ironically, during his first run for the White House, in 1992, Ms. Clinton’s husband recognized the need to focus “like a laser beam” on the economy – when it was in much better shape. There’s a strong case that her own campaign this year could benefit from taking that advice.

Im-Politic: Black Belt Lessons on Race

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Alabama, Black Belt, civil rights movement, Im-Politic, poverty, race relations, racism, segregation, Selma, South, voting rights

Glass half empty? Half full? Somewhere in between? I was confronted with those questions last week when a flood of civil rights-era memories was unleashed in my head from the least likely of sources.

It all began on Wednesday night, as I was watching a college basketball game. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad was broadcast that jerked me to attention with the phrase “black belt.” Anyone alive and alert to the news during the 1960s, or schooled in its history, should link these words with a stretch of counties in Alabama originally named for its unusually rich ebony soil, but later known for large African-American populations. (Geologically, the Belt stretches through the entire south, from Texas to Maryland.)

The Alabama portion in particular was the site of landmark civil rights movement events. Some were peaceful and inspiring, like the Montgomery bus boycott resulting from Rosa Parks’ refusal to submit to segregationist seating laws in public transit. Others, like the police suppression of the Selma voting rights march, were shamefully violent.

Wednesday night’s TV commercial mentioned none of this. Instead, it touted the region as a great place for hunting and fishing. My first reaction was pleasant surprise, given the Belt’s tumultuous history. Initially, it looked like another example of the South putting its tragic past behind it. A little further investigation, though, revealed a more complicated reality.

According to at least one scholar, like much of the majority black South today, the Alabama Black Belt is marked by “low taxes on property, high rates of poverty and unemployment, low-achieving schools, and high rates of out-migration” along with “a high number of single-parent households, high teen birth rates, and poor access to health-care services.”

Nor has the region become entirely free of discrimination, or at least charges thereof. Last fall, for example, in what it described as a budget-cutting move, Alabama’s Republican controlled state government closed 31 driver’s license offices. According to critics, an outsized share of these closings came in the Black Belt, and they looked suspiciously like an effort to create new obstacles to voting in this predominantly Democratic area.

It seems beyond legitimate dispute that times have changed dramatically for the better in the Belt. How, for example, can anyone not take as a small encouraging sign the Wednesday night ad, sponsored by a “public-private partnership committed to promoting and enhancing outdoor and tourism opportunities” and “sustainable economic development” in the region? I can personally remember days when this would have been inconceivable.

At the same time, as signs of racial tensions resurface throughout the country, the Black Belt’s continuing economic and political struggles raise questions more and more Americans are asking: Should the nation mainly be proud of how much has been accomplished in this sphere? Or troubled that, more than half a century after official segregation began ending, so much more needs to be done?

Im-Politic: New Survey Shows Surprising Areas of National Consensus

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abortion, American Values Survey, blacks, China, Democrats, Donald Trump, equal opportunity, family leave, Hispanics, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, inequality, Islam, minimum wage, multinational corporations, Muslims, offshoring, parental leave, police killings, polls, Public religious Research Institute, race relations, regulations, Republicans, same-sex marriage, Trade, whites

Just when you think you’re getting a handle on the American public’s mood in these raucous political and social times, along comes some polling data that rock your world. And I’m pleased to report that, in the case of the new American Values Survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRII), the net results strike me as encouraging as they are surprising. Specifically, they indicate that the U.S. public is much less divided on many hot button social and cultural issues than politicians and the national media coverage have been indicating. In fact, the findings of this November survey suggest the gathering of a common sense consensus on these supposedly bitterly divisive matters.

The unexpected areas of agreement start with a subject close to the leading headline-maker of the day – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s call for a temporary ban on travel by all non-citizen Muslims into the United States. It’s too early for a poll on this specific proposal. But I found it instructive that, according to the PRII, Americans agree by a 56 percent to 41 percent margin that “the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life.” In 2011, only 47 percent agreed and 48 percent disagreed.

