John F. Early’s excellent discussion in Saturday’s Opinion section on the statistical establishment’s struggles with defining and describing race is a question we all need to address seriously. It seems that OMB, which tried and failed to introduce similar thoughts for inclusion in the 2020 decennial census, seems to be trying it again on perhaps a more hospitable administration. Their clumsy efforts to somehow make America divide comfortably into five easy to label World groups (and two smaller ones) is an immense struggle with reality. Few outside Washington could respond to their new race question categories or care about them. A large part of it comes from having failed to convince Central and South Americans that they are something called an “ethnicity” and so OMB created “Some Other Race” as a categorization in order to make the data collection process fit.
My first experience with racial data collection was for the New York metropolitan area to meet federal requirements for travel data to support public investment analyses. At first, the survey we designed included race. We were told that was divisive and ordered to take the questions on race out. About a year after completing that survey I arrived in the Washington metropolitan area, again working on developing transportation survey data, and when I presented my draft designs I was asked why there’s no race questions in there. How can we tell what’s going on with different people? So race was back in. That was all about 50 years ago.
Some current comic effects of the OMB struggle:
The OMB says Europeans are White, except Spaniards, who are given as an example of Hispanics. Hmmm! That makes it a little clumsy in that the little country next to Spain on the Iberian peninsula called Portugal will be white, but not Spain? In Spain the Catalans have never wanted to be Spanish anyway, so maybe they’re still white – – should we ask them? My wife is from Catalonia and was labeled Hispanic at work years ago to up the percentage for government reporting.
Oh, then there’s the small matter of a place in South America called Brazil which is Portuguese-speaking and constitutes the majority of South American population, so are they white like the Portuguese or are we making them Hispanics to fit the geography? So maybe we make the Portuguese Hispanics because they almost share the language, and White Europe stops at the Pyrenees.
The Census Bureau seems intent on creating a "race" or "ethnicity" out of MENA - Middle Eastern & North African populations, a compartmentalization of the North African Middle Eastern, sort-of-Arabic world. It includes old friends such as Israel, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear where MENA begins and totally not clear where it ends -- around Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan? Who might voluntarily identify themselves as a MENA?
Then there’s the Asians in America, about 5% of our population, but more than half of the world’s so we’ll squeeze Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, all into that meaningless but convenient phrase. When they describe Asian, Indonesia is never mentioned. I’m sure they won’t mind! We could shift the Indonesians to the Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians Race category and up their population by about a quarter of a billion people.
Finally, will African-Americans and Africans be comfortable with that single word appellation?
These have become tangled labeling tools to make summary reporting convenient for the US statistical system to which probably none of the respondent populations would recognize. Perhaps geography is the easier answer? As Mr. Early suggests, maybe just forget the whole thing that has so clumsily, been drawn again and again.
Alan Pisarski is a writer, analyst and consultant in the fields of transportation research, policy and investment.
The geographical resorting of America continues apace–the separation of peoples based broadly on ideology. You see this population movement on both coasts, accentuated by the pandemic and remote work.
It’s about other things, of course–costs, space, weather–but it’s a lot about politics. And after Tuesday’s mayoral election result in Chicago (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/us/elections/chicago-mayor-election-brandon-johnson.html), we can expect more resorting in the middle of the country. A majority of the closely-divided city electorate chose a higher-tax, less-policing candidate backed by most of the powerful public-employee unions. On top of the immediate worries that conservative Chicagoans might have, there’s the ongoing pensions deficit that the city, Cook County and the state of Illinois (also dominated by Democrats of the left) are running, which is a lien on taxpayers who hang around.
Unless attempts succeed to garnish the higher income of fleeing residents (moves under consideration in a few states), or a bailout from Washington is forthcoming, Illinoisans-in-place are squarely under this cloud. So the movement into “two Americas” can expect another rush. I don’t know whether this pace and degree of separation is unprecedented (obviously blacks had reason to escape the Antebellum and Jim Crow South) or necessarily harmful on balance in such an already-sundered society, but it is happening nonetheless.
The recent sparring between Starbucks’s longtime CEO Howard Schultz and Senator Bernie Sanders reflects a conflict within the Democratic Party that is likely to get far more intense in the years ahead. Sanders accused Schultz, a self-described progressive who once considered a presidential run, of conducting “illegal union busting” at the coffee chain’s shops — something that the Starbucks CEO vehemently denied.
Schultz is finding out the hard way that liberal intentions are not enough to prevent his employees from seeking better wages and conditions. This dilemma mirrors that of his gentry progressive allies, who represent the Democrats’ increasingly affluent, well-educated base. They are now primary funders of the party and it is their agenda that has come to achieve dominance.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States exported a record 3.6 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2022, a 22 percent increase from 2021. According to the EIA:
“Since early 2022, trade patterns have shifted because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions of Russia’s crude oil exports. Prior to 2022, OECD Europe had been the largest regional importer of Russia’s crude oil, receiving 2.3 million b/d from Russia in 2021.
