12305: Cultural Wealth Gap Increasing.

From The New York Times…

Minorities Fall Further Behind Whites in Wealth During Economic Recovery

By Tanzina Vega

The wealth gap between minorities and whites has continued to increase in the midst of the economic recovery, according to a report by the Pew Research Center that was released Friday.

According to the report, which analyzed data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of white households in 2013 was $141,900, about 13 times that of black households at $11,000.

In 2007, when the recession began in the United States, the median net worth of white households was $192,500, or 10 times that of black households at $19,200.

For Hispanics the numbers are similar, albeit slightly higher, than those for blacks. In 2007, the median net worth of a Hispanic household was $23,600, and in 2013 it was $13,700.

“The gaps are big, and they are also persistent,” said Rakesh Kochhar, the associate director for research at Pew’s Hispanic Trends Project and one of the report’s authors. In the last 30 years, net worth for white American households has hovered around $100,000, or six to eight times as high as net worth for blacks, Mr. Kochhar said.

The survey has been conducted every three years since 1983, with the largest wealth gap between blacks and whites recorded in 1989. That year, the median net worth of white households was 17 times as large as that of black households and 14 times that of Hispanic households.

Wealth is defined as the value of an accumulated sum of assets that could include income, financial products like stocks and bonds, retirement accounts or real estate subtracted from the debt that is owed against those assets. It is built up over time and tends to increase with age, Mr. Kochhar said. This in part explains the widening racial gap, because blacks tend to earn less than whites and have less assets than whites do to pass on to future generations.

According to the Federal Reserve data, the median income of minority households fell 9 percent from 2010 to 2013, compared with 1 percent for whites. Homeownership, also a factor in the creation of wealth, fell 6.5 percent for minority households from 2010 to 2013, compared with 2 percent for whites.

A “legacy of discrimination,” including lower levels of education and depressed property values in certain minority communities, has played a role in the widening wealth gap, Mr. Kochhar said.

A slight increase in net worth of Hispanics over blacks can partly be explained by geography, he said. Hispanics are more concentrated in states with higher home values like California, New York and Florida; blacks may own homes in Southern states with lower home values.

While all American households have lower assets, the decrease has been more significant among minority households, the report said.

The Hispanic population is also likelier to be younger and likelier to be immigrants, who often take 20 to 30 years to settle into a new country before beginning to accumulate wealth, Mr. Kochhar said.

11939: Blacks Responsible For Own State.

From Vox…

63% of Americans believe ‘blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition’

By Max Fisher

The Pew Research Center’s massive new report on American political and social beliefs reveals some fascinating nuances in American public opinion, which they’ve divided into seven ideological groups. But one surprising area where views seem to converge is on the question of African-American advancement.

A wide majority of Americans say that, if black people are struggling to advance in society, then it is primarily their fault and not because of discrimination. That’s the majority view for some types of liberals but is far, far more common among conservatives. Over 80 percent of conservatives say they agree that “Blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition,” while just some seven percent say that “Racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.”

That’s based on Pew pollsters asking Americans which of those two statements they agree with more. Nationally, 63 percent say “blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition” versus 27 percent who say “racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” That’s more than two-to-one.

Here, [below], is how the poll breaks down along American political ideologies, which Pew has broken down into seven different groups:

You can see that only one of those seven ideological groups sees racial discrimination as the primary driver of widespread disadvantage for black Americans. That group, which Pew has named “solid liberals,” are a small minority. They make up 15 percent of the general public and 17 percent of voters; Pew defines them as “generally affluent and highly educated...Most say they always vote Democratic and are unflagging supporters of Barack Obama.”

The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his recent cover story “The Case for Reparations,” wrote about the popular American fiction that the age of widespread discrimination against black people is over in American, as are its effects. Because, even though it is widely perceived as fact by American conservatives and even liberals, it is a fiction.

In fact, not only does discrimination continue today, but the consequences of two centuries of slavery and one century of explicit white supremacy still directly impact and hold back black families. Here is Coates writing about how this persists just within the narrow but important question of neighborhoods:

The lives of black Americans are better than they were half a century ago. The humiliation of Whites Only signs are gone. Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows-and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970. Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.

