Hispanics Aren't Marginalized, Oppressed Victims

At Fox News, "Rev. Samuel Rodriguez: Hispanics, Latinos thriving – we are not marginalized, oppressed victims: Please stop calling us marginalized, oppressed victims."

Latinos Now the Majority at the University of California

This seems, umm, anticlimactic.

And Michelle Malkin's got the rejoinder:

They're allowed to celebrate this, but if I talk about it, I'm a racist conspiracy theorist...

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 16, 2020

A New Social Movement in Los Angeles?

This is interesting.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How L.A. teachers scored a decisive political victory with strike":

Los Angeles is often criticized for its lack of public engagement and low voter turnout, and as a place where neighborhoods have a sense of community but the city overall feels fragmented.

But the nation saw a different side of L.A. when last week’s teachers’ strike galvanized the city. Thousands of red-clad teachers marched and rallied on the streets, drawing vocal support not just from residents and parents but from politicians and celebrities eager to back their cause.

By keeping a tight message and engaging parents, the United Teachers Los Angeles union and its president, Alex Caputo-Pearl, were able to highlight issues of inequality and L.A.’s struggling school system in a way that supporters hope has lasting significance.

Over the six-day walkout, teachers made the strike less about their salaries than about class sizes, services for children and the future of public education. Many parents in Los Angeles have fled traditional public schools in favor of charter schools, which are expanding rapidly across the city.

The strike may not have hurt the allure of charters to parents frustrated with the Los Angeles Unified School District. But it brought attention to the financial toll that defections are having on the school system and the difficult learning conditions, especially for students from lower-income families, in L.A. Unified.

The union’s message was that “public education is rooted in democracy and in the tradition of the school district,” said Charles Kerchner, a labor relations historian and professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University. “They were actively selling this idea to parents, to the public.

“UTLA and Alex handled this brilliantly,” he added. “It almost became a movement.”

The long-term implications of the strike are unclear. The teachers union remains in an uncertain position, with half the current members of the L.A. Board of Education having been elected with backing from charter advocates. That could change in March with a special election for the board’s seventh seat.

Moreover, it’s hard to know whether other labor movements would have similar success without the issue of childhood education in the forefront.

Some see the teachers’ strike as a larger increase in political engagement that began with the election of President Trump in 2016 and the many protests that came with the blue “resistance” in California. That continued in 2018, when Democrats took several key House seats across the state in areas once considered safely Republican.

“You’re having a consecutive number of events where people are in the streets or supporting people in the streets,” said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A., adding that there’s a “spirit of resistance, a spirit of support” in California in the Trump era.

Time will tell how long this shift will last. Los Angeles has become notorious for its low voter turnout in local elections, which hit an all-time low of about 18% in the 2009 mayor’s race and was only 20% when Eric Garcetti was reelected.

Union leaders said preliminary counts show the agreement was approved by a large majority, but the contract between L.A. Unified and the teachers union wasn’t universally embraced by educators, and UTLA’s Facebook page was flooded with complaints Tuesday about the agreement. Some teachers complained it was vague on details and watered down. Also, gains were modest on reducing class sizes compared with what union leaders said publicly.

Still, the union achieved its goal, at least temporarily, of uniting parents, educators and their supporters. Downtown rallies backing educators over the last week followed several other recent marches in Los Angeles focused on gun violence and women’s rights.

The strike gained momentum as images of marching teachers spread, but parents also played a key role as they picketed alongside their children’s teachers or had their kids stay home...

More.

I don't like teachers' unions, but I like school administrators even less. Thus I'm giving it up for UTLA, and especially for the families which might indeed see some improved services.

The school district's student population is more than 75 percent Latino. A lot of these students are the first in their families to get a grade school education, if not a majority of them. If these same students go on to college and graduate, their levels of education are light years away from their parents and grandparents, most of whom came to the U.S. as scrub-poor migrant laborers.

Do something for the people, the regular people, in this state for once. The Bay Area elites, with the Sacramento Democrat cronies, are killing California. And don't even get me going about the stupid Eric Garcetti Democrat-Party machine in Los Angeles. Ugh, the evil is through the roof with these ghouls.

