Although official unemployment in New York City is 10.1 percent, a closer looks reveals an underlying complexity to the story. Rates of unemployment vary greatly across the city. Last month, the Fiscal Policy Institute released a report, New York City in the Great Recession: Divergent Fates by Neighborhood and Race and Ethnicity (PDF), investigating further.
Here are some numbers, first by neighborhood. Unemployment in Manhattan's Upper East and West Sides is 5.1 percent. Brooklyn's East New York stands at 19.2 percent. The South and Central Bronx have unemployment levels at 15.7 percent.
Now turning to unemployment rates by ethnicity, white non-Hispanics are experiencing an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent. 15.7 percent for black, non-Hispanic, and 11.8 percent for Hispanics. The Fiscal Policy Institute reports that unemployment is 6.1 percent for their Asian and other category.
(Difficult questions, at a very knitty-gritty level. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Another progressive democratic dream is that of a multicultural community of free dialogue. Instead of conflict between different groups, all in their own spaces, why can't we simply come together to collaborate? Every participant could value the myriad differences of each member, learning from each other's unique capacities. Together we could create spaces where everyone could participate as equals.
Research indicates, however, that spaces of free multicultural collaboration are very difficult to create. Monocultural, monoclass, etc. groups and communities actually work together much better than diverse ones. Ironically, diversity actually tends to reduce social trust and the likelihood that participants will engage with each other as whole persons.
These findings have important implications for community organizing efforts that seek to generate power across different groups. This research seems to support arguments I have made earlier that some separation between different cultural, class, racial, etc., groups is likely more productive for long term social action efforts.
Time for another look at the results maps for Guam, Indiana, and North Carolina:
Click to enlarge.
Overall, the results in all three contests were pretty solidly linked to demographics. Poblano has been busy running the regressions and making predictions, but for those of you who don't get much out of t-values, I've included some maps for several demographics below. And, the usual nationwide views. Finally, some evidence that Clinton's support in Appalachia isn't necessarily about race.
Just now, on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, there was a segment with Judy Woodruff interviewing Rep. John Lewis, a Clinton supporter, and an African-American religious leader's whose name I can't recall that was supporting Obama. The discussion was, of course, about race in the campaign. Lewis kept arguing that the Obama campaign was trying to inject race into the election by interpreting vague comments in a particular way, while the Obama support argued that the Clinton campaign and its surrogates was injecting race into the election by making the comments in the first place. The key seemed to be about arguing that the other campaign was injecting race into the election. It was an uncomfortable exchange to watch. Having avoided televised news for most of the last three years of my life, I was also taken aback by it, feeling convinced that it was a very, very bad argument for the Democratic Party. No matter who wins the nomination, many supporters of the losing campaigns will definitely feel jobbed by identity politics. That isn't the sort of wound that will heal overnight. With McCain currently the Republican frontrunner, that is also very, very bad news for Democrats in November.
When watching the discussion, I felt that the Obama campaign was more in the right on this one. Some of the things that Rep. Lewis said, such as not knowing what Robert Johnson meant by his "in the neighborhood" comment and implying that Donna Brazille and Rep. Clyburn were using this fight as an excuse to endorse Obama, struck me as way off base (he isn't the VP option I once thought he was). However, while I think that the Obama campaign is more in the right on this one, I also don't think that this is a coordinated effort on the part of the Clinton campaign, as some have argued (more in the extended entry):
While many of us have been raised on the Jeffersonian notion of arriving at consensus through rational, democratic discourse on a series of discrete issues, the truth is that cultural differences permeate almost every aspect of our political divide in America. There is very little difference between identity and ideology and between identity and issue politics. This can be easily demonstrated by noting how the main ideological institutions in this country--family / region, religion, education, work and media-are also the main determining factors in identity, and also in how someone will vote:
I have been following Belgian devolution politics recently. Belgium was one of the first countries to gain independence in the age of nationalism, one of the wealthiest countries in the world and the home to major international institutions like NATO and the European Union. Given all of this, my basic feeling is that if even the people of Belgium can't get along, resulting in even greater devolution for the various regions of the country, there is little hope left for the world. I am only partially joking when I write that.
The specter of devolution has increased over the past six months as Belgium has been unable to form a majority government. Fortunately, it now seems hope has a reprieve:
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt unveiled a new interim government Friday to end over six months of political paralysis and give the main parties more time to forge a long-term coalition.
The new emergency government, which Verhofstadt said will last no more than three months, will deal with the growing pile of urgent business that has accrued since a general election on June 10.
It immediately had another emergency on its hands, with security boosted in the capital Brussels after an alleged plot to spring an Al-Qaeda sympathiser from prison was foiled.
However it was the feuding between parties from Belgium's richer Dutch-speaking Flanders region and poorer francophone Wallonia to the south which was uppermost on Verhofstadt's mind as he outlined the goals of the interim cabinet he said would not serve beyond March 23.
I am generally opposed to separatist political movements, which I view as moving humanity in the wrong direction. In the case of peoples who are not really oppressed, I absolutely revile such separatist movements. The ethnically homogeneous nation state is, I believe, a relic of past. This isn't a time to create new ones. The future should be about pluralism, not the creation of new coherent "civilizations." If the only way we can prevent individuals from being oppressed on ethnic, religious or linguistic grounds is to cordon them off into homogeneous ghettos, then basically I think humanity is screwed.
In my view, classifying groups of people into distinct ethnic categories has always been unfeasible on both scientific and sociological grounds. Identity is simply too fluid and too "nurture" to be pinned down in any absolute form, especially across entire populations. Also, I think it has been mainly used as a tool of oppression rather than liberation. Even left-wing national liberation movements only came about because an oppressor imposed a sub-human identity upon an oppressed. I'm not saying that cultural differences should be dispensed with, just that governments should not exist to cater to individual cultures. Governments should secure self-determination for individuals, not for "peoples" or "civilizations." If the wealthy, internationalist Belgians can't even do this, then who can?
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