This is not surprising. Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes-a medical emergency, divorce, job loss-the fall is precipitous.

And just as black families of all incomes remain handicapped by a lack of wealth, so too do they remain handicapped by their restricted choice of neighborhood. Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”

The American belief that discrimination and its effects ended with the dismantling of Jim Crow are an important part of this story, and a real component of why this discrimination is allowed to persist. But the widespread insistence on this point — with more than 60 percent of Americans and 80 percent of conservatives saying that black families have primarily themselves to blame for unequal advancement — makes the politics of addressing the issue all the more difficult.

11380: Equality In Black & White.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Have we achieved racial equality? Whites say yes, blacks say no

Studies show vast racial gap in how Americans gauge unfair treatment of blacks on the job, by police, in school and in other everyday situations.

By Emily Alpert

Half a century after Martin Luther King Jr. declared his famous dream, white Americans think his vision is much closer to reality than blacks do, a new survey from the Pew Research Center shows.

The findings underscore an enduring chasm between how white and black Americans perceive racism and its continued effects, as glaring gaps persist between whites and blacks in wealth, education and imprisonment.

Black Americans were nearly twice as likely as white ones — 79% versus 44% — to say that the U.S. had a long way to go before reaching racial equality, Pew found in a survey released Thursday. Nearly half of whites said the country had made a lot of progress toward that dream, while less than a third of blacks agreed.

And as blacks lament ongoing mistreatment, whites were much less likely to believe that blacks continue to be treated unfairly in courtrooms, classrooms or other common situations.

Whites may believe racism is gone because “the hideous things that have happened in our history” — such as lynchings or cross burnings — “have tended to disappear,” said Jerome Rabow, professor emeritus of sociology at UCLA. But “when blacks talk about how they’re doing, it’s more about their daily lives.”

Whites often miss those everyday frustrations, such as frequently being pulled over by police, Rabow said. Seventy percent of blacks surveyed said that in their community, police treated blacks less fairly than whites. Only 37% of whites agreed.

More than half of blacks surveyed said blacks were treated unfairly at work, compared to only 16% of whites who thought so. Hispanics fell somewhere in between whites and blacks on those and similar questions.

Other studies also show vast differences in how blacks and whites gauge racism: Earlier this summer, 74% of whites told Gallup that blacks in their community had an equal shot at jobs, while only 40% of blacks agreed. Whites also held much sunnier views about blacks’ chances at housing and a good education.

In the new millennium, “whites became more convinced that racism wasn’t a problem,” University of Chicago political science professor Michael Dawson said. “And blacks became more convinced that racial problems are not being solved.”

National polls recently revealed whites and blacks starkly split over whether the George Zimmerman case was tied to race. And last year, Loyola Marymount University researchers found that whites in Los Angeles were more upbeat than blacks about how Angelenos of different races were getting along.

Whites may see blacks alongside them at a Lakers game, but “you’re not around when the African American person goes to get a job and is offered thousands of dollars less,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Community Coalition in South Los Angeles.

Some scholars argue whites have grown increasingly blind to the disadvantages faced by blacks. One year after President Barack Obama was elected to his first term, a Harvard University study found 61% of whites said blacks had achieved racial equality, compared to 43% of whites who answered another survey nine years earlier.

More than half of whites thought blacks, on average, were doing as well or better than whites financially, Pew found in the new poll. Yet two years ago, the median white household had an income of $67,175, compared to $39,670 for black households. Wealth in white households, or assets minus liabilities, dwarfed that of black ones even more — $91,405 versus $6,446.

High school completion rates have drawn closer between black and white Americans, but blacks are still less likely than whites to have college degrees. And as of three years ago, black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated, a gap that has widened since 1960.

