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According to Barone, Jews and Asians have the least similarity among those comparisons. Both value and achieve high standards in education and progress rapidly up the economic ladder to being lawyers and doctors, but while "Jews vote against the Czar," "Asians tend to vote against Mao," with all that implies. Also, a substantial number of Asians in America (50% or more by some measure) tend to be Christians and have more in common with their majority co-religionists.
Interesting. I may have to read that book. I agree with most of that, but I do think it's a mistake to regard Asian Americans as monolithic (just as it's a mistake to regard African Americans as such). Chinese Americans in my experience tend to be more liberal and are usually nominally Buddhist. (Among Asians, Buddhism is not usually an element of daily life the way it is for white converts.) Korean Americans, on the other hand, are more conservative and usually Catholic. Japanese Americans generally are Buddhist and progressive to liberal. Southeast Asians also seem to trend liberal (other than being strongly anti-Communist and pro-defense) and are mostly Buddhist--except for Vietnamese Americans, who are often Catholic, but not as heavily so as Korean Americans.
And it gets even more complicated if you include South Asians in the "Asian American" demogaphic. India alone is basically half-Hindu and half-Buddhist, with probably a few Christians thrown in. The Indian Americans I know of tend to be liberal (Dinesh D'Souza and Bobby "Kenneth Parcel" Jindal notwithstanding).
Last edited by Carlingtonian; 09-26-2011 at 07:27 AM..
This is where I have to respectfully disagree. Northern VA has it's issues too. I have been subjected to quite a bit of racism, but admittedly it has only been in certain parts. Let's not make NoVA seem like a utopia because it's not. Every area has it's issues, but some are more tolerable than others.
And I can't argue with you on that. However I will say that it's mostly transplants who carry their racial baggage from more homogenouos parts of the country, as well as DC yuppies who move here when their kids reach schooling age, who contribute to most of the racism in NoVA.
Personally, the further you move from the city, the less racist it gets. Arlington and Alexandria has mainly white yuppies/transplants from places with no integration and immigrants who self segregate into their own communities. Fairfax gets more racially integrated, but you do have spots where blacks are <5 percent of the population. And ironically, there's more blacks and racial integration in Prince William, Stafford, and (eastern) Loudoun counties.
Personally, if you're black and want to live in NoVA, look in a place that has a black population at least equal to or slightly above the national average, about 8-20 percent. That way, you can avoid the racial eggshells of being the only black person on your block, yet avoid much of the ghetto baggage that's dominant in many black places in DC and PG. But overall, the East Coast needs to get its head out of its ass when dealing with race issues.
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Goes back to my last point. Every area has it's issues. There are people in places like Fort Washington, who have their nose turned up. They believe they are the best of the best. They will drive around in the Mercedes, while their house is about to foreclose just to show people that they have made it. Sure Landover, Seat Pleasant, Suitland, Capitol Heights and other places have that ting of "ghettoiness" but I don't know how much I like being around fake uppity people who believe their butt doesn't stink.
And that's the other issue I have with PG. There is no "humble middle-class mentality" in nearly any of the places. if the ghetto mentality isn't present, then it's snobland.
Honestly, if I had to live in Maryland, then Montgomery County would be the only place on my list. My concerns are pretty much between the commute and the high states taxes, and the fact that taxes are partially maintaining the "nanny-havens" in inner-beltway PG is something I just can't stomach paying.
Interesting. I may have to read that book. I agree with most of that, but I do think it's a mistake to regard Asian Americans as monolithic (just as it's a mistake to regard African Americans as such).
Some ethnic groups are more monolithic than others. For example, black Americans tend to be much more predictable politically (usually 90% Democrat) than Americans of Asian descent (usually 30-60 percent Democrat). Among the major ethnic minority groups, Asians track the closest to majority white voters, certainly much more so than their black or Jewish counterparts.
In any case, Barone delves into the topic of differences among Asians in America.
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Chinese Americans in my experience tend to be more liberal and are usually nominally Buddhist. (Among Asians, Buddhism is not usually an element of daily life the way it is for white converts.) Korean Americans, on the other hand, are more conservative and usually Catholic. Japanese Americans generally are Buddhist and progressive to liberal. Southeast Asians also seem to trend liberal (other than being strongly anti-Communist and pro-defense) and are mostly Buddhist--except for Vietnamese Americans, who are often Catholic, but not as heavily so as Korean Americans.
