GRAPHIC: The racial/ethnic demographics of U.S. Top 10 metro areas

Information on race in America, especially in metropolitan areas in the United States. This is from a recent deep dive into race, politics and demographics by the Boston Globe's award-winning Spotlight team as the paper tried to examine why Boston is perceived as "more racist" than other big cities.

REPORT: No Educational Achievement Gap Between Multiracial and White Students

A new report published by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think-tank in Washington D.C. claims that there is educational gap between multiracial and white students. This would seem to contradict the race-based theories  trying to explain the achievement gaps which are often found when one analyzed educational attainment data through a racial and ethnic lens.

Here's an excerpt from the report, authored by Jonathan Rothwell, an Economist who works at Gallup

Despite the growing number of multiracial students, almost no attention has been given to their educational outcomes. But gaining a better understanding of how multiracial students perform may cast useful light on the causes of race gaps more generally. My analysis shows that:

1.    Students of multiracial identity are from families with lower socioeconomic status than whites; 

2.    They attend schools that are far more integrated with whites and Asians compared to blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders 

3.    Multiracial students have the same average test scores as whites on math, science, and writing; 

4.    For reading tests, multiracial students outperform other groups, including Asians; and 

5.    These results contradict the controversial hypothesis that between group differences in IQ result from genetic differences between races.

These findings suggest that the race gaps in academic achievement in the United States are the result of inequality, especially in terms of access to educational opportunities, and therefore could be closed under fairer political, social, and economic arrangements.

This is just more evidence about the socially constructed nature of race and the arbitrariness of racial categories. If "white"

Science Publishes Article Calling For Elimination Of Racial Categories In Genetics Research

In an important article titled "Taking race out of human genetics" published in Science magazine today, a team of researchers argues that "the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way."

I have often taught classes which include the idea(s) that the identity characteristics of sex, gender, race, sexual orientation are socially constructed. This does not mean that these categories are not real, but that these characteristics are not innate, fixed, "natural" properties of human beings; instead the idea is that how we perceive and interact with people according to these categories is contested, time-dependent and malleable.

It's exciting to see a paragraph like this in the world's most prestigious scientific journal:

One reason is that phylogenetic and population genetic methods do not support a priori classifications of race, as expected for an interbreeding species like Homo sapiens (11, 18). As a result, racial assumptions are not the biological guide-posts some believe them to be, as commonly defined racial groups are genetically heterogeneous and lack clear-cut genetic boundaries (10, 11). For example, hemoglobinopathies can be misdiagnosed because of the identification of sickle-cell as a “Black” disease and thalassemia as a “Mediterranean” disease (10). Cystic fibrosis is underdiagnosed in populations of African ancestry, because it is thought of as a “White” disease (19). Popular misinterpretations of the use of race in genetics also continue to fuel racist beliefs, so much so that, in 2014, a group of leading human population geneticists publicly refuted claims about the genetic basis of social differences between races (20). Finally, the use of the race concept in genetics, an issue that has vexed natural and social scientists for more than a century, will not be obviated by new technologies. Although the low cost of next-generation sequencing has facilitated efforts to sequence hundreds of thousands of individuals, adding whole-genome sequences does not negate the fact that racial classifications do not make sense in terms of genetics.

Coincidentally enough, I actually m et one of the authors of this article (Professor Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania) when she visited my place of employment this week. On Tuesday February 2, she gave an impressive talk which summarized some of the key ideas in her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century. The audience was enthralled and Prof. Roberts answered questions matter-of-factly and informatively.

 Overall, it is exciting to see the idea that race is NOT a human biological feature getting more attention.

CELEBRITY FRIDAY (BONUS): Is Rachel Dolezal Black Simply Because She Says She Is?

Social and popular media have been going buck wild about the story of Rachel Dolezal, the  apparently white woman who has been posing publicly as a Black woman for at least the last 10 years.