Less crude oil was exported to India and China from the United States in 2022 than in 2021 because the two countries imported more discounted crude oil from Russia. India was the largest export destination of U.S. crude oil exports in 2021; China had been in 2020. Decreased demand for U.S. crude oil exports to India and China was more than offset by increased demand from other destinations, particularly in Europe.”
Just implemented service adjustments will reduce Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) services to nine percent below pre-pandemic levels.
A Toronto Metropolitan University report (2023 TTC Service Changes and Transit Equity in Toronto), while acknowledging TTC’s challenging fiscal situation, notes that “Toronto’s most marginalized neighbourhoods will likely be disproportionately affected by the TTC service cuts.” The report continues: “These neighbourhoods may not generate the highest amounts of public transit trips, but residents in these neighbourhoods may be more dependent on public transit for their everyday needs compared to other parts of the city.” This “will likely make these neighbourhoods more mobility poor, creating additional barriers to the residents’ participation in employment, education, and society in general.”
Moreover, the report finds “At a time when all levels of the government are committing to address affordability and inequality, the proposed TTC service cuts are not justified.”
Note: The TTC principally serves the city (municipality) of Toronto, which accounts for 45% of the Toronto census metropolitan area population.
The rescue of Silicon Valley Bank and its large depositors has drawn together unlikely bedfellows. Both the Right-wing Free Beacon and the Leftist Stranger magazine, to give two examples, have denounced this federal largesse as “socialism for the rich”.
Whether this is true or not lies in the eye of the beholder, but one thing is for sure: this is a crisis that could reshape the 2024 election.
Americans, particularly progressives, no longer see the Silicon Valley elites as “enlightened plutocrats” eager to create a better world. Now they view these same people as sinister far-Right figures, as evidenced by the treatment of Elon Musk since his takeover of Twitter. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans now also fear the tech elite, and the industry’s approval dropped dramatically in the years before the pandemic.
On this episode of The Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky help us understand the Iranian revolution with project analyst, Mahnaz Asghari, Iranian actress Nazanin Nour, and hematologist Montreh Tavakkoli.
Latest Research: From Chapman’s Center of Demographics & Policy, Joel Kotkin & Marshall Toplansky co-author the new report on restoring The California Dream.
The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.
Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.
For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.
This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.
Philadelphia’s transit agency, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) has paused the King of Prussia rail line that is proposed as a link to the Norristown High Speed Line and centre city. King of Prussia is located in suburban Montgomery County, PA and is hope to the King of Prussia Mall, one of the five largest in the United States.
According to a SEPTA press release dated March 17, “… SEPTA must prioritize essential
infrastructure work and safety and security improvements to maximize the reliability and effectiveness of our aging system.” The press release further noted that “From August 2020 to August 2022, the project estimate increased from $2.08 billion to $2.6 billion. The estimate now stands at $3.02 billion.”
All activities on the King of Prussia project are being halted, and a pending contract for final design has not been executed by SEPTA.
“The Authority will provide details on how funds allocated for KOP Rail will be used
when the proposed capital budget and long-term program is released in April.”
Like other transit agencies around the world, ridership has been severely reduced by the effect of the pandemic, pandemic lockdowns and the increase in remote and hybrid work. In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, the transit’s work trip market share in the Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD metropolitan area fell by half, from
9.4% to 4.7% in 2021, according to American Community Survey data. At the same
time, the work from home share quadrupled, from 6.0% to 23.6%.
On this episode of The Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by political demographer, Ruy Teixeira, and author and principal, Soledad Ursua to discuss the future of Latinos in politics.
Latest Research: From Chapman’s Center of Demographics & Policy, Joel Kotkin & Marshall Toplansky co-author the new report on restoring The California Dream.
The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.
Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.
For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.
This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.
In “California’s High-Speed Rail Was A Fantasy From Its Inception,” economist Lee Ohanion says that: “California’s HSR is perhaps the greatest infrastructure failure in the history of the country. And the reason it failed is because of a gross failure of state governance, one on such a grand scale that it is nothing short of a betrayal of Californians.”
Ohanion notes that the cost of the present Bakersfield to Merced line, for which the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) does not even have the money, is already more costly that the original projections for the 800-mile system, which was to connect San Diego, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Sacramento. This 170-mile stub is on the flat land in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, by far the easiest portion of the system to build. CHSRA hasn’t turned the first shovel on the Pacheco Pass tunnel, the Tehachapi or the San Gabriel Mountains tunnel that would be required just to complete the San Francisco to Los Angeles segment. The San Diego and Sacramento extensions have barely been mentioned for years.
Ohanion concludes:
“There is no path to completion for the fantasy rail system that was falsely sold to voters 15 years ago. Finishing the Bakersfield-Merced route, which will cost in excess of $35 billion, and which won’t be operative for ten years, doesn’t come close to penciling out. The only reasonable decision is to end a project that should never have begun.”
Infinite Suburbia is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development. Find out more.
Authored by Aaron Renn, The Urban State of Mind: Meditations on the City is the first Urbanophile e-book, featuring provocative essays on the key issues facing our cities, including innovation, talent attraction and brain drain, global soft power, sustainability, economic development, and localism.
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