Your perception or experience is not quite in line with the general trends. For example, Vietnamese-Americans tend to be highly Catholic, but Koreans much less so. The vast majority of Korean Christians tend to be Protestants, particularly evangelicals, not Catholics. (Koreans in America tend to be much more Christian than their brethren in Korea, by the way).
Most Chinese are not Buddhists and Chinese in America are even less so. And so on and so forth.
One thing to keep in mind is that these demographic trends tend to be isolated better by generational gaps than with national ones (as with say, Cubans).
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And it gets even more complicated if you include South Asians in the "Asian American" demogaphic. India alone is basically half-Hindu and half-Buddhist, with probably a few Christians thrown in. The Indian Americans I know of tend to be liberal (Dinesh D'Souza and Bobby "Kenneth Parcel" Jindal notwithstanding).
Again, your perception is not quite reflective of the overall reality. South Asians tend to be culturally fairly conservative (arranged marriage is still common and intermarriage rates are far below those of East Asians, for example). They may be among the most conservative and traditional immigrant groups (perhaps less so than Africans and Middle Easterners, but certainly more so than East Asians). Also, India is not "half-Buddhist." Buddhism is exceedingly rare in the land of its birth (except in Sri Lanka). India is mostly Hindu with a sizable minority of Muslims (mostly Sufis rather than post-modern Pakistani-type Salafists). There is a small minority of Catholics in India, especially among those from Goa (some of who even have Portuguese names). An interesting tidbit: many people don't know about St. Thomas Christians in India (those who were evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle who did come to India as well as Syria and Persia around 50 AD).
Nonetheless, for his study, Barone intentionally omits South Asians and Southwest Asians from his definition of "Asian" (as a comparison to the older Jewish immigrants), because those two groups and the later arrivals from East and Southeast Asia have markedly different linguistic, immigration and assimilation patterns.
ILD, so glad you brought this up: I mistyped on the part about India. I mean to say half (approximately) Hindu and (approximately) half Muslim. There are, as you correctly point out, few Buddhists in India, to my knowledge. Don't know how I made that typing error. (Guess I had the word "Buddhist" in my head still.) Boundless is my chagrin. I even went back and tried to change it last night, but the edit button was no longer there! Grrr....
Many Koreans are Catholic, and yes, there are also a lot of Lutherans and Presbyterians. I'm pretty sure at least a plurality are Catholic, though. Korean American C-Ders, feel free to pipe up if I'm wrong on this.
Even if 90% of African Americans voted for Obama--sounds right, so I'll take your word on it--what I meant is that they aren't culturally monolithic, as many whites tend to believe.
Arranged marriages aren't a sign of cultural conservatism on other cultural issues. Indian Americans don't have the motivation (radical fundamentalist Christianity) that motivates other groups to oppose abortion, equal rights for gay people, federally funded social-support programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.), and the secular nature of government codified in the Constitution. E.g., as far as I can tell, Indian society seems very tolerant of gays and, being so multi-ethnic and mulitfaith, has to be somewhat secular in its government. And I believe that at least a plurality of Indian Americans vote Democratic.
OK, let me get this off my chest--the adjective is "Democratic," not "Democrat." A Democrat votes in the Democratic primary. (I point this out not to be a grammar ninny but because Republicans do this on purpose as a little jab. Not saying you were necessarily doing it for that reason. Obviously, lower-case "democratic" is how one denotes generic democracy-related ideas.)
I didn't know about the St. Thomas Chrisitians in India--interesting. I did know about the Goans. (The Goan owner of one Indian restaurant in Fairfax has the surname "Cardozo.")
Last edited by Carlingtonian; 09-27-2011 at 07:05 AM..
Some ethnic groups are more monolithic than others. For example, black Americans tend to be much more predictable politically (usually 90% Democrat) than Americans of Asian descent (usually 30-60 percent Democrat). Among the major ethnic minority groups, Asians track the closest to majority white voters, certainly much more so than their black or Jewish counterparts.