NPR's Code Switch blog has a useful roundup of online coverage:

In a bizarre turn of events, a prominent civil rights leader and Africana studies professor in Spokane, Wash., has been accused of pretending to be black for personal gain. 

Rachel Dolezal, 37, heads up the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane and has apparently identified as black for several years. Dolezal's story came to light after she was accused of falsifying reports of multiple hate crimes. Local reporters contacted her parents, who made a startling claim backed up by a birth certificate and old pictures. They say their daughter's heritage is Swedish, German, Czech and a little bit Native American. But definitely not black. 

Predictably, this story has blown up all over the Internet as people try to make sense of it all: Why did she do it? Didn't anyone suspect? What's up with that hair?

As many experts have pointed out, people have been "passing" as a different race for hundreds of years. It's just that almost always this has meant that it was people who would generally be characterized as "Black" (or African-American) passing as something else, usually a racial identity which is less marginalized. What makes the Dolezal situation so unusual is that it is an example of someone voluntarily adopting a subaltern identity, presumably to garner some kind of advantage that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to if they maintained their original identity.

Some people are trying to compare the Dolezal story to the Caitlin Jenner story but that is clearly just stupid.

Dolezal engaged in such actions in order to be perceived as black, in a racialized American environment where that matters. Trans people transition in order to be the gender we feel inside and, while there may come a time when posers will appropriate trendy trans culture for profit, right now, there's no advantage to transitioning when you're not trans.

In some sense this Dolezal situation shows that there has been progress of race relations in America where it is possible for some people to actually believe that their social circumstances would improve if they were perceived as Black or African-American.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

Killer Cop Darren Wilson Resigns From #Ferguson Police Department

Darren Wilson, the police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old African-American man named Michael Brown  in Ferguson, MO in August 2014 has been the subject of protests around the country, has released a public letter of resignation less than a week after a grand jury refused to indict him on any criminal charges relating to his actions that resulted in the death of Brown.

"I, Darren Wilson, hereby resign my commission as a police officer with the City of Ferguson effective immediately. I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow. For obvious reasons, I wanted to wait until the grand jury made their decision before I officially made my decision to resign. It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal. I would like to thank all of my supporters and fellow officers throughout this process."

Wilson's actions and words have raised the profile of racial differences in the country, in particular as they relate to police relations with minority communities.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

POLL: Americans See Michael Brown Shooting Very Differently By Race and Party

Not TOO surprisingly there are stark racial differences in how Americans of different racial backgrounds view the shooting of Michael Brown, a poll by Huffington Post reveals.

As YouGov puts it:

There is a massive racial divide between white and black Americans about whether Darren Wilson should face punishment for killing Michael Brown. While only 22% of whites say that wilson was at fault and should be punished, just under two-thirds (64%) of black Americans want the officer to be punished. 30% of whites, and 11% of blacks, say that the shooting was a tragic accident. 29% of whites say that officer Wilson was fully justified in shooting Brown, something only 4% of black Americans agree with.

Views of the Ferguson incident are not only bifurcated by racial identity but also by party identification:

Democrats were also three times more likely than Republicans to say Wilson was at fault, and to fear that he would be punished too leniently. 

Perhaps the biggest divide, however, was on whether the shooting represented an isolated incident or part of a broader pattern in how black men are treated by the police. While Americans overall were split, 74 percent of black Americans and 57 percent of Democrats, compared with 31 percent of whites and 18 percent of Republicans, saw the shooting as part of a larger pattern.

Despite this being an incident that involves a white cop and  a Black victim I would be interested in seeing data about how other racial groups (especially Latino and Asians) view the Michael Brown situation. Race in America is far more complicated than just Black and white.

QUEER QUOTE: LGBT Groups Issue Statement On Michael Brown Killing

The fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old Black man named Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri (just outside St. Louis) has been roiling the internets since it happened on Saturday August 9.