Many experts argue that “structural racism” — advantages and disadvantages that perpetuate themselves even without people choosing to discriminate — plays a big part in continued inequality. For instance, even if companies don’t try to avoid hiring blacks, blacks may be less likely to get the best jobs because many get filled through word-of-mouth. That gives an edge to those who live and socialize with people already working lucrative jobs, who remain disproportionately white.

But whites have pulled away from such ideas: Over recent decades, fewer agreed on national surveys that slavery and discrimination had created conditions that made it hard for blacks to advance, University of Illinois at Chicago sociology professor Maria Krysan found. Instead, more chalk up inequalities to differences in culture, blaming those who aren’t succeeding, she said.

Pew found young whites were more likely than older ones to say blacks were treated unfairly. Yet in another study, based on the national Monitoring the Future survey, Emory University sociologist Tyrone Forman found young whites were increasingly likely to say they were indifferent to racial matters. Between 1976 and 2011, the percentage of young whites who said they never worried about race relations nearly tripled.

The problem is that “a lot of these biases have gone underground but have not disappeared,” Forman said. “And that’s what is powerful and dangerous about racial apathy. We are all still looking for the smoking gun,” such as Paula Deen using racial slurs — instead of more subtle discrimination, he said.

Whites have steered away from plainly bigoted ideas, such as whites being more intelligent than blacks, on national surveys over time. Pew found blacks and whites largely agree that they get along well. However, newer “implicit” tests show Americans tend to have more trouble matching positive words to black faces, suggesting that unspoken bias persists.

11276: Polling The Painfully Obvious.

Pew Research Center and USA TODAY polls showed a sharp racial divide on opinions regarding the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman trial verdict. Did someone really see the need to conduct a survey? Hell, Tanner Colby could have predicted the results—as well as the responses from thought(less) leaders Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent.

11229: New Jailhouse On Sesame Street.

The New York Daily News reported Sesame Street introduced a new Muppet—Alex—whose father is in jail. Look for a possible bonding friendship between Alex and Elmo.

‘Sesame Street’ introduces first-ever muppet with a parent in prison

The long-running children’s show is introducing the storyline in an online kit being made available to prisons and advocacy groups. The Sesame Workshop hasn’t shied away from other thorny topics.

By Erik Ortiz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“Sesame Street” is teaching kids about bedtime, bath time and jail time.

The popular children’s television series hasn’t shied away from tough topics in the past, and has introduced a new muppet named Alex as a way to talk about the stigma of having a parent in jail.

“I just miss him so much,” the fuzzy blue-haired muppet says of his locked-up dad, adding, “Sometimes I just feel like I want to pound on a pillow and scream as loud as I can.”

The sensitive subject is being featured in an online teaching kit called, “Little Children, Big Challenges.”

The clips featuring Alex aren’t actually being aired on television, and he isn’t being introduced as a regular character on the show.

Still, “Sesame Street” execs say his story can be a useful tool for kids, specifically those ages 3 to 8. The show has broached other tricky lessons relating to divorce, hunger and military deployment.

“Coming from a muppet, it’s almost another child telling their story to the children,” Jeanette Betancourt, vice president of outreach and educational practices at the Sesame Workshop, told the “Today” show.

The videos show Alex telling his friends that his dad won’t be able to help him build a toy car. When they ask him why his father is not around, he says he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Later, his friends ask him what’s wrong.

“My dad’s in jail,” he says haltingly, adding, “I don’t like to talk about it. Most people don’t understand.”

A human friend says that her father was once incarcerated, which happens when “someone breaks the law — a grown-up rule — and then they have to go to jail or prison.”

A Pew Charitable Trusts report found that 1 in every 28 children has a parent behind bars.

In New York state, an estimated 105,000 kids have an incarcerated parent, although that’s a low-ball figure, said Tanya Krupat, program director of the Osborne Association’s New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents.

Krupat said the group is excited about the “Sesame Street” kit, which is in the process of being shipped to prisons in 10 states, including New York.

“We’re grateful to them for taking this on,” Krupat told the Daily News.

While she thinks America may not be ready for a character such as Alex to be a regular on a kids’ show, she hopes the attention brought by “Sesame Street” will spotlight the issue of over-incarceration.