By definition, monolithic means casted as a single piece, constituting a massive undifferentiated and often rigid. Using that word in this context is simply wrong, not factual, and actually quite stereotypical. In order for a group to be monolithic by definition, that means the group must all do the same thing, which is simply not true, especially if your assertion that 90% of black people vote Democratic. And to that point, there is nothing factual to prove what black people actually vote. Any statistic that has ever come out stating this is not scientific and is only conducted by using a sample size. The truth is, there is no accurate way of depicting exactly how many blacks vote that way. I'm really particular about how statistics are used because people can manipulate numbers to make them say exactly what they want, but unless you take a census where everyone is accounted for (at least as much as possible), it is impossible to get an accurate portrayal of exactly how accurate a study like that can be. I definitely agree that there are a lot of black who vote democratic, but some of the things you were saying are teetering on the line of being just completely stereotypical.
By definition, monolithic means casted as a single piece, constituting a massive undifferentiated and often rigid. Using that word in this context is simply wrong, not factual, and actually quite stereotypical. In order for a group to be monolithic by definition, that means the group must all do the same thing, which is simply not true, especially if your assertion that 90% of black people vote Democratic. And to that point, there is nothing factual to prove what black people actually vote. Any statistic that has ever come out stating this is not scientific and is only conducted by using a sample size. The truth is, there is no accurate way of depicting exactly how many blacks vote that way. I'm really particular about how statistics are used because people can manipulate numbers to make them say exactly what they want, but unless you take a census where everyone is accounted for (at least as much as possible), it is impossible to get an accurate portrayal of exactly how accurate a study like that can be. I definitely agree that there are a lot of black who vote democratic, but some of the things you were saying are teetering on the line of being just completely stereotypical.
This totally! It's pretty impossible to paint all blacks with a broad brush--just like any other group. Blacks from the south do things differently than blacks in the north or west coast. They may SOMETIMES share similar ideals, but that cannot be interpreted to say that black america is monolithic--IMO it's far from.
This totally! It's pretty impossible to paint all blacks with a broad brush--just like any other group.
Quite right, but this is not to diminish the value of statistics. There are some 42 million blacks in the country. It would be prohibitively expensive in terms of time and money to interview each and every one of them on any topic at all. One can however invest comparatively little time and money in creating a sample survey that will in fact return results not otherwise available that are worthwhile to quite useful degrees of accuracy so long as the surveys and analyses of them are conducted by knowledgeable and responsible people.
Useful as thinking in such terms may sometimes be however, it is very important to remember that there is actually no such thing as "blacks" or "women" or "high school dropouts". These "groups" are mere statistical constructs that have been made up by researchers as part of an effort to better understand the tides and currents of our society. There is no more significance to them than that.
By definition, monolithic means casted as a single piece, constituting a massive undifferentiated and often rigid. Using that word in this context is simply wrong, not factual, and actually quite stereotypical. In order for a group to be monolithic by definition, that means the group must all do the same thing, which is simply not true, especially if your assertion that 90% of black people vote Democratic.
Typically self-identified black voters vote in the range of 85-90% for the Democratic Party candidates. No, it does not mean ALL blacks vote that way, but it is a good indication of how politically monolithic American blacks are, particularly in comparison to other ethnic groups.
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I definitely agree that there are a lot of black who vote democratic, but some of the things you were saying are teetering on the line of being just completely stereotypical.
In my view, stereotypes are fine provided 1) there is a statistical basis for them and 2) one does not apply the said stereotypes to evaluate individuals.
In other words, it's perfectly fine to state, in a discussion about voting tendencies among ethnic groups, that group x is more likely vote for party y by a z margin based on statistical trends.
What is not fine is to assume that since group x votes for party y by a z margin, a specific individual belonging to that group x must automatically vote for party y.
Quite right, but this is not to diminish the value of statistics. There are some 42 million blacks in the country.
And that number is not exact, for that matter, but a good approximation.
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It would be prohibitively expensive in terms of time and money to interview each and every one of them on any topic at all. One can however invest comparatively little time and money in creating a sample survey that will in fact return results not otherwise available that are worthwhile to quite useful degrees of accuracy so long as the surveys and analyses of them are conducted by knowledgeable and responsible people.
Useful as thinking in such terms may sometimes be however, it is very important to remember that there is actually no such thing as "blacks" or "women" or "high school dropouts". These "groups" are mere statistical constructs that have been made up by researchers as part of an effort to better understand the tides and currents of our society. There is no more significance to them than that.
For once we agree.
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