LGBT groups are often criticized by other progressive groups, especially African American civil rights organizations for a lack of reciprocity when it comes to coalition work but today comes word of a joint statement from numerous LGBT groups about the heinous Michael Brown killing:

When communities experience fear, harassment and brutality simply because of who they are or how they look, we are failing as a nation. In light of the recent events in Missouri, it is clearer than ever that there is something profoundly wrong in our country. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community cannot be silent at this moment, because LGBT people come from all races, creeds, faiths and backgrounds, and because all movements of equality are deeply connected. We are all part of the fabric of this nation and the promise of liberty and justice for all is yet to be fulfilled. 

The LGBT community stands with the family of Michael Brown, who was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri. We stand with the mothers and fathers of young Black men and women who fear for the safety of their children each time they leave their homes. We call on the national and local media to be responsible and steadfast in their coverage of this story and others like it--racialized killings that have marred this nation since the beginning of its history. We call on policy makers on all levels of American government not to shrink from action, and we are deeply grateful to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice for their immediate commitment to a thorough investigation. At this moment, we are inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies … but the silence of our friends." 

ACLUCenter for Black Equity, Inc.Equality FederationGay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)GMHCHuman Rights CampaignNational Black Justice CoalitionNational Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)National Center for Transgender EqualityNational Gay and Lesbian Task ForceNational Minority AIDS CouncilNational Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA)PFLAG NationalPride at Work, AFL-CIOSoulforceSoutherners on New Ground (SONG)United AIDS

Good work!

Even while on vacation, President Barack Obama has also commented on the shooting, calling it "heartbreaking."

SATURDAY POLITICS: Nate Silver Proves White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats

Nate Silver relaunched his FiveThirtyEight.com website awhile back and continues his mission to bring his analytic skills to non-quantitative fields. For example, in a recent article, Silver analyzes poling data from the General Social Survey to confirm what most people already know, (white) Republicans and more racist than (white) Democrats.

As of 2012, this index stood at 27 percent for white Republicans and 19 percent for white Democrats. So there’s a partisan gap, although not as large of one as some political commentators might assert. There are white racists in both parties. By most questions, they represent a minority of white voters in both parties. They probably represent a slightly larger minority of white Republicans than white Democrats. 

Fortunately, the expression of racism by whites toward blacks has decreased over time, and for Americans in both parties — at least, according to this survey. In 1990, the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 40 percent for white Democrats and 41 percent for white Republicans. 

There hasn’t been much of an overall increase or decrease in the index since Obama took office. On average, between the 2004 and 2006 editions of the surveys — the last two before Obama was either a president or a candidate — the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 22 percent for white Democrats and 26 percent for white Republicans. Those values are within the margin of error for those in the 2010 and 2012 surveys. 

If there’s a discouraging trend, it’s not so much that negative racial attitudes toward blacks have increased in these polls, but that they’ve failed to decrease under Obama, as they did so clearly for most of the past three decades.

So if people thought that "racism was over" because Barack Obama was elected President (I'm looking at your John Roberts!) they should look at this data and think again.

POLL: Is Obama "Black" Or "Mixed-Race"? Majority Of Americans Pick The Latter...

A new poll from the Pew Research Center called "The Next America" dives deep into the future demographics of America and reveals how American's views on race an racial identity have changed and are continuing to change.

For example, a majority of respondents (52%) to a poll when asked about the racial identity of President Barack Obama in 2009 said that they think of him as "Mostly Mixed Race" while only 27% said they thought of him as "Mostly Black."

Notably, these results differed by the racial identification of the respondents. Black people said that Obama was Black by the rate of 55% to 34% who said he was mixed. The group that was the least likely to call Obama "Black" was Hispanics!

The report also shows what America will look like in coming decades, with the majority of Americans expected to be from non-White racial groups around 2040.

What do you think, is the President Black or Mixed-Race? Is there some reason he can't be both? (That would be my answer.)

Hat/tip to Huffington Post Politics

New Doctor Who Star To Be Revealed Today!

