Census Archives - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Economic Census, Women’s March, football

Some think NFL ratings are down because of players taking of a knee during the national anthem.

A few items that might not generate a whole post:

I went to New York City on January 16 to visit our center at Pace University. The librarians are divvying up the state to find out how we can serve them better. After that, the center director, Andrew. and I met with some folks from the Census Bureau, led by Andy.

Andy and his colleagues were touting the 2017 Economic Census, which will take place electronically in May 2018. This allows them to generate data that help businesses to make decisions on location, demographic trends and the like.

I was REALLY happy I didn’t go down the following day, because it snowed, not just in Albany, but in NYC. Snow in NYC makes travel dreadful.
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A bunch of folks met at my church to walk down to the Women’s March in Albany on January 20. Some guy commenting on my Times Union blog said there wouldn’t be 10 people at the event. I replied that there would be more than that going just from my church, and that was true.

I’m lousy at crowd size guesstimation, but I heard everything from three to six thousand. In any case, there were so many there, good friends of mine who were present I simply did not see. But there they were all over Facebook.

I did not know that nearly 60 protesters from the J20 anti-Trump march in DC last year are still subject to prosecution, though 129 indictments were dropped.
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I tend to watch football only in the last couple weeks of the season and into the playoffs. The first weekend I saw one game, and watched summaries of the three others online. The next weekend, I saw parts of games. But I recorded the last two games and watched them later. The trick, of course, is NOT to watch live TV, check email or social media. Ignorance in this process IS bliss.

There’s been reports that NFL viewing is down. Some think it’s because of players taking of a knee during the national anthem. Others believe it’s that, with the increased reporting of brain damage from CTE, people are less likely to watch it.

I think it is that the official reviews of every touchdown, almost every play in the last two minutes of each half, plus the coaches’ challenges take FOREVER. Still another reason for watching on tape delay. well, not TAPE…

Go, Philadelphia Eagles!

November rambling #3: The American In Me

A time-honored American political tradition: disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination

Australia cut off food and water at an offshore detention camp; asylum seekers there more determined than ever to find freedom

Meet the Teenagers Who Started a Film Production Studio in Their Refugee Camp

Where Brexit Hurts: The Nurses and Doctors Leaving London

From the November 26 lectionary: Matthew 25:44-45 (NIV): They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work

The recent tide of apologies by famous men have been ‘awful’

Right-wing troll James O’Keefe fails badly at baiting Washington Post with rape lie

Fear of a Black Princess: Britain’s Royal Racial Problem

Bringing an XX perspective to an XY world of movies

What Latino Film Critics Are Saying About Pixar’s ‘Coco’

I’ve seen a variation of this more than once on Facebook: “If we’re being technical here, Charles Manson isn’t actually a serial killer and never killed anyone that we know of.” I think this is pedantic; encouraging others to kill made him legally culpable

How evidence once thought destroyed helped free a man after 39 years behind bars for murder he didn’t commit

NYT responds to readers’ accusations of normalizing a Nazi sympathizer

Fear of crackdown haunts daily life of undocumented immigrants

Net Neutrality: What You Need to Know Now and Without it in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package

Thomas Brunell’s appointment “signals an effort by the administration to politicize” the decennial survey

Supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination

Supporter Says He’d Trust Trump Before Jesus Christ

He Now Says That Wasn’t Him on Access Hollywood Tape

Schroedinger’s Tax Hike

In the Land of Vendettas That Go On Forever

Why the rise of the robots won’t mean the end of work

NOW YOU CAN ENJOY GLUTEN FREE VERSIONS OF FAMOUS ART – As gluten-free options are on the rise in trendy circles, someone had the bright idea to go back into classical art and make it gluten-free too

David Brickman’s Italy photos

#Marie Severin is a Comic-Con Icon Award Recipient

#The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour at 50: The Rise and Fall of a Groundbreaking Variety Show

a few thoughts on bathroom signage

This New York Times Website Comment Is the Single Best Comment of the Year

These Aren’t the Tootsie Rolls You’re Looking For

Lessons from the Worst Food Hack of 2017

The strategically planned implosion of the Georgia Dome, captured by The Weather Channel

MUSIC

The Passenger (Randall Thompson) – Chris Trombley, baritone; Todd Sisley, piano

Simple Gifts (excerpt) – Aaron Copeland

Suite from JFK – John Williams

The American In Me – The Avengers

Abraham, Martin and John – Dion

In My Life – Jose Feliciano and Jools Holland

Obsession – OK Go

R. Stevie Moore

Hero and Leander by Victor Herbert

The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys

Neil Young Launching Online Music Archives December 1

Black with a capital B?