“The goal of these materials is not to normalize parental incarceration because there’s nothing normal about it,” Krupat said. “It’s great to focus on those children immediately impacted … but I want to see these materials affect policy.”

10998: Social Media By Ethnicity & Race.

From Advertising Age…

Pew Study: Blacks Over-Index On Twitter; Whites On Pinterest

26% of Black Internet Users Surveyed Use Twitter, Compared to 14% of White Users

By Cotton Delo

Consumers have an ever-expanding set of choices for social-networking, and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are finding a niche among different demographic subsets, according to new research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The study, an expansion of a similar study on Twitter in 2010, queried 1,802 people on their cell phones and land lines over the course of a month late last year.

Here are seven takeaways.

Black users over-index on Twitter.
 Twenty-six percent of black internet users surveyed said they used Twitter, compared to 14% of white users and 19% of Hispanics. (In 2010, Pew reported that 13% of black internet users, 5% of white users and 18% of Hispanics were using on Twitter.)

Blacks and Latinos also over-index on Instagram.
 Twenty-three and 18% of black and Latino internet users respectively use Instagram, compared to 11% of whites.

Pinterest is the whitest social platform.
 Eighteen percent of white internet users are on Pinterest, compared to 8% of blacks and 10% of Hispanics.

Twitter is most popular among urban-dwellers.
 Twenty percent of people living in urban areas use Twitter, compared to 14% in the suburbs and 12% in rural areas.

Pinterest is more popular among better-off people.
 Twenty-three percent of people with household income between $50,000 and $74,999 use Pinterest, as well as 18% of people who make more than that. Just 10% of people who make under $30,000 use it.

Instagram has become much more popular than Tumblr.
 Tumblr has been around since 2007, but just 6% of people surveyed use it. Thirteen percent use Instagram.

Facebook is used by everyone everywhere—even senior citizens.
 Thirty-five percent of people 65 and older use Facebook.

10871: Black Voters Showing Up.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Black voter turnout may have surpassed whites for the first time

By David Lauter

Despite often-voiced concerns about the effect of voter identification laws, black voter turnout remained high in 2012 and, for the first time, may have topped the rate for whites, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Four years ago, the rate of black voter turnout almost equaled that of whites, continuing a trend of a steady increase in black turnout rates that began in 1996. This year, with white turnout appearing to have dropped, black turnout seems very likely to have exceeded the white level, although definitive figures won’t be available until the Census Bureau reports in a few months.

A higher turnout rate among blacks than whites would mark an historic milestone given America’s long history of disenfranchising blacks. Blacks were effectively barred from polls in many states until after passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965.


In the run-up to this year’s presidential election, a number of states with Republican-majority legislatures passed laws limiting voting hours, curtailing voter registration efforts or requiring voters to show identification. Many black leaders said those laws would disproportionately hurt elderly, poor and minority voters and accused Republicans of running a campaign of “voter suppression.”


Republicans said the measures were needed to combat voter fraud. In a few states, Republican legislative leaders explicitly said they hoped the measures would hurt Democratic candidates or reduce the “urban” vote.

Courts blocked some of those laws, and in the end they may have backfired as black organizations used “voter suppression” as a rallying cry. The perception that “people don’t want you to vote” motivated many blacks, particularly young people, to turn out, said Chanelle Hardy, executive director of the National Urban League. “It was huge,” she said during a recent panel discussion.

Overall, about 60% of the Americans eligible to register actually voted in 2012, according to data compiled by Michael McDonald of George Mason University. That would be about three points below the 2008 turnout, with much of the decline coming among white voters. The precise final number won’t be known until New York state completes its vote count, which has been slowed by the after-effects of Hurricane Sandy.

The number of voters from minority groups rose in November’s election, a key factor in President Obama’s reelection. But those numbers went up for disparate reasons. Among Latinos and Asians, population growth has steadily driven up the number of voters. Turnout rates also have gone up, but remain significantly lower than those of the population as a whole. The nation’s black population, by contrast, has remained steady, but the number of black voters has continued to go up because of higher turnout rates. Blacks make up about 12% of the U.S. population but were 13% of the voter turnout, according to exit polling. Whites made up about 71% of the voter-eligible population and 72% of the turnout, the exit poll indicated.