Indian Slavery

This is pretty fascinating -- and tells you something about how far down identity politics has infested historiography and cultural assimilation.

At NYT, "Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico. Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It."

Latinos with roots in New Mexico are discovering ancestors who were Native American slaves, prompting new debates over identity https://t.co/B6VpNjXmq1

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 28, 2018

Illegals Have Definitely Taken Over

I tweeted.

Far left Robin Abcarian wasn't pleased.

Oh brother. Illegals have definitely taken over. #StopAmnesty #BuildTheWall #NoDACA #BanRefugees https://t.co/wLvq9OdIMW

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 7, 2017

Donald. Come on. https://t.co/whhp3b3ueV

— Robin Abcarian (@AbcarianLAT) October 7, 2017

Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios

At Amazon, Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890.

Violence Breaks Out in Anaheim as Off-Duty Cop Scuffles with 13-Year-Old Boy (VIDEO)

Everything's going to be videotaped nowadays.

And a single off-duty cop would be having a hard time anyway, surrounded by a gang of young teenage hoodlums.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How an off-duty cop telling teens to stay out of his yard escalated to gunfire, protests and outrage":

⚡️ “Hundreds protest in #Anaheim after officer-teen confrontation” #TheOC https://t.co/ymp5kX8upm

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 23, 2017

The altercation on the tidy, suburban street in Anaheim apparently began with a complaint common in many neighborhoods: a group of teenagers walking through a neighbor’s yard on their way home from school.

But this seemingly mundane dispute spun out of control on West Palais Road on Tuesday when authorities say an off-duty Los Angeles police officer confronted the group. Other teenagers pulled out their cameras, filming the officer as he held a 13-year-old boy by the collar of his sweatshirt, trying to detain him.

The situation quickly escalated from there. At one point, another teen rushed the officer, sending him tumbling over a line of bushes. The officer then reached into his jeans and drew a gun, firing a single shot.

No one was hurt by the gunfire, which Anaheim police said was aimed at the ground. But footage of the encounter stirred uproar across the country, prompting criticism of the off-duty cop’s actions and questions over why investigators arrested two teenagers — but not the officer — at the scene.

As the video went viral Wednesday, more than 300 protesters took to the streets to protest the shooting. Police broke up the demonstration and arrested 23 people, but not before some vandalized the officer’s home.

The tension in Orange County’s largest city comes after several incidents in recent years in which Latino activists have protested police shootings that they felt unfairly targeted the city’s large Latino community. Many of the teens involved in Tuesday’s incident appeared to be Latino, and the officer appears to be white.

On Thursday, officials from both Anaheim and Los Angeles scrambled to calm the public’s concern.

“Like many, I am deeply disturbed and frankly angered by what it shows,” Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said about the footage of the incident. “The video shows an adult wrestling with a 13-year-old kid and ultimately firing a gun. … It should never have happened.”

Anaheim police are investigating the altercation itself while the Los Angeles Police Department and Inspector General are conducting internal investigations into the officer’s actions.

The Los Angeles Police Commission will ultimately decide whether the officer violated any LAPD rules during the encounter.

“I am very interested in knowing the facts of the incident based on the investigation by the department and the Office of Inspector General that is underway,” said commissioner Cynthia McClain-Hill. “Some of the actions — brief as that exchange caught on video may be — do not properly represent what I believe should be expected and reflected by a member of the Los Angeles Police Department when engaging members of the public, be it on-duty or off-duty.”

The officer, whose name has not been released by authorities, was removed from the field, which is standard protocol after shootings by LAPD officers.

An attorney representing the officer, Larry Hanna, declined to discuss the encounter in detail, citing the ongoing investigations. He also declined to name his client or describe his work with the LAPD, saying he was concerned for his safety.

“All of this will come out,” he said. “I just think that people should let the investigators do their job.”

The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers came out strongly against those who criticized the officer’s action...

More.

Santa Ana Votes to Condemn Trump's Eecutive Actions on Immigrants, Sanctuary Cities

Santa Ana's just a couple of cities over from Irvine. So lame. But what can you expect from a city that's roughly 80 percent Hispanic.