Moreover, although breaking the results down by political leanings produces differences, even 43 percent of Democrats share these suspicions of Islam. For Republican and independents, the figures are 76 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

The survey shows an even split on the question of whether immigrants “strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents” (47 percent agreed) or “constitute a burden on the U.S. because they take jobs, housing, and health care” (46 percent). But only last year, the “strengthen” option won out by 57 percent to 35 percent. The partisan gap is indeed wide, with 63 percent of Republicans holding such negative views of immigrants and 66 percent disagreeing. But 32 percent of Democrats were focused on immigrant-created economic burdens as well.

Even more suggestive of consensus on this issue, though, are the results for a slightly different question. Fully 45 percent of Democrats agreed that “illegal immigrants are at least somewhat responsible for America’s current economic woes” (as well as 70 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of independents). And check out the racial split: Majorities of white and black Americans (58 percent and 52 percent, respectively) told held illegal immigrants “at least somewhat responsible” for the nation’s economic troubles – along with 40 percent of Hispanic Americans. For good measure, so do 44 percent of the white and college-educated, who often benefit from low-wage illegal immigrant labor.

The PRII survey will scarcely comfort President Obama, Congress’ Republican leadership, or the multinational corporations who all support America’s current trade policies. Breakdowns were not provided, but 86 percent of Americans hold “corporations moving American jobs overseas…somewhat or very responsible for the present economic troubles facing the U.S.” That’s up from 74 percent in 2012. “China’s unfair trade practices” were cited by 73 percent. Not surprisingly, 72 percent of Americans believe the country is still in a recession, a figure that’s remained pretty steady 2012. Keep in mind that the current recovery began, at least technically, in mid-2009.

Large majorities also believed that “the current economic system is heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy” (79 percent); that lack of equal opportunity in America is a “big problem” (65 percent); and that “hard work is no guarantee of success” (64 percent – including 52 percent of Republicans).

And these majorities extended to numerous economic policies. Just over three-quarters of all Americans favor increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour (including 60 percent of Republicans). Eighty five percent support paid sick leave and 82 percent back paid parental leave. And although no questions were asked about desired regulatory policy changes, 69 percent of respondents blamed “burdensome government regulations” for at least some of the nation’s economic predicament.

Signs of common ground were also evident on domestic social issues that are thought to be highly polarizing. For example, relatively few Democrats (36 percent) or Republicans (43 percent) considered abortion important to them “personally.” And the partisan split on same-sex marriage was smaller, and at lower levels of salience – 28 percent for Democrats and 29 percent for Republicans.

Big divides remained on numerous issues, to be sure – like confidence in the federal government, and a $15 minimum wage (lots of Republicans climb off that boat), and police treatment of minorities. Interestingly, in this vein, minority Americans are significantly more optimistic than whites that “America’s best days are ahead of us.”

But it’s hard to finish this latest American Values Survey feeling deeply pessimistic that the nation can’t overcome its differences and create that better future. In fact, one of my biggest reasons for hopefulness is the following finding: “Nearly two-thirds (66%) of the public agrees that, ‘everyday Americans understand what the government should do better than the so-called ‘experts.’ There is broad agreement across racial, generational, and partisan lines.”

Im-Politic: What Really Makes Us Americans

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American exceptionalism, culture wars, E.D. Hirch, Eri Liu, Im-Politic, multi-culturalism, race relations, The Atlantic, traditionalists, white privilege

Back into the culture wars we go, and when better than the Fourth of July? The occasion: The Atlantic’s publication of an article arguing that the nation needs a new concept of American-ness, and therefore a “new way to be American” culturally that’s “delinked” from “whiteness.”

Before traditionalists go ballistic (and before multi-culturalists go smug), I’d urge everyone to read this (long) piece all the way through. It’s much more compelling in many respects than those opening claims indicate, and it seems as wholly legitimate to contend, as it is necessary to recognize, that at least important aspects of American-ness will change over time. In fact, in a country like the United States, whose fundamental identity has nothing to do with “blood and soil” but rather with ideas and beliefs, nothing could be more American. That’s why I’m especially grateful to author Eric Liu for introducing me to Albert Murray’s view that  “the essence of American life is that it relentlessly generates hybrids. American culture takes segments of DNA—genetic and cultural—from around the planet and re-splices them into something previously unimagined.”