Between 1850 and 1920, the United States census classified those of African descent as black, negro, mulatto, quadroon or octoroon — depending on the visual assessment of the census taker.

Abraham Joshua Heschel walks with Martin Luther King Jr. on civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Courtesy of the American Jewish Archives

Arthur the AmeriNZ sent me an article about the new Speaker of the Nevada state assembly, Ira Hansen, and notes: “This guy obviously endorses the current Republican meme about how the relationship of blacks and the Democratic Party is akin to that of master and slave. I’d love to see your take on that, um, interesting propaganda point.”

Specifically: “[Hansen] wrote that African-Americans are insufficiently grateful for being given their freedom: ‘The lack of gratitude and the deliberate ignoring of white history in relation to eliminating slavery is a disgrace that Negro leaders should own up to.'”

And from this story: “The relationship of Negroes and Democrats is truly a master-slave relationship, with the benevolent master knowing what’s best for his simple-minded darkies.”

Lessee, what do I think? (Roger works mightily to rein in his sarcasm…)

1. I do recall the national Republican Party in the past few years giving at least lip service to the idea that the party needs to be more inclusive. To that end, Hansen is a big FAIL.

2. We’ve been “celebrating” the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War for over three years in this country, and the (very imperfect) narrative that Lincoln freed the slaves, the war was fought to free the slaves, has been front and center. What the heck is he talking about?

2a. Virtually all progress toward freedoms for black people in the United States has involved white people, from the slave owner who freed their “property” upon death to the abolitionists of the 19th century, to the activists before World War II, to the Freedom Riders in the 1960s, some of whom died for the cause. Truman desegregating the armed forces. Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights and Voting Acts, which have been undercut in recent years. Hansen’s argument is a fiction, of course.

3. I could buy the idea that the Republican party stood for “freedom” if so many of their votes and policies haven’t been to disempower the poor and middle class and restrict choices (except when it comes to guns).

4. Goodness knows that the Democratic party in the United States is corporatist and that President Obama is likewise. But maybe a smidgen less than the Republicans, which is why blacks still tend to vote Democratic.

But I really zeroed in on Hansen’s use of the word Negro, which apparently he often fails to capitalize. I happened upon this recent New York Times article about the racial designation.

Between 1850 and 1920, the United States census classified those of African descent as black, negro, mulatto, quadroon or octoroon — depending on the visual assessment of the census taker. By 1930, the Census Bureau offered just one of these categories: negro…

(I LOVE that 1890 census. Seriously.)

In the mid-1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois began a letter-writing campaign, demanding that book publishers, newspaper editors and magazines capitalize the N in Negro when referring to Black people.

While initially resistant, many mainstream publications accepted the request, “including The Atlantic Monthly and, eventually, The New York Times.”

The article is pushing for the B in Black to be capitalized, as it is a designation of the race. I know this argument rather well, having written a paper for a college sociology class in New Paltz c. 1974; the paper was “corrected” for not capitalizing black, er, Black. This is one of those issues where I just don’t much care one way or another. I get the point, I suppose, but with substantial issues of racism that still exist, it just doesn’t resonate much with me.

An older article describes whether black should be used as a noun or adjective. Given my long-stated disdain for “African-American” as narrow and inaccurate, I’m not much bothered by the noun use.

The idea of race

I never embraced the term ‘African-American’; it’s SEVEN syllables, versus one for ‘black’.

Leonard Pitts wrote a tremendous article, Dumbest idea in history? Race. You should read the whole piece.

Among other things, He explains that race became “that which would allow one person in rags to feel superior to another person in rags.” In the United States, “Whiteness was something that had to be learned and earned, particularly for those — Jews, Poles, southern Italians, Hungarians, the Irish — who were regarded as congenitally inferior. They were seen as white, says [Nell Irwin] Painter, but it was a sort of defective whiteness. They were ‘off white’ for want of a better term, and as such, a threat to American values and traditions. And they were mistreated accordingly until, over the passage of generations of assimilation, they achieved full whiteness.”