At the O.C. Register, "The Santa Ana City Council voted late Tuesday to prepare a resolution condemning President Trump’s executive orders withholding funds from sanctuary cities and barring immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S."

Rural Hispanic Voters Shifted to Donald Trump

Well, this certainly goes against the "racist" Trump voters smear.

At least 29 percent of Latinos supported Trump, which is more than those Hispanics supporting Mitt Romney in 2012.

Leftist are gobsmacked, I'm telling you.

At WaPo, "Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here’s why":

Fascinating: Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here's why. https://t.co/nVNbLdqf74 @gerry_cadava

— Kathy Cramer (@KathyJCramer) November 18, 2016

Many observers contend that Hispanic voters will shape the future of American politics. But it’s not yet clear exactly what their influence will be. There’s been debate about whether they may portend a permanent Democratic majority; vote according to ethnic backgrounds — Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American; or hold political points of view that vary by economics or region, much like other Americans.

With the 2016 election, we have a new set of data to help us investigate this question. My county-by-county comparison of election results in 2016 and 2012, drawn from data available at CNN.com, Politico.com, PBS.org and other sites, shows that rural white and rural Hispanic voters have a lot in common.

Or to put it another way, the election of 2016 revealed an urban/rural divide that was as strong as the white/Hispanic divide.

Election analysts have noted that Donald Trump ran up the vote in rural, largely white counties in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. He flipped or narrowed Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in others. Because these rural voters came out so strongly, states that hadn’t helped elect a Republican for a long time — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and most likely Michigan — delivered his electoral victory, however narrowly.

And here’s the surprise: many rural Southwestern counties with large Hispanic, predominantly Mexican populations, moved in Trump’s direction as well.

That wasn’t true in Southwestern states as a whole. States like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas remained blue or became less red. Hillary Clinton got strong Hispanic turnout in Sun Belt metropolises like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

But if you look closely at many largely Hispanic rural areas in these states, you find that Trump did better — and Hillary did worse — than did Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Voting in these counties was much like that in similar counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

When postelection reports suggested that Trump performed surprisingly well among Hispanic voters, the polling firm Latino Decisions rejected the claim. The firm specializes in polling Latino voters, and enumerated the risks of relying on exit polls to understand that electorate’s behavior. The firm vigorously defended its own election eve polls, which suggested that Clinton would rack up historically wide margins from Latinos.

But Latino Decisions, in defense of polls it conducted leading up to the election, has focused on overwhelmingly Hispanic precincts in more urban areas, not the rural communities that tell a different story.

In dozens of rural counties throughout the Southwest, Clinton performed worse in 2016 than Obama did in 2012, as you can see in the figure below. In Guadalupe County, N.M., about an hour’s drive east of Albuquerque, she received 17 percent less of the vote than Obama did four years ago — 53 percent compared with Obama’s 70 percent. In several other counties where Hispanics accounted for half to nearly all of the population — Rio Arriba, N.M.; Costilla, Colo.; Greenlee, Ariz.; and Duval, Tex., for example — Clinton took home roughly 10 percent fewer votes than did Obama in 2012. In many more heavily Latino counties, her votes lagged behind Obama’s by 3 to 8 points.

Even in the South Texas counties that Latino Decisions has named bulwarks of Clinton support — the Rio Grande Valley below San Antonio, where she won between 70 and 85 percent of the vote — she didn’t do as well as Obama had done four years earlier. In Brooks County, which, according to the 2015 American Community Survey, is 89.5 percent Hispanic, Clinton’s tally was 3.9 percent less than Obama’s. In Zavala County, which is 93.1 percent Hispanic, it was 5.6 percent less. In Duval County, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic, it was 9.8 percent less.

Meanwhile, as you can see below, Trump did much better among Hispanics in the rural Southwest than Romney did. He received a greater share of the vote than Romney had in more than a dozen counties with large Hispanic populations: six percent more than Romney in Starr County, Tex., which is 95.8 percent Hispanic; 7.5 percent more in Costilla County, N.M., which is 63.6 percent Hispanic; and 9.1 percent more in Duval County, Texas, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic.