The large black turnout was critical to Obama’s victory in several swing states, according to a recent analysis by Ruy Texeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. Their analysis pointed to Ohio, in particular, as a state in which an increase in the black share of the vote proved decisive.

10227: Asian Americans Rising.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Fueled by immigration, Asians are fastest-growing U.S. group

Surpassing the influx of Latinos, Asian Americans lead the general public in education and income, according to the Pew Research Center.

By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times

Asian Americans are now the nation’s fastest-growing racial group, overtaking Latinos in recent years as the largest stream of new immigrants arriving annually in the United States.

In an economy that increasingly depends on highly skilled workers, Asian Americans are also the country’s best educated and highest-income racial or ethnic group, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

In fact, U.S. Asians, who trace their roots to dozens of countries in the Far East, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, are arguably the most highly educated immigrant group in U.S. history, the study shows. And although there are significant differences among them by country of origin, on the whole they have found remarkable success in their new land.

“These aren’t the poor, tired, huddled masses that Emma Lazarus described in that inscription on the Statue of Liberty,” said Paul Taylor, the research center’s executive vice president.

In fact, the Asian newcomers’ achievements are likely to change the way many Americans think about immigrants, typically as strivers who work hard in the hope that their children and grandchildren will have easier lives and find greater success in this country, Taylor said.

For U.S. Asians, especially those who arrived in recent years, the first generation itself is doing well, outpacing Americans as a whole when it comes to education, household income and family wealth, according to the report released Tuesday.

Asian Americans also tend to be more satisfied than most Americans with their own lives, the survey found, and they hold more traditional views than the general public on the value of marriage, parenthood and hard work.

As a whole, Asian Americans are more likely than the general public to prefer a big government that provides more services. They also lean Democratic and a majority approves of President Obama’s job performance.

Although the first large wave of Asian immigrants came to the U.S. in the early 19th century, the population grew slowly for more than a century, held down by severe restrictions and official prohibitions, some explicitly racist. Most Asian Americans now living in the U.S. arrived after 1965 legislation that allowed immigration from a wider range of countries.

Asian Americans now make up nearly 6%, or 18.2 million, of the U.S. population, the latest figures from theU.S. Census Bureaushow. Nearly three-quarters were born abroad, and about 8 million came to this country in the last 30 years.

Geographically, nearly half of all U.S. Asians live in the Western states. California, the traditional gateway for Asian immigrants, has by far the largest number, almost 6 million. Of the major Asian subgroups, in fact, only those from India are relatively evenly distributed throughout the country, with the largest share, 31%, living in the Northeast.

Asian immigration has grown rapidly in recent years, with nearly 3 million arriving since 2000. At the same time, Latino immigration, especially from Mexico, has slowed sharply, mainly because of the weakened U.S. economy and tougher border enforcement.

As a result, the number of newly arrived Asian immigrants has outpaced Latinos each year since 2009, according to Pew’s analysis of census data. In 2010, for instance, 36% of new U.S. immigrants were Asian, compared with 31% who were Latino.

The most recent immigrants have arrived even as the economy has boomed in many Asian countries and the standard of living has risen. Taylor said the reason many Asians move to the U.S. include shifts in U.S. immigration policies, changes in their home countries and U.S. labor needs for science, engineering and math graduates.

The Pew study combines recent census and economic data with an extensive, nationally representative survey of 3,500 Asian Americans. The interviews, conducted from January to March, were done in English and seven Asian languages.

Chinese Americans are the largest Asian immigrant group, with more than 4 million who identified as Chinese, followed by Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.

U.S. Asians as a whole are more satisfied than most Americans with their lives overall (82% compared to 75%), with their personal finances (51% compared to 35%) and with the general direction of the country (43% compared to 21%).