“As whiteness was invented, so was blackness. When Africans were gathered on the shores of that continent to be packed into the reeking holds of slave ships for the voyage to this country, they saw themselves as Taureg, Mandinkan, Fulani, Mende, or Songhay — not black. As Noel Ignatiev, author of How The Irish Became White, has observed, those Africans did not become slaves because they were black. They ‘became’ black because they were enslaved.”

This remained true, to an obsessive degree, even after slavery ended in the United States. Check out the detailed recording of black people in the 1890 Census: “Be particularly careful to distinguish between blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. The word ‘black’ should be used to describe those persons who have three-fourths or more black blood; ‘mulatto,’ those persons who have from three-eighths to five-eighths black blood; ‘quadroon,’ those persons who have one-fourth black blood; and ‘octoroon,’ those persons who have one-eighth or any trace of black blood.”

Incidentally, the Census Bureau is considering getting rid of the term ‘Negro’, leaving the terms ‘black’ and ‘African-American’.

If ‘black’ is an imprecise term, then ‘African-American’ is even more so, as Pitts explains: As the example of Charlize Theron, the fair-skinned, blond actress from South Africa, amply illustrates, it is entirely possible to come from [Africa], yet not be what we think of as ‘black.’ Indeed, Theron, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008, is by definition an African American. Yet, she fits no one’s conception of that term, either.”

I never embraced the term ‘African-American’; it’s SEVEN syllables, versus one for ‘black’. As long as the distinctions are made, I prefer the term ‘black’; after all, as Ken Levine noted, the James Brown anthem would sound very different if it were, “Say It Loud! I’m African-American and I’m Proud.”
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Pitts also wrote about How Black Is Black Enough?

A great story by Bob Costas about the late baseball player Stan Musial on an extended section from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 28, 2012.

N is for National Elections: November 6

As a New Yorker, I don’t see many of the ads that run in states such as Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

If you’re not from the United States, you may not be aware of the fact that the US is having its national election on Tuesday, November 6.

CONGRESS

Approximately 1/3 of the US Senate is up for election. Senators are elected on a statewide basis for six-year terms.

All 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for election. The number of districts in each state is dependent on its population. The breakdown changes every 10 years, after the decennial Census. The results of the 2010 Census will alter the makeup of the House for the 2012 election.

From the Census Bureau:
“Among the eight states gaining seats, Texas will gain four seats and Florida will gain two seats. The other six states (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington) will each gain one seat. Of the ten states losing seats, two states, New York and Ohio will each lose two seats. The other eight states (Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) will each lose one seat.”

Even the states that have the same number of seats will have to change its Congressional boundaries (except for the states with only one House member, of course), to reflect population shifts within the state, based on the doctrine of One person, one vote.

THE PRESIDENCY

The Democratic Party is fielding the incumbent, President Barack Obama of Illinois, with his running mate, Vice-President Joe Biden of Delaware. The Republican Party candidate is putting up former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt Romney, with his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Since about the year 1800, the President and VP have run as a ticket. There are a number of “third party” candidates who have approximately a zero percent chance of winning the election.

The nomination process is rather peculiar for both major parties. Some states have what are called caucuses, while other states have primaries. But even the rules of primaries vary from state to state, with some having “closed” primaries (only members of that party can vote) while others have more “open” primaries, (voters who are not enrolled in either party may vote, and in a few states, voters from the OPPOSING party may participate!)

The Presidential election is not decided by the popular vote nationally, but rather by the vote in each state, which gets representatives to something called the Electoral College. Each state gets electors equal to its number of members of Congress (House plus Senate); the District of Columbia also gets three electors.

In 49 of 51 geographies, except for Maine and Nebraska, there are winner-take-all contests. Thus, some states are not generally contested by the candidates. New York, it is surmised, will go to Obama; Texas is safe for Romney. Therefore, the race is generally run in the so-called battleground states.

As a New Yorker, I don’t see many of the Presidential campaign ads that run in states such as Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. A good political map can be seen at Real Clear Politics.
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Re: “the dozens of political tell-alls…that appear each election cycle.” The Center of Gravitas Best and Worst Seller List helps “you navigate which books would be likely to fly off the shelves and which would be reduced to the bargain bin.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 11