Clinton may have received more votes than Obama did in many parts of South Texas, where, as a politically-motivated student at Yale Law School, she knocked on doors in predominantly Mexican neighborhoods for the McGovern campaign. But Trump also received more votes in South Texas than Romney did. Clinton rallied thousands more voters, but so did Trump. His supporters there matched the enthusiasm of Clinton’s, just as they did in dozens of rural counties with large Hispanic populations in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.

In fact, two Colorado counties where Hispanics constitute about half the population flipped from blue to red. Conejos County, which is 53.7 percent Hispanic, went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. So did Las Animas County, which is 42.6 percent Hispanic. In both counties, turnout was lower for Clinton than it had been for Obama, and higher for Trump than it was for Romney.

To be sure, some of these rural Southwestern counties are extremely small compared with the big cities where Hispanic support for Clinton was strong. In small counties, the Hispanic vote adds up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands — while in cities, it totals hundreds of thousands. Therefore, rural Hispanics won’t be credited with moving the needle much in one direction or the other.

So yes, there was a Hispanic “surge” in big Southwestern cities that helped Clinton hold on to New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, and helped make Trump’s margin of victory in Arizona and Texas narrower than it had been for any Republican in two decades. But that ignores the vote in rural counties across the country — including those that are largely Hispanic — that led to Trump’s victory.

Why would Hispanics vote for Trump, despite his many anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican statements?

One answer: poverty. The Hispanic communities in the rural Southwest that moved toward Trump were some of the poorest in their states.

Take San Miguel, Guadalupe, and Mora Counties in New Mexico, whose populations are 77.1, 79.2, and 80.2 percent Hispanic, respectively. These three counties have New Mexico’s lowest median household income, highest rates of unemployment, and lowest rates of labor market participation. The median income in these counties for families with a head of household between the ages of 25 and 44 is between $25,000 and $30,000 per year, or about half the national median income ($55,000) for families with heads in the same age range. These counties lost, on average, about 5 percent of their population between 2010 and 2015.

In other words, they’ve suffered the same tough economic circumstances as did some of the Midwestern counties that handed Trump the election. They’re more similar to than different from other forgotten counties across the United States, where voters upended the predictions of pollsters and shouted against the status quo.

Ruben Navarette Jr. wrote in The Daily Beast that the election “boiled down to a brutish tug-of-war between Latinos in the battleground states of the West … and working class whites in the Rust Belt” — let’s add the upper Midwest — and “in the end, Trump found enough white voters to offset losses with Latinos.”

But that’s only partly true. In reality, many rural Hispanics and working class whites pulled on the same side of the rope.​

Twists and Turns in California's 2016 Primary

The once-Golden State's going to have a very consequential primary, which is quite a surprise to most observers.

At LAT, "Donald Trump is about to blow up the California primary. Here's how":

The California electorate in the November general election will be far different than the makeup of voters who cast ballots in June. Obama won in 2012 with 59.3% of the vote.

If Trump becomes the Republican presidential nominee, political analysts expect a substantial anti-Trump movement in California during the general election, the first opportunity for non-Republicans to vote against him. Voter turnout among Latinos also would rise substantially, Madrid predicted.

“California has huge Spanish-language media markets … so you’re going to have much more reaction from the community,” Madrid said...

A great piece. Very informative.

RTWT.

Must Obama Reach Out to 'Angry White Voters'?

Actually, Obama hates "angry white voters."

I doubt he'd ever deign to "reach out" to them. Frankly, he's constantly demonizing them.

In any case, at Politico, "Why Obama Must Reach Out to Angry Whites:

For all the bad feelings that Donald Trump’s naked religious bigotry and race baiting are conjuring up, it is also providing our nation with an opportunity. The ugly rhetoric just might force the country to finally contend with a problem many don’t even want to acknowledge exists: that we are fast becoming a nation in which minorities make up a majority of the population. As a result, tens of millions of white Americans, accustomed for so long to having all the benefits of being the majority, are scared out of their minds—and it is this fear that Trump is exploiting so effectively. These feelings are emerging not because whites are all racists, but because they don’t know what that might mean for them and their children.