There have been 11 white male actors to play the lead character on the long-running British television series Doctor Who. Matt Smith announced this summer he would be leaving the show, and we will know who the 12th Doctor Who today will be by the end of a live television show on BBC America at 7pm British time (2pm EDT).

The show has been running for more tan 50 years and has improved dramatically in recent years. It no longer has cheesy visual effects and it still has one of the best television theme songs of all time. A number of Britain's greatest acting talents (Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Diana Rigg, Sophie Okonedo, John Hurt, Richard E. Grant, Bill Nighy) have guest starred on the latest version of the show, which is run by an openly gay man, Steven Moffatt. (CORRECTION: Russell T. Davies, the showrunner before Moffat too over Doctor Who, is openly gay; Moffat is not!)

The show has become notably more diverse, with people of color playing larger roles. It will be very interesting if the producers take the next logical step and cast a non-white actor in the role. Do you think it will happen?

GRAPHIC: No (Rich) Child Left Behind

The New York Times Opinionator blog has an interesting article entitled "No Rich Child Left Behind" by Stanford education professor Sean Reardon which publicizes a fact that most people not involved with education policy may not realize: the wealth of one's parent's is the largest factor (more significant than race or ethnicity or gender) in determining whether someone becomes a college graduate or not.

This idea is captured by this excerpt:

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000. 

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

And a key point to remember is that the disparity between rich kids and poor kids is widening while racial/ethnic disparities have been slowly decreasing.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole. 

Professor Reardon explains the implications of this phenomenon on our society:

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile. 

The entire piece is well worth reading. Check it out!

Black Voter Turnout Won 2012 Election For Obama

A new report analyzing voter turnout in 2012 confirms that well-publicized efforts by Republicans to suppress voting by minorities (a.k.a. the GOP War on Voting) resulted in record Black turnout, handing the election to President Obama even though overall voter turnout was down over 2008 (and 2004). In fact, the most dramatic finding in the report is that turnout by Black voters surpassed turnout by White voters for the first time ever. For the second presidential election in a row, the Black percentage of the presidential vote (13%) exceeded the Black percentage of the electorate (12%).

This is the key excerpt from the Associated Press story:

Romney would have erased Obama's nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey's analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

There is a  lot of interesting information in the article for both Democrats and Republicans. First, the article notes that only only political party (Republicans) have managed to win the presidency three consecutive times in the last 60 years (1980, 1984, 1988) so that Democrats should not be confident about 2016. It also notes that Romney was a particular weak candidates, failing to energize white voters while Obama successfully energized black voters. The much vaunted Latino vote is still  only a potential factor at the presidential level, with Latino voters making up 17% of the electorate but only 11% of the vote. This could change sooner rather than later, depending on how immigration reform ends up impacting the citizenship status of the millions of undocumented immigrants of Hispanic descent living in the United States.

However my favorite oart of the story is this description of Mitt Romney by an African American voter from Cleveland, Ohio:

"A white Mormon swimming in money with offshore accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees just doesn't quite fit my idea of a president," she said. "Bottom line, Romney was not someone I was willing to trust with my future."

And that is a summation of the 2012 Republican presidential candidate in a nutshell: "a white mormon swimming in money with offshore accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees." David Axelrod must be very proud!

The Boston Bombers Were White. Any Questions?

As is the case whenever an event or incident which causes America to consider it's founding principles and self-identity, notions of race appear soon afterwards. Now that the pictures of Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev,  the perpetrators of the first completed terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, are ubiquitously distributed, one question being asked is: Are the Boston Bombers White?

Peter Beinart says the answer to this question is clearly yes in a thoughtful piece in The Daily Beast in which he discussed the historical shifting of racial categories in America, especially the conflation of racialization with religious affiliation.

But the bombers were white Americans. The Tsarnaev brothers had lived in the United States for more than a decade. Dzhokhar was a U.S. citizen. Tamerlan was a legal permanent resident in the process of applying for citizenship. And as countless commentators have noted, the Tsarnaevs hail from the Caucasus, and are therefore, literally, “Caucasian.” You can’t get whiter than that.