More than half of adult Asian Americans say that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life; 34% of all American adults agree. Asian Americans are more likely than American adults in general to be married (59% compared to 51%) and their newborns are less likely than U.S. infants as a whole to have an unmarried mother (16% compared to 41%).

Experts praised the study, saying that it was likely to change views of U.S. Asians for scholars and the public alike.

“This really opens up a conversation and sheds light on a community that is extremely heterogenous and very complex,” said Tritia Toyota, a former Los Angeles television reporter who is now an adjunct professor of anthropology and Asian studies at UCLA.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, an associate professor of political science at UC Riverside, also noted that in terms of their education, recent Asian immigrants are an elite group. More than two-thirds of recent adult immigrants are either college students or college graduates, the study showed. So, he said, experts should be careful when comparing their characteristics with other Americans.

“This is a select group even in their own countries,” he said.

10192: The New Digital Divide…?

From USA TODAY…

Minority digital use needs new direction

By Yolanda Young

For too many years, blacks have spent more time watching television than any other group. So, I guess it was just a matter of time before blacks took a similar ignominious role in the new digital age.

While blacks (54%) and Hispanics (51%) have less access to the Internet than all Americans (66%) from computers at home, these two groups use their mobile phones more than whites to access the Internet, visit social media sites, and send e-mails and text messages, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. And the concern is that these devices are being used more for entertainment than for educational purposes.

The issue has led the Federal Communications Commission to consider a $200 million proposal that would send trainers to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of public schools and libraries to teach constructive uses of computers for parents, students and job seekers. This fall Connect2Compete, a non-profit supported by groups such as Microsoft and Goodwill, is also getting into the act by working with the Boys and Girls Club and 4-H and other organizations to teach word processing, keyboard functionality and online job searching.

Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, has studied the negative impact of television and other digital devices on students. In an essay, he said his research found that “black and Hispanic students reported less leisure reading at home compared with whites, watched television more … and (perhaps as a consequence) were more prone to become sleepy at school.”

Ferguson has been calling for integrating the type of training proposed by the FCC into our national education strategy, which should be aimed not only at minorities but at the poor as well. The FCC notes that only 40% of households with less than $20,000 in annual income have access to the Internet at home. A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that students whose parents never attended college spent 90 minutes more per day exposed to media than children with educated parents. Vicky Rideout, the study’s author, calls this “the time-wasting gap.”

Parents, churches, businesses and neighborhood organizations should work together to teach young people how to use technology not just for entertainment but also for education.

Yolanda Young is based in Washington, D.C., and is the founder of www.onbeingablacklawyer.com.

9797: Interracial Marriage Milestone.

From USA TODAY…

U.S. rate of interracial marriage hits record high

By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

Interracial marriage in the USA reached an all-time high in 2010: 8.4% of all marriages, compared with 3.2% in 1980, finds a Pew Research Center study, released today, that analyzes unions between spouses of different races or ethnic groups.

Among marriages in 2010, 15% of couples married outside their race or ethnicity.

“Interracial marriage has gone from taboo to a rarity, and with each passing year, it’s less of a rarity,” says Pew’s Paul Taylor. Pew reviewed Census data from more than 850,000 people in the American Community Survey between 2008 and 2010.

In addition, Pew surveyed 2,003 adults in September and found more tolerance: 43% agree that “more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society.” Another 44% say it made no difference; 11% say it’s been a change for the worse.

But questions about race make people cautious, says sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University. “People don’t want to reveal negative attitudes that might reflect badly on them, and they tend to tell interviewers what they want to hear,” says Lichter, whose data analysis last year found similar trends in interracial marriage.

Pew found that minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who say they’re “liberal” and those who live in the Northeast and the West are more likely to view intermarriage positively.

Other regional differences were clear in the 2008-2010 data Pew analyzed: 35% of all newlyweds who married outside their race live in the West. In Hawaii, 42% of newlyweds fell into that category; other states with 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi.