The author also deserves praise for making a strong case that the nation needs “a shared cultural core. A vocabulary. A set of shared referents and symbols,” and that those who pay the highest price for “illiteracy” in this regard are the poor and the powerless. Moreover, he makes a valuable contribution by writing that “It’s not enough for the United States to be a neutral zone where a million little niches of identity might flourish; in order to make our diversity a true asset, Americans need those niches to be able to share a vocabulary. ”

But Liu makes one error that’s important enough to undermine his uber-point that the nation needs a new foundational “story of  ‘us’” reflecting the imminent reality that “’us’ is no longer by default ‘white’.” And ironically, it stems from his own inappropriate blood-and-soil-centric thinking. Because for all the longtime dominance of America’s politics and economy in particular by the descendants of white Europeans, the irreducible core of American-ness has never flowed ultimately from their ethnic or racial background. Instead, it stemmed from the ideas they developed, and from the (truly) revolutionary and successful institutional scaffolding it provided for our – yes, ever evolving – national edifice.

Interestingly, Liu himself unwittingly validates the ideological focus in two ways. First, as he correctly observes, “America is foundationally English in its language, traditions of law, social organization, market mindedness, and frames of intellectual reference.” Note the adjective: not “white” but “English.” That’s because, although there was no shortage of white people in Europe back in the day, the vast majority hadn’t developed or come to accept the “traditions of law, social organization, market mindedness, and frames of intellectual reference” that have flourished so spectacularly in America. It should also go without saying that for roughly a century after the republic’s founding, white Europe ex-England could only hope to live in a place where this framework existed by crossing the Atlantic – and millions did.

Moreover, Liu compounds the error by implicitly equating this English contribution to the African-American contribution to America’s identity — or at least coming awfully close. Of course, the latter has been crucial. But “changed speech and song” have nothing to do with the essentials of the way of life that Americans have been willing to fight and die for. And slavery manifestly did not “change” the nation’s “civic ideals” – certainly not in any proactive sense. Instead, it reminded of how shamefully short of them the nation had fallen – just as continuing racial and similar injustices have reminded how much of the challenge is still unmet.

Second, Liu confirms the primacy of that distinctively English contribution by very astutely citing a major insight of the scholar E.D. Hirsch.  He observed that political and other forms of radicalism in America become more powerful when they draw on and invoke those traditional, truly foundational ideals. But more than simple opportunism clearly has been at work here. Radicals seeking genuinely constructive change, and who knew American history, also have couched their appeals in traditional values because (a) they were rightly confident that these values were broadly supportive of and consistent with their agendas; and (b) the very prevalence of these values is what makes gaining political traction possible for such radicalism to begin with.

So let’s by all means work to update our national portrait and narrative to include all the groups who have contributed major facets. And because this isn’t an exact science, let’s debate prioritizing them robustly but respectfully. But let’s not forget where the civic and economic diamonds at the core came from, and how central they must remain to preserve what’s worthy about the nation’s exceptionalism. And let’s keep in mind that they’ve been preeminent not because they’re “white,” but because they’ve worked.

Im-Politic: Why Dylann Roof Isn’t a Terrorist

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African Americans, Anthea Butler, Charleston shooting, crime, Dylann Roof, Eugene Robinson, Im-Politic, race relations, terrorism

Most debates over political labeling do way more harm than good, tending to result from the usually wrong-headed, guilt-ridden impulses of the political correctness crowd. But the latest controversy, sparked by the horrific Charleston, South Carolina killings, is worth considering – whether confessed shooter Dylan Roof should be considered a terrorist.

Here’s a representative example of the affirmative case, from a Washington Post blog. Given the historical racial atrocities it (rightly) lists, it is genuinely thought-provoking:

“Black churches have long been a target of white supremacists who burned and bombed them in an effort to terrorize the black communities that those churches anchored. One of the most egregious terrorist acts in U.S. history was committed against a black church in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963. Four girls were killed when members of the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, a tragedy that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.”

“But listen to major media outlets and you won’t hear the word ‘terrorism’ used in coverage of Tuesday’s shooting. You won’t hear the white male shooter, identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, described as ‘a possible terrorist.’ And if coverage of recent shootings by white suspects is any indication, he never will be. Instead, the go-to explanation for his actions will be mental illness. He will be humanized and called sick, a victim of mistreatment or inadequate mental health resources.”