[...]

Think about American history and you can understand why. For centuries, Americans were legally segregated by race. Thus, when newcomers from the Middle East came to our shores, Americans had to decide which side of the line they were on. And in the struggle to be classified as white, Middle Eastern Christians had an advantage: Jesus. In the 1915 case Dow v. United States, a Syrian Christian successfully argued that he was white because Jesus, the original Middle Eastern Christian, was too.

[...]

Today, Americans still often link Islam and dark skin. What’s changed is which category we consider more dangerous. For much of American history, the problem with being Muslim was that you weren’t considered white. Since 9/11, by contrast, one of the problems with not being considered white is that you might be mistaken for Muslim.

[...]

You can also glimpse this conflation of religion and race in the demand, which surfaces after every terrorist attack, to single out Muslims for special scrutiny at airports and the like. Often, the politicians and pundits most eager to profile Muslims are the same folks who in the 1980s and 1990s defended the “racial profiling” of blacks. And listening to them, you sometimes get the sense that they think the process would work the same way: just look to see who the Muslims are.

You should really go read the entire piece yourself. The only part I would quibble with is that Beinart does not explicitly use language saying that race is a social construction, a figment of our society's imagination, although the notion of its fluidity is clear throughout his piece. Just saying so does not undermine the very real impact that race has on the lives of very real individuals, but acknowledging its fictional nature is important when discussing it.

What do you think?

CDC Releases Latest AIDS/HIV Figures

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released updated figures on HIV/AIDS incidence in the United States this week. The figures show that the annual rate of new infections is still approximately 50,000 per year, with the total number of people living with HIV in the United States approximately 1.2 million. The data are from 2010.

Hat/tip Joe.My.God

LOOK: The Partisan Racial Divide in the 2012 Vote

The Washington Post's The Fix summarizes the Republican Party's current and future problems in winning elections at the national level by demonstrating the partisan racial divide in the 2012 exit polls of the presidential vote.

That only 11 percent of Republicans’ total vote came from non-whites tells you everything you need to know about the large-scale demographic challenges that Republicans must confront. (The fact that 44 percent of all Democratic votes came from non-whites paints the Republican challenge in even starker terms.) That the white vote as a total of the overall votes has declined in every election since 1992 and dropped to just 72 percent in 2012 just adds to Republicans’ problems.

Hat/tip to The Fix

Obama's Vote % of White People and Uneducated

There are some interesting analyses of the presidential vote which illustrate the contours of President Obama's re-election victory and the characteristics of the coalition he brought together to carry him to 332 electoral votes and nearly 51% of the popular vote.

Previously I had blogged about the crucial role of the LGB population (5% of the electorate) voting 76% to 22% for Obama-Biden 2012 but today I want to talk about the people who did NOT vote for the President.

The graphic at the top of this post indicates that all of the top 10 states that have the highest percentages of people with college degrees (MA, MD, CO, CT, VT, NJ, VA, NY, MN) voted for Obama, while 9 of the bottom 10 (WV, MS, AR, KY, LA, AL, IN, TN, OK) voted for Romney-Ryan 2012.

Additionally, Charles Blow in The New York Times noted some other interesting features of the election results:

 This year was the first presidential election in which there were more Asian-American voters (11 percent) in California than African-American ones (8 percent). In 2008, 6 percent were Asian-American and 10 percent were African-American. In fact, there were more Asian-American voters than African-American voters in Washington and Oregon, the other two Pacific Coast states, this year, too. 

[...] 

In fact, Obama won the white vote only in states with small minority voting populations. The others Obama won were Iowa (93 percent white), New Hampshire (93 percent white), Oregon (88 percent white), Connecticut (79 percent white) and Washington State (76 percent white). 

[...] 

 Obama won all four states that begin with “New” (New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York), but he lost all five that begin with a direction (North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia).