Pew also found that among those who married in 2008-2010, 42% had been married before (one partner or both). And some patterns vary by gender among blacks and Asians but not among whites and Hispanics. Among blacks, 24% of newlywed men married outside their race, compared with 9% of women. Among Asians, the opposite is true: 36% of women married outside their race, compared with 17% of men.

8482: Conflict Of Disinterest.

Confusion reigns with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new Pew Research Center poll reported about half of all Americans are clueless about the events happening in Egypt. Sarah Palin definitely falls into the group, as her Egyptian knowledge is based on viewing Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy series.

• Mickey D’s worldwide sales were up 3.5 percent in January. The fast feeder also hopes to spike February global sales by introducing the McMummy sandwich to salute the happenings in Egypt.

• Groupon continues to take heat for its asinine Super Bowl spot, with the company CEO defending the work by declaring, “We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes—even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?” Um, a culturally clueless company partnering with a White advertising agency known for offending the masses.

8463: Border Babies.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Few illegal immigrants cross border to give birth

The vast majority of illegal immigrants who had children in the United States in 2010 had entered the country several years earlier, according to a new report.

The Pew Hispanic Center study found that 350,000 babies were born in the U.S. between March 2009 and March 2010 to at least one illegal immigrant parent. Of those parents, 91 percent arrived before 2008.

“It’s real concrete data that I think destroys this notion that immigrant women are crossing the border illegally [to have] babies,” said Angela Kelley of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.

Republican lawmakers in Congress and in more than a dozen states are trying to alter the interpretation of the 14th Amendment so that the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. are no longer granted citizenship.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe has claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are crossing U.S. borders to give birth and exploit their child” to obtain citizenship.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, said that even if the number of people crossing over to immediately have a child is small, it’s still a problem.

“It isn’t a big enough deal that we should fix it?” he said. “It’s wrong to reward people for bad behavior.”

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, which supports a process for some illegal immigrants to become citizens, said a baby born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents must wait until he or she is 21 to sponsor their parents for citizenship.

Illinois has an estimated illegal immigrant population of about 525,000, according to the study.

8008: Playing The Percentages.

Surveying the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A Gallup survey shows depression is up 25 percent in the Gulf region since the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP should now stand for BiPolar.

• A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows most Americans are pretty ignorant about their own religions. However, nearly everyone agrees BP is going straight to hell.

• The Government Accountability Office released a report indicating that women have still made little progress in attaining management positions in the workplace. Imagine the reports that would be generated if there were a Madison Avenue Accountability Office.

7836: Blacks Invisible In Mainstream Media…?

Excerpted from The Hinterland Gazette…

The fallout from the firing of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod and the one-year anniversary of the controversial arrest of African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. have put race back in the news of late. These high-profile stories raise a larger question: to what degree does the press cover news about the state of black America generally?

In the last year, African Americans as a group generated relatively little attention in the mainstream press—and what coverage there was focused more on specific events instead of on broader issues about race, according to a Pew Research Center study that investigated media coverage of African Americans during the first year of the Obama presidency.

The report examined more than 67,000 mainstream news stories from February 2009 through February 2010 and found that just 643 of those stories (1.9% of the newshole studied) related in a significant way to African Americans in the U.S. While relatively small, this was more coverage than was given to Hispanics (1.3%) and Asian Americans (.2%) in the same time frame.

The biggest story involving African Americans in the time period under study was the Gates incident. That story accounted for nearly four times more African American coverage than did either of the two biggest national “issue” stories—the economy and health care.

The nation’s first black president was the second-biggest story in the coverage explicitly related to African Americans in the last year. In all, nearly 18% of coverage of African Americans came through attention to the Obama Administration.

Among the key findings: Nearly a third of the coverage of Africans Americans was related in some way to President Obama. Obama made himself a central player in the Gates incident when, at a presidential press conference, he described the arrest as “stupid.” Soon thereafter the president hosted a “beer summit” at the White House with his friend Gates and the arresting officer in an effort to smooth things over.

Coverage of Obama’s involvement in the Gates controversy combined with coverage of the Obama Administration more generally accounted for almost 30% of all African American coverage during the year studied. About 9% the coverage of the Obama presidency had a substantial racial element to it.