As long as angry, scared white Americans follow Trump and his ugly rhetoric, the racial divide in America will only deepen, and it will become increasingly difficult to solve the nation’s most pressing problems. So the question becomes: Who can counter Donald Trump?

Actually, there's no "naked religious bigotry" nor "ugly rhetoric." Trump's just speaking plainly. We've become a nation where minorities are exempt from criticism, to the point on national suicide.

Still more at that top link, FWIW.

From Decadence to Destruction in California

Check out Victor Davis Hanson's new collection of essays, The Decline and Fall of California: From Decadence to Destruction.

Plus, Hanson's classic on illegal immigration, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

In Historic Shift, More Mexicans Leaving the U.S. Than Entering (VIDEO)

This was at Pew Research the other day, "More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S."

And at the Sacramento Bee, "Study finds more Mexicans leaving the US than coming":

SAN DIEGO - More Mexicans are leaving than moving into the United States, reversing the flow of a half-century of mass migration, according to a study published Thursday.

The Pew Research Center found that slightly more than 1 million Mexicans and their families, including American-born children, left the U.S. for Mexico from 2009 to 2014. During the same five years, 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., resulting in a net flow to Mexico of 140,000.

The desire to reunite families is the main reason more Mexicans are moving south than north, Pew found. The sluggish U.S. economic recovery and tougher border enforcement are other key factors.

The era of mass migration from Mexico is "at an end," declared Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew's director of Hispanic research.

The finding follows a Pew study in 2012 that found net migration between the two countries was near zero, so this represents a turning point in one of the largest mass migrations in U.S. history. More than 16 million Mexicans moved to the United States from 1965 to 2015, more than from any other country.

"This is something that we've seen coming," Lopez said. "It's been almost 10 years that migration from Mexico has really slowed down."

The findings counter the narrative of an out-of-control border that has figured prominently in U.S. presidential campaigns, with Republican Donald Trump calling for Mexico pay for a fence to run the entire length of the 1,954-mile frontier. Pew said there were 11.7 million Mexicans living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of 12.8 million in 2007. That includes 5.6 million living in the U.S. illegally, down from 6.9 million in 2007.

In another first, the Border Patrol arrested more non-Mexicans than Mexicans in the 2014 fiscal year, as more Central Americans came to the U.S., mostly through South Texas, and many of them turned themselves in to authorities.

The authors analyzed U.S. and Mexican census data and a 2014 survey by Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The Mexican questionnaire asked about residential history, and found that 61 percent of those who reported living in the U.S. in 2009 but were back in Mexico last year had returned to join or start a family. An additional 14 percent had been deported, and 6 percent said they returned for jobs in Mexico.

Dowell Myers, a public policy professor at the University of Southern California, said it's lack of jobs in the U.S. — not family ties — that is mostly motivating Mexicans to leave. Construction is a huge draw for young immigrants, but has yet to approach the levels of last decade's housing boom, he said.

"It's not like all of a sudden they decided they missed their mothers," Myers said. "The fact is, our recovery from the Great Recession has been miserable. It's been miserable for everyone."

Also, Mexico's population is aging, meaning there's less competition for young people looking for work. That's a big change from the 1990s, when many people entering the workforce felt they had no choice but to migrate north of the border, Myers said.

While the U.S. economic recovery is sluggish, Mexico has been free in recent years from the economic tailspins that drove earlier generations north in the 1980s and 1990s. While many parts of Mexico suffer grinding poverty and violence, others have become thriving manufacturing centers under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Still more.

Democrats Move Left on Immigration, Republicans Move Right

Well, it must have taken Einstein to figure that out.

At LAT, "Democrats move left on immigration, GOP to the right":

American views on immigration have grown more polarized, with Republicans taking harder-line positions as Democrats and independents take more liberal stands, a new poll indicates.

The shift can be seen on several issues, including whether children born in the U.S. to people in the country illegally should be eligible for citizenship. Over the last nine years, Democrats have become steadily more supportive of so-called birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Republicans have become slightly more opposed to it.