The writer, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Anthea Butler, goes on to argue that:

“U.S. media practice a different policy when covering crimes involving African Americans and Muslims. As suspects, they are quickly characterized as terrorists and thugs, motivated by evil intent instead of external injustices. While white suspects are lone wolfs — Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston already emphasized this shooting was an act of just ‘one hateful person‘ — violence by black and Muslim people is systemic, demanding response and action from all who share their race or religion. Even black victims are vilified. Their lives are combed for any infraction or hint of justification for the murders or attacks that befall them: Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie. Michael Brown stole cigars. Eric Garner sold loosie cigarettes. When a black teenager who committed no crime was tackled and held down by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Tex., Fox News host Megyn Kelly described her as ‘No saint either.’”

As is often the case with the intrinsically emotional issue of race, Butler clearly goes too far in exculpating major crimes by African Americans and, it seems, violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists. (In contrast to her view that America suffers big problems with policing in low-income inner city neighborhoods, and that some public figures are too quick to invoke harmful and intellectually lazy stereotypes.)

But Butler is on stronger grounds, in my opinion, in dealing with Dylann Roof-like murderers and how they’re routinely described. If terrorism is indeed violence against innocent civilians aimed at furthering political or social or economic or cultural agendas and beliefs (which seems right to me), then racists like Roof arguably qualify. Nor should it matter whether they act alone or in groups.

I do, however, believe that Butler and those who agree with her re terrorism are missing a crucial ingredient in the equation: historical context. As I see it, the racist violence that raged on a large scale between the end of the Civil War through the mid-1960s absolutely should be seen as terrorism. The aim was nothing less than deterring blacks from exercising their existing rights and seeking more, scaring whites and others who supported them, and rallying like-minded bigots. Moreover, although the violence was backed by many fewer whites in the south (and other parts of the country), the segregationist program was entirely mainstream politics in the region for decades .

Can anyone honestly say that anything like these conditions holds today? Obviously too much racism remains in American life, and violence-prone Dylann Roof types can surely be found in most, if not all of the 50 states. Many of these, moreover, have formed organizations, so they can’t accurately all be dismissed as lone wolves.

Yet they enjoy the support of exactly no elected politicians, and their influence over the body politic as a whole is practically non-existent. Indeed, despite (far too much) lingering prejudice, and heated debate over racially charged issues like affirmative action and voter registration, endorsing explicit discrimination by public or private institutions has thankfully become nothing less than taboo in America.

In fact, another piece in the Washington Post, from black commentator Eugene Robinson, made the point eloquently. Just before (rightly) lamenting the endurance of racism, however, diminished, he noted that Charleston, “a multiracial, multicultural city is united in grief.” The same can be said for the country as a whole. This is a subtle but powerful reminder that terrorists need to have a critical mass of followers and sympathizers – and that America’s Dylann Roofs fall pathetically short of the mark. That’s also why his countrymen have been so quick to brand him as – almost unimaginably – sick. 

Im-Politic: Race-Mongering Enters the Trade Debate

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African Americans, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Congressional Black Caucus, conservatives, Democrats, Employment, fast track, Gregory Meeks, Im-Politic, Labor Department, liberals, manufacturing jobs, Obama, politics, race relations, racism, Republicans, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, urban poverty

It seems that New York City Democratic House Member Greg Meeks doesn’t think relations between blacks and whites in America lately have been strained enough by the series of dubious police shootings and the reactions they’ve ignited over the last year. And that there’s not enough bad blood in American politics overall lately. And that the heated debate in Congress and the nation over trade policy hasn’t been muddied with enough phony arguments. So he decided to inject a little race-mongering into the policy fight over President Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement and a bill to grant the president fast track trade negotiating authority.

Meeks didn’t exactly come out and say that right-of-center opponents of the president’s trade agenda are racist. But his claims, made to members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and then to reporters, fail to qualify only if cynical Clintonian parsing is now the norm in American politics. According to Meeks, as reported by Politico, “[Mr. Obama] has endured things that no other president has,” and that “in his own discussions with colleagues he’s linked opposition to the president’s trade agenda to the hounding of Obama for his birth certificate and never-quite-ending questions about his religion. ‘Some folks don’t want to give him a vote because they don’t want to give him the authority every other president has had.’”