Most of that coverage, too, was tied to specific incidents rather than broader issues, in particular Rep. Joe Wilson shouting “You Lie!” during a Presidential speech and Senator Harry Reid’s apology for comments he made about Obama’s skin color. In order to be coded as having a racial angle, at least 25% of the content of a story must deal with the topic of race or with a specific racial group. Black newsmakers drove the coverage of African Americans.

The press coverage that did emerge in the time frame studied tended to be a reaction to events involving black newsmakers rather than to issues relating to African Americans more generally. The arrest of Gates, the Obama presidency, the death of Michael Jackson and the attempted Northwest Airlines terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab accounted for nearly half (46%) of all coverage that had a substantial mention of African Americans during this time period.

Cable, talk shows mentioned African Americans most. The media sectors studied differed in the degree to which they focused on African Americans in their coverage over the course of the year and in the angles they pursued. Cable TV and talk radio came in at the top, with 2.5% and 2.4%, respectively, of time studied on their programs containing significant mention of African Americans. The bulk of this time was spent assessing political implications of actions by or to black figures. African American press focused more on issues than incidents.

A separate analysis of three African American newspapers reveals a very different approach to the coverage of the Gates incident. While the mainstream media largely assessed political implications for President Obama, the commentary in the black press considered the arrest itself and the broader question of race relations in the U.S.

These are some of the findings of a study that examined coverage of African Americans in the press from February 16, 2009, through February 15, 2010, in different mainstream media outlets including newspapers, cable and network television, radio and news websites.

The study also included a separate analysis of how the Gates controversy was treated in the three highest circulation African American newspapers in the country—The New York Amsterdam News, The Afro-American and the Philadelphia Tribune. This study was designed and produced by jointly by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and its Social and Demographic Trends Project. The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan and nonpolitical fact tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.

6382: Firsts And Lasts.

Signing out in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• President Barack Obama signed his first bill, approving equal pay legislation. Obama declared the act would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.” Um, wait until he hears about the Bendick and Egan Economic Consultants, Inc. report on Madison Avenue.

• Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was officially ousted from office after a 59-0 vote by the state Senate. No word if Blagojevich will demand a recount.

• A new Pew study revealed about half of all Americans wish they lived somewhere else. And about all Illinois residents wish Rod Blagojevich lived somewhere else.

• Michael Jackson is being sued by director John Landis, who claims Jacko owes him royalties for various projects related to the “Thriller” video Landis directed. It’s a wonder Landis can even still recognize the King of Pop, as Thriller was shot about a dozen plastic surgeries ago.

• Ford Motor Company reported 4Q losses at $5.9 billion, but insist they still don’t need bailout money. Maybe they can float some cash to Jacko.

• Kodak reported 4Q losses at $137 million, prompting plans to cut 4,500 jobs. Talk about a Kodak Moment.

Essay 4755

From Adweek.com, Mark Dolliver’s take on the recent Pew Research Center study…

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The Intra-Racial Divide

By Mark Dolliver

If you think a hip-hop soundtrack will help a brand ingratiate itself with black consumers, guess again. A Pew Research Center poll found 61 percent of black adults saying they think hip-hop exerts a bad influence on society; 71 percent said the same about rap. Asked to assess some prominent blacks, just 17 percent deemed 50 Cent a good influence on the black community. (By comparison, Oprah Winfrey was rated a good influence by 87 percent.)

The split on hip-hop reflects a deeper divide. [According to the study,] black adults see a widening divide in the values of middle-class and poor blacks. Just 23 percent agreed that “middle-class and poor blacks share ‘a lot’ of values in common.” Forty-two percent said they share “some values in common,” while 22 percent said they share “only a little” and 9 percent said they share “almost no values in common.”

Strikingly, 37 percent agreed with the statement, “Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse.” Barely half (53 percent) said it still makes sense to view blacks as a single race “because they have so much in common.” Be that as it may, one wonders in reading the report whether the phrase “black community” has become obsolete.