Just more than half of Republicans favor amending the Constitution to end birthright citizenship, according to a new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Donald Trump is among the leading Republicans who have called recently for ending birthright citizenship, although Trump has argued the change could be made without amending the Constitution.

Fewer than 1 in 4 Democrats back an end to birthright citizenship, the poll found. That's a notable shift since 2006, when slightly more than 1 in 3 Democrats took that position. Among independents, 37% would back a constitutional amendment, down from 44% in 2006. Blacks and Latinos have both become more opposed to an amendment, as have Americans younger than 50.

A similar shift has taken place on the issue of building a fence along the entire U.S. border with Mexico. Overall public opinion has remained stable, with just less than half of Americans backing the idea. But support has grown in the GOP, from 65% in a 2007 Pew survey to 73% now. Democrats have gone in the opposite direction, from 37% support to 29%.

Despite the intense campaign debate among Republicans over immigration, two-thirds of Republicans continue to say that they believe that at least some immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be allowed to stay. One-third say they should not be allowed to stay, the position taken by Trump and several other GOP presidential candidates.

Asians to Be Top Immigrant Group by 2065

Look, we've had a huge surge of immigration over the last two decades, at least. It doesn't bother me, as long as people come legally and they learn to speak English. But no doubt we're reaching a tipping point. Irvine is a major ethnic enclave, especially for Asians. I don't love Chinese and Korean (or Japanese) drivers, but it's not the end of the world. The 99 Ranch Market is just across the way, so when I get coffee in the morning at the 7/11 just next door, sometimes, between the Asians and the Mexican day-laborers, there's hardly anyone speaking English. I just say hello, and hopefully they'll say hello back. If not, they're probably just off the boat.

In any case, USA Today has the general trends, "U.S. foreign-born population nears high."

And at the Los Angeles, "Asians to surpass Latinos as largest immigrant group in U.S., study finds":

Asians are likely to surpass Latinos as the nation's largest immigrant group shortly after the middle of the century as the wave of new arrivals from Latin America slows but trans-Pacific migration continues apace, according to a new study of census data.

The surge of immigration that has reshaped the American population over the last half century will transform the country for several decades to come, the projections indicate. Immigrants and their children are likely to make up 88% of the country's population growth over the next 50 years, according to the study by the Pew Research Center, which has tracked the effects of immigration on the country's population for the last several decades.

The foreign-born, who made up just 5% of the nation's population in 1965, when Congress completely rewrote the country's immigration laws, make up 14% today, the study found. They are projected to be 18% of the population by 2065.

Increasingly, that population growth will involve Asians. Unlike the Latino population, which mostly shares a common language, Spanish, and many cultural traits, the census category of Asian takes in a vast array of ethnic and language groups, including Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Indians and Pakistanis.

Already, Asian Americans make up about 6% of the nation's population, up from just 1% in 1965. By the middle of the century they will total 14%, the projections say.

Asians are expected to constitute 36% of the immigrant population by 2055, surpassing Latinos, who by then will be 34% of immigrants, the study indicates. Since many Latinos are third- or fourth-generation Americans, they will remain a larger share of the total population, close to one-quarter of all Americans by midcentury.

Currently, Americans have a more positive view of Asian immigrants than of Latinos, according to a survey Pew did along with the population projections.

Nearly half of American adults, 47%, said immigrants from Asia have had a mostly positive effect on American society. Only 26% said the same about immigrants from Latin America, with 37% saying they thought the effects of Latin American immigration had been mostly negative. Immigrants from the Middle East fared worse in public opinion, with just 20% saying their effect on the country has been mostly positive, and 39% saying their impact has been mostly negative.

The survey found that 59% of Americans said immigrants, overall, were not learning English in a reasonable amount of time...

Yeah, like I was saying, it'd be better if all these newcomers would learn the language, sheesh.

But keep reading.

Education Gap Between Rich and Poor Is Growing Wider

But what about all that hopey-changey stuff?

At the New York Times:

The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites.