The New York Democrat therefore was too smart to smear anti-TPP and fast track Democrats and other liberals generally with the racism charge. After all, even most of the non-blacks among them have consistently supported the president’s other programs. But what about backing for the president’s trade agenda by Republicans and conservatives that neither Mr. Obama nor African-Americans (rightly or wrongly) have ever viewed as allies? And what of those on the Right who have essentially nudged and winked as more their radical fellows have cast the aspersions on the president’s background Meeks specifies? How does the Congressman’s racial paradigm explain their often pro-fast track and TPP positions?

Even worse, when it comes to substance, Meeks is ignoring (or doesn’t know about) the powerful evidence that the kinds of trade deals he’s long supported have devastated blacks’ economic prospects. How? By destroying jobs they’ve held in the relatively high-paying manufacturing sector. Not coincidentally, that’s the sector that has long dominated American trade flows. According to an analysis of government data by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 1979, African-Americans made up 23.9 percent of the nation’s manufacturing workers, who numbered about 19.4 million. That comes out to more than 4.6 million jobs that paid what are now called family wages.

As of 2013 – the Labor Department’s last comprehensive look at the situation – blacks comprised 8.8 percent of the nation’s 10.3 million manufacturing jobs. That’s only a little over 906,000 manufacturing positions. The employment massacre revealed here updates findings from eminent scholars such as Harvard’s William Julius Wilson that the disappearance of good jobs in African-American communities since the 1970s explains much of the poverty and related social problems they’ve suffered.

Not that there hasn’t been a silver-lining, though, to Meeks’ race-baiting. In using such mud-slinging to rally support for fast track and the TPP, he’s implicitly confessing to his CBC colleagues that they shouldn’t pay much attention to the economic case made for Mr. Obama’s trade agenda. In the process, of course, he’s telling the rest of us that we shouldn’t, either.

Im-Politic: When Polls are Poles Apart

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2016 elections, big government, Gallup, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Iraq, ISIS, national security, polls, public opinion, race relations, Republicans, terrorism

With the 2016 presidential election (too) rapidly approaching, opinion polls will be attracting even more attention than usual over the next year and a half. Yet if two recent Gallup surveys are any indication, many are likely to confuse more politicians and voters than they inform.

On the one hand, yesterday Gallup published the results of its latest annual sounding on “Americans’ level of concern about national problems.” The main findings, according to Gallup: The nation’s worries about terrorism and race relations are up sharply over early 2014 levels. Fifty-one percent of Americans said they “worried a great deal” about the possibility of a terror attack – compared with 39 percent in 2014. Twenty-eight percent gave a similar response about race relations, versus only 17 percent last year. And comparable concern about illegal immigration increased from 33 percent to 39 percent. You can see how a wide range of other issues polled at this link.

Given the rise of ISIS, police shootings of unarmed young black men in places like Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, and the uproar over Central American minors flooding the U.S. southern border, the above results are perfectly understandable.

On the other hand, they seem to contrast strikingly with the findings of a Gallup survey from the week before focusing on the “most important problem” Americans believe face the nation. Only six percent so identified “the situation in Iraq/ISIS;” only six percent tabbed “terrorism;” and “foreign policy” and “national security” garnered only four percent each.

Was there a closer correlation between the two polls on race relations and immigration? Absolutely not. Race also ranked as the leading national problem for only four percent of respondents, while “immigration/illegal aliens” was cited by only seven percent. You can see the full results at this link.

When I read the top problems results, I immediately thought that they spelled especially bad news for Republicans, many of whom hope and expect foreign policy issues to play a much bigger role in Election 2016 than they usually do in American politics. Nor did emphasizing immigration and border security issues seem especially promising based on these results. At the same time, public opinion seemed to break pretty strongly for Republicans on one important front – “Dissatisfaction with government” was the leading vote-getter in this poll, with 18 percent calling it the country’s number one problem.

But the “levels of concern” results just one week later sent almost exactly the opposite message for the two major parties.

Of course, office-seekers at all levels of government will be commissioning their own polls and reading countless others as they plot their strategies. And continually changing events could well affect the public’s stated priorities. But for the sake of at least minimally coherent campaigns and debates, I hope their collective message is a lot clearer than that sent by these two Gallup polls.