It's interesting that conservatives have been focussing on how how people of color voted for the first Black president but they haven't noticed how places (in)famous for unapologetic racial prejudice voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney. For example, Obama won a mere 10% of the white vote in Mississippi.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man and Sentient Meat.

Top 10 Billionaires in the United States

The list of the 400 richest people in the United States was released by Forbes magazine recently. The top 10 have a number of familiar names, led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates at #1 and Nebraska-based investor Warren Buffet at #2. At #3 was Larry Ellison who made waves with the news that he was buying the Hawaiian island of Lanai in its entirety. The infamous Koch brothers, who are attempting to buy their preferred election result thanks to loopholes in campaign finance laws are tied for 4th, followed by 4 members of the Walton family (whose patriarch founded the Walmart company) and at #10 is the 3-term mayor of
New York City, Mike Bloomberg.

Forbes magazine notes that things are going very well for most of the super-ricj=h, with their wealth increasing at an astonishing rate:

Gates alone was worth $7 billion more than he was last year. Berkshire Hathaway head and renown investor Warren Buffett again ranked No. 2 on the list, with his net worth climbing by the same amount to $46 billion. 

Larry Ellison, head of software maker Oracle, remained in the No. 3 spot, but posted the biggest gain in wealth on the list, with his net worth rising by $8 billion to $41 billion. 

Two-thirds of the list’s members saw their wealth grow over the past year to an average $4.2 billion, Forbes said.

It's too bad that we have a communist president or else these revered job creators would not be suffering so much! (Yes, this is sarcasm!)

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

This Is What Romney's "Amercia" Looks Like #FAIL

Daily Kos posted this picture of what the Mitt Romney campaign seems to think that Amercia looks like. Notice anything similar about all the people pictured above? Notice any kind of people missing from that picture?

Wow. Two #major #fail in the first day after clinching the Republican Party nomination for President.

(The two fails are 1) America is not an all-white country as depicted above, and 2) America is not spelled "Amercia"!)

D.C., "Chocolate City" Now White Chocolate?

A curious result from the 2010 Census (which generally showed how America in general is becoming less white) is that Washington, D.C., a city which was nearly 71% Black is now only plurality African-American.

The Washington Post reports:

The number of African Americans residing in the District plummeted by more than 11 percent during the past decade, with blacks on the verge of losing their majority status in the city for the first time in half a century.

According to census statistics released Thursday, barely 50 percent of the District’s population was African American in 2010 — a remarkable shift in a place once nicknamed “Chocolate City.” 

The black population dropped by more than 39,000 over the decade, down to 301,000 of the city’s 601,700 residents. At the same time, the non-Hispanic white population skyrocketed by more than 50,000 to 209,000 residents, almost a third higher than a decade earlier. 

The census statistics showed a steeper change for both blacks and whites than had been estimated. With the city ‘s black population dropping by about 1 percent a year, African Americans might already be below the 50 percent mark in the city.

In a city that prides itself on being a hub of black culture and politics, a majority of residents have been black since whites began moving to the suburbs en masse at the end of World War II. By 1970, seven out of 10 Washingtonians were black.

The loss of blacks comes at a time when the city is experiencing a rebound, reversing a 60-year-long slide in population and adding almost 20,000 new residents between 2000 and 2010.

I wonder if the change in racial demographhics will make it more likely that D.C. will finally become  a state and get actual representation in Congress? It has a larger population than Wyoming, which of course is overwhelmingly white. It's within striking distance of Vermont and North Dakota's population in size as well.
Of course the bigger question is "Does it matter if the racial demographics of a city (or country) change over time?" And, what is race, anyway?

Speaking of race, you MUST read this Daily Kos article on the nature of race which ran yesterday. Here's a small excerpt:

Historical research has shown that the idea of "race" has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields argue that "race" as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.

From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.

As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.

I strongly encourage you to read the piece (which includes a quiz!), which was written by Denise Oliver Velez.