The civil rights movement, school desegregation and the War on Poverty helped bring a measure of equity to the playing field. Today, despite some setbacks along the way, racial disparities in education have narrowed significantly. By 2012, the test-score deficit of black 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds in reading and math had been reduced as much as 50 percent compared with what it was 30 to 40 years before.

Achievements like these breathe hope into our belief in the Land of Opportunity. They build trust in education as a leveling force powering economic mobility. “We do have a track record of reducing these inequalities,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University.

But the question remains: Why did we stop there?

For all the progress in improving educational outcomes among African-American children, the achievement gaps between more affluent and less privileged children is wider than ever, notes Sean Reardon of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford. Racial disparities are still a stain on American society, but they are no longer the main divider. Today the biggest threat to the American dream is class.

Education is today more critical than ever. College has become virtually a precondition for upward mobility. Men with only a high school diploma earn about a fifth less than they did 35 years ago. The gap between the earnings of students with a college degree and those without one is bigger than ever.

And yet American higher education is increasingly the preserve of the elite. The sons and daughters of college-educated parents are more than twice as likely to go to college as the children of high school graduates and seven times as likely as those of high school dropouts.

Only 5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34 whose parents didn’t finish high school have a college degree. By comparison, the average across 20 rich countries in an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is almost 20 percent.

The problem, of course, doesn’t start in college.

Earlier this week, Professor Waldfogel and colleagues from Australia, Canada and Britain published a new book titled “Too Many Children Left Behind” (Russell Sage). It traces the story of America’s educational disparities across the life cycle of its children, from the day they enter kindergarten to eighth grade.

Their story goes sour very early, and it gets worse as it goes along. On the day they start kindergarten, children from families of low socioeconomic status are already more than a year behind the children of college graduates in their grasp of both reading and math.

And despite the efforts deployed by the American public education system, nine years later the achievement gap, on average, will have widened by somewhere from one-half to two-thirds.

Even the best performers from disadvantaged backgrounds, who enter kindergarten reading as well as the smartest rich kids, fall behind over the course of their schooling.

The challenges such children face compared to their more fortunate peers are enormous. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are seven times more likely to have been born to a teenage mother. Only half live with both parents, compared with 83 percent of the children of college graduates.

The children of less educated parents suffer higher obesity rates, have more social and emotional problems and are more likely to report poor or fair health. And because they are much poorer, they are less likely to afford private preschool or the many enrichment opportunities — extra lessons, tutors, music and art, elite sports teams — that richer, better-educated parents lavish on their children.

When they enter the public education system, they are shortchanged again...

Keep reading.

More funding and additional education reforms will have only a marginal impact on improving student achievement, and hence reducing inequality. The most significant gains are likely to come from changes in the culture, especially the strengthening of the family in minority communities. It would help, too, if public schools were freed from the tyrannical and debilitating control of the Democrat-left and the corrupt teachers unions, which will do nothing to improve educational performance if such reforms weaken their power.

Frankly, if the Obama administration would just start a minority education voucher program so that poor families could afford to send their kids to schools like Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., then we'd be a lot better off.

Roman Catholic Church Rises and Falls on Tides of Immigration

This is fascinating.

At the New York Times, "Pope Francis to Find a Church in Upheaval":

MERCED, Calif. — More than 5,000 parishioners packed the pews, the choir loft and the vestibule on a recent weekend at Sacred Heart Church here in California’s Central Valley for five Masses — four of them in Spanish. Young Hispanic families spilled outside onto the steps, straining to hear the homily over the roar of an elevated freeway across the street.

Across the country in Philadelphia, there is only one weekend Mass now at Our Lady Help of Christians, a church built by and for German immigrants in 1898. The clock in its tower has stopped. The parochial school next door is closed. Only 53 worshipers, most of them with white hair, gathered for Mass on a recent Sunday in the soaring Gothic sanctuary.

The Roman Catholic Church that Pope Francis will encounter on his first visit to the United States is being buffeted by immense change, and it is struggling — with integrating a new generation of immigrants, with conflicts over buildings and resources, with recruiting priests and with retaining congregants. The denomination is still the largest in the United States, but its power base is shifting.

