America in 2016 should do better.
Author: Harold Pollack
Harold Pollack is Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He has served on three expert committees of the National Academies of Science. His recent research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, and American Journal of Public Health. He writes regularly on HIV prevention, crime and drug policy, health reform, and disability policy for American Prospect, tnr.com, and other news outlets. His essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare" was selected for the collection The Best American Medical Writing, 2009. He recently participated, with zero critical acclaim, in the University of Chicago's annual Latke-Hamentaschen debate.
View all posts by Harold Pollack
This is kind of like Where's Waldo? I see three people who could conceivably be minorities. Can anyone top that?
Eighth row, two o'clock, almost certainly black. Photoshop can handle that error, easily.
Send it to a Republican friend and see whether they understand your headline. If they have any inkling at all, it will be something along the lines of "You mean we aren't properly solicitous of people of color" as opposed to "This really isn't what the face of the country looks like these days."
This is what the face of the part of the country with enough money and influence to send their kids to Capitol Hill internships looks like?
You think the corresponding Dem photo would be much different?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110725480 — nope. I think paulwallich nailed it. And since Speaker Ryan called it "Capitol Hill interns", there may well be lots of Democrat interns in the photo.
Of course, I think it misses Mr. Pollack's point — one party does nothing much besides hammer home their lust to return to an all-white America that never existed, while the other party at least makes symbolic gestures toward tolerance and inclusion and diversity. Except for Melania's plagiarized pabulum last night, the entire rest of the RNC's first evening was about whipping up racial resentment and stoking fear over the existence of blacks, Muslims, and Mexicans. You won't see that at the DNC. But it sure seems to sell to the Libertarian base.
And the other party does nothing much besides hammering home their lust to fundamentally change America's demographics, to produce a tolerant and diverse country by importing as many people as possible who reject those values. Like that ever worked anywhere, like it isn't tearing Europe apart at this moment.
Aspiring to create what can never be is scarcely an improvement over nostalgia for what never was. You've got a vision of what you want America to be, but it's not a remotely realistic vision, and you're destroying the America that is in your doomed effort to create it.
That ship sailed long ago, buddy. For two years the majority of babies born in America — meaning new American citizens — have been non-white. The half of Mexico that we stole at gunpoint a century and a half ago has always had Mexicans in it…..go figure. And even if you deported all 12 million undocumented workers — including a few million Chinese and Vietnamese, a couple of million Eastern Europeans (whom you probably don't mind, because of their complexion), a million and a half Indians, a million middle easterners, and a half million Canadians (don't worry if we can't round them all up, they're mostly lily-white, the way you like your neighbors) — there would still be 50 million Spanish-speaking citizens, 40 million blacks, 25 million Asians, and 8 to 10 million Middle East/Subcontinentals.
The country was never white, even if your grandpa's suburb or farm town was. And it's their America too. They'd probably prefer to build a wall in front of wherever racist trolls like you come from.
I never said the Democratic party's drive to 'elect a new people' wasn't well along, too far along to reverse. That doesn't mean it has to be continued to the point where the US is replaced with some kind of Mexico/Syria mashup. One of the advantages of not being as far down this road as Europe is that we have time to learn from their mistakes.
I'm not concerned about the color of immigrants, I'm concerned about their culture. There are immigrants who will improve the US culturally, (It's a shame we didn't offer visas to all those Hong Kong residents the UK sold to China, for instance.) but there are also immigrants who will degrade us, because they reject the values that make the US worth living in.
I gather this is a difficult concept for Democrats to accept, that cultural diversity can make things worse, not better, that we really do not have a crying need to become more like Mexico or the Middle East. But that is exactly what importing enough people from such places will accomplish.
They're not hell-holes because of the color of the people who live there. It's because of their cultures. Not all cultures work.
Heh heh. Just WHO is consumed with identity politics? Just because YOU don't like Mexican culture doesn't mean that 100 million other Americans don't. Better food, better dancing, much more friendly and outgoing than Open Carry jerks, or rich yuppies in their gated enclaves, and San Antonio, El Paso, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, San Diego, Los Angeles are all fantastic cities, with very Mexican culture. There'd be no rock 'n' roll without black culture. Aside from The Beatles and Stones, Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, none of whom are from America, I can't say that Anglos have done much for America except infest us with 7 or 8 generations of hillbillies, never learned to speak English correctly, can't clear a jalopy from their front yard, are all now meth-monkeys living in their Mom's basement on the dole, and are the raison d'etre for Fox News. Nobody's rejecting American values except you and your Anglo kin. There's a reason we call our country a melting pot. It's just lumps of degraded ore like you who never quite melt.
But it's sweet that you approve of those wily Orientals. Maybe you should move to Hong Kong.
Maybe you should move to Mexico, instead of bringing it here?
Happily, no …
http://dcist.com/2016/07/democratic_interns_flaun…
I agree that paulwallich has identified the determining factor here. These are unpaid positions and only the affluent can afford to take them.
I have to wonder if some of the Trump campaign fiascos of the past couple of days were the work of unpaid interns. The phallic Trump/Pence logo which was quickly deleted looked like something you could do with a few clicks of a mouse in about a half hour or so, and whoever handed Mrs. Trump her speech last night could well have been a twenty something whose parents made it possible for him to join the campaign without monetary compensation. You get the level of competence you are willing to pay for.
Speaking of incompetence: the doctor's letter which was put out by the Trump campaign just before Christmas (the one with the salutation "To Whom My Concern") and said that his lab results were astonishingly excellent and that he would be the healthiest president ever: this reeks of amateurish incompetence. The Democrats have been sitting on it for months without using it. Why is this?
Being at least as astute a pundit and prognosticator as William Kristol, I venture a guess: they are waiting to spring it and may do so this week. Thursday at about 11:30 would be just about right, so that there would be a firestorm over calls of "Forgery!!" when prime time rolls around. I cannot believe that the Washington Post has no one working on this. Then Trump would have to spend his entire acceptance speech ranting about the dishonesty of the news media and how he will sue them because that is a genuine letter from Dr. Bornstein.
Hasn't anyone wondered why a fabulously wealthy man, who could afford to go to the best doctor in Manhattan, ended up going to a doctor who cannot write any better than this?
Hence my bold prediction: this story will break big time on Thursday. If I am right, I hope to get a couple of "likes" for my comment. If I am wrong, I hope to get a job alongside William Kristol as a political commentator on TV.
There's speculation that the 'nevertrump' faction have been planting moles in Trump's campaign. Candidates don't normally have to structure their campaigns on the assumption that the party that nominated them will be covertly trying to defeat them; Perhaps some advice from the Pauls would be in order, they've experienced that.
Gee! I thought that maybe Trump was a mole who has been placed in the Republican party to get Hillary elected. That would explain a lot of things!
Yes, like it would explain why Trump's most adamant opposition in the GOP are actively trying to assure Hillary wins.
Bernie Sanders pays his interns $12 an hour.
A bit dated:
How the Senate Exploits Unpaid Interns: Barely a third of U.S. senators pay their interns — and embarrassingly for Democrats, a party focused on workplace welfare, most of them are Republicans.
Mexico's murder rate: 15.7/100k (Queretaro? 5.4)
Mexico's CPI(Corruption Perception Index) rank 95
America's murder rate: 3.9/100k
America's CPI rank 16
Great, so you live in the glaring exception.