On the East Coast and in the Midwest, bishops are closing or merging parishes and shuttering parochial schools built on the dimes and sweat of generations of European immigrants. In many parishes, worshipers are sparse, funerals outnumber baptisms, and Sunday collections are not enough to maintain even beloved houses of worship.

In the West and the South, and in some other unexpected pockets all over the country, the church is bursting at the seams with immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, but also from Asia and Africa. Hispanic parents put their children on waiting lists for religious education classes and crowd into makeshift worship spaces, but avoid predominantly Anglo parishes because they do not always feel welcome there.

“The ethnic face of the church is changing, and the center of gravity and influence in the church is shifting from the East to the West, and from the North to the South,” Archbishop José H. Gómez of Los Angeles said...

More.

RELATED: At the Los Angeles Times, "Latino influence on Catholic Church is a backdrop to Pope Francis' visit."

Hillary Clinton Makes it a Contest (VIDEO)

I'm not sure if anyone seriously thinks Bernie Sanders can win the Democratic nomination. There's a big difference between mobilizing large protests versus mobilizing a big turnout on election day, and certainly the balance of institutional machinery lies with Clinton.

But we'll see. Well see.

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Poll: Clinton's lead over Sanders grows."



And ICYMI, "Doesn't An Apology Mean Saying You Were Wrong?"

Doesn't An Apology Mean Saying You Were Wrong?

This is perfect, from the letters to the editor, at the Wall Street Journal, "I remember when apologizing meant saying, 'What I did was wrong. I am sorry'."

Socialize This, America: Bernie Sanders on the Cover of Time Magazine

He should be on the cover of Time.

At least Sanders is running a real campaign, with real grassroots support, unlike some other Democrat in the race.

See, "The Gospel of Bernie":

With each twist and wrinkle of this election season, which is as wide-open and unscripted as any presidential cycle in living memory, we see more clearly that these are special times in American politics, baffling times, times to challenge categories and scramble expectations. The Internet has killed the kingmakers. Freshness beats incumbency, while the perception of sincerity beats all. There is no room for focus groups in the elevator to the top of the polls; America wants its candidates straight up and packing a kick. This is how a squinty-eyed New Yorker goes from shooting his cuffs and hawking condos to the head of the GOP pack. It’s how Bernie Sanders can join the Democratic Party in April and by August be battling for first place in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Without a single TV ad–or a single congressional endorsement–Sanders has exposed the weakness of the party’s Clintonian establishment while at the same time spotlighting its hunger for an ideological savior. Polls now indicate that if the nominating contests were held tomorrow, Sanders would edge out Clinton in Iowa and beat her in New Hampshire by 10 points. Nationally, he has cut Clinton’s lead from an impregnable 46 points to a crumbling 21 points in just two months.

But even those metrics don’t convey the extent of the Sanders phenomenon. At Clinton events, campaign staffers section off floor space before her speeches to make her crowds look densely packed. Sanders needs no barriers. His audiences are authentically huge–28,000 in Oregon, 11,000 in Arizona, 7,500 in Maine. His volunteer army, meanwhile, though mostly self-organized online, numbers more than 182,000 people spread out from rural Alaska to the Florida Keys, people who have asked the campaign how to improvise events, knock on doors and spread the gospel from campus quad to living room to farmer’s market.

Win or lose, Sanders seeks to transform his party and redeem American politics through an epic battle against some of the wealthiest powers in human history. “A lot of people have given up on the political process, and I want to get them involved in it,” he tells TIME. “In this fight we are going to take on the greed of the billionaire class. And they are very, very powerful, and they’re going to fight back furiously. The only way to succeed is when millions of people stand up and decide to engage.”

This is not just a campaign, says Sanders. It is a “movement,” a “revolution.” He is not only after delegates; he plans to “raise the political consciousness.” Contrast this with the message Clinton conveyed during a meeting this summer with a group of activists. Consummate political engineer, virtuoso of the knobs and dials of public opinion, Clinton said, “Look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” David Axelrod, the onetime guru to Barack Obama, brutally mocked the plodding story line. “Hillary: Live With It,” tweeted Axelrod, “is no rallying cry.”

RTWT.