If you've ever read progressive blogs then no doubt you, like me, have heard complaints about the netroots being stereotyped as all full of Matt Yglesias types: young, male, persons. The complaints are always backed up with statistics, but actually attending the conference really brings it home. By eyeball, the attendee pool here is whiter than the United States as a whole (and certainly whiter than the Democratic Party voting base as a whole) and does seem to include fewer genuinely old people, but it's a very, very, very mixed-aged group of very normal looking people.
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Netroots Demographics
02 Aug 2007 04:17 pm
Comments (58)
The key phrase is: "normal looking."
What would you say is the Birkenstock to Normal ratio? How many don't have ponytails? Are they giving out bags to carry useful information around in, and, if so, are they recyclable?
Re Matthew's comment: "no doubt you, like me, have heard complaints about the netroots being stereotyped as all full of Matt Yglesias types: young, male, persons."
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You left out "virginal" .
Isn't Matt technically... hispanic?
There are a lot of ex-hippies from the boomer generation who have been into kos since the beginning. Ex-hippies were a big chunk of Dean's core support.
"Isn't Matt technically... hispanic?"
No, he's a rich white Jew. Just as Jews in German-speaking countries took on German names (e.g., Klein), so Jews in Spanish-speaking countries took on Spanish-sounding names. And yes, many of us with Spanish names who trace our ancestry to the Iberian peninsula are 100% caucasian, not mestizo or mullato like most American 'hispanics'.
Funny that Matt is surprised that the YearlyKos bunch is so young and white. I'll make another prediction: Most of them, like Matt, were able to avoid going to high schools with ghetto blacks. If they had, they wouldn't have grown up to be liberal.
Thanks.
What's the male to female ratio?
Isn't Matt technically... hispanic?
Since Matt often seems to not read his comments threads: What's "technically" mean? "Hispanic" or "latino" doesn't necessarily imply "not white". And Matt's ostensibly Hispanic (Cuban, right?) heritage isn't the entirety (or even the majority?) of his background.
Most of them, like Matt, were able to avoid going to high schools with ghetto blacks. If they had, they wouldn't have grown up to be liberal.
Because "high schools with ghetto blacks" have proven to be factories for conservative thought?
The activist Democrats in Northern Virginia are at least 95% white. The Democratic voters are more like 50-70% white.
If going to school with "ghetto blacks" makes you conservative, then we have finally disproved the notion that George W. Bush is in anyway "conservative."
Juan, your idiocy is nauseating. Please suffocate on your own smugness for all our sakes.
My observation has been that a lot of the influential segments of American society are almost as white male-dominated as in 1960, especially those where affirmative action doesn't apply, such as at liberal netroots conferences or as CEOs of Fortune 500 firms.
Political blogging, for example, is overwhelmingly dominated by white males, plus the occasional upper-caste Indian. Writing Hollywood movies might be more white male dominated than in 1960 -- whites still make up 94% of big movie screenwriters, and the male to female ratio apppears to have increased as action became more important than dialogue.
Huh, Steve Sailer posted two comments at exactly the same time. Very impressive dexterity.
@Steve Sailer: 'Cos these broads just don't know when to shut up, amirite?
Steve, Francois Girbaud called... He wants his understanding of racial dynamics back.
What's particularly striking is the under-representation of Hispanics, who now make up 1-7th of the residents of the country, in just about any quasi-elite organization, other than legislatures where the Voting Rights Act mandates the creation of majority-minority districts, and other affirmative-action influenced entities.
That Matt Yglesias might just be the best-known Spanish-surnamed pundit in the country is bizarrely ironic.
Funny that Matt is surprised that the YearlyKos bunch is so young and white.
Isn't that the opposite of his point? The stereotype is that the netroots is young. But in fact as Matt (and statistics) says:
t's a very, very, very mixed-aged group
Survey after survey shows the netroots has a relatively normal distribution of ages with a peak in the 35 to 45 range. It's mostly composed not of teens and twenty-somethings but instead of mature adults who are in aggregate more male, white, educated, and well-to-do than the population at large.
How something could be bizarrely ironic is beyond me, unless of course you turn out to be Clayton Bigsby from Dave Chappelle's notorious "Blind Klansman" sketch.
You know what I'd be doing if I were there (other than having fits about the lack of topographical variety of course)? Going to the local 99 Cents store to buy several packages of luncheon meat, and then leaving the contents next to each granola bowl I could find. C'mon, MattY, fight the power, wherever it be.
So why are semi-elite non-quota organizations staying white male-dominated? Here are some hypotheses, based on statistical generalizations. (I realize that thinking statistically is politically incorrect, but the universe works stochastically):
- Apparently, African-Americans have in recent decades tended to lose interest in fields that they can't dominate numerically and thus culturally: e.g., they've come to dominate the NBA and NFL, while losing interest in baseball. Blacks don't seem to want to be tokens anymore. For instance, from 1964-1986, five different black guys won a total of 23 PGA golf tournaments. In the last 20 years, however, only the 1/4th black Tiger Woods has won anything on the PGA. Going to a netroots conference, for instance, probably strikes most black guys as something for particularly lame white nerds.
- Hispanics are vastly under-represented in most influential fields of civil society, perhaps for deep cultural reasons -- e.g., there's little civil society in Mexico.
- East Asians are doing well, but tend to be a little less assertive and little less interested in politics and the like.
- Women just aren't that interested in broadcasting their opinions to the world. They love to tell you their opinions personally, but telling the world about how to reform telecom policy tends to strike them as a waste of time.
- So, that leaves the main exception, South Asians, who tend to be very well-educated, quite verbal, and quite interested in politics and public affairs.
Gregorio,
If you haven't noticed, George W. Bush has some liberal-egalitarian positions on race. You may have noticed, for example, that he has appointed more blacks and Latinos to cabinet and other senior positions than any previous president. You may have also noticed that one of his two signature domestic policy achievements -- the No Child Left Behind Act -- is predicated on the belief that the only thing keeping ghetto blacks from doing as well in school as whites is a lack of money and objective testing.
Had Bush had any exposure to this demographic in high school (instead of going to an elite prep school followed by an Ivy League college, as MY did), he wouldn't have proposed and signed into law such a silly Act.
God. This post isn't even really about race and it still attracted Steve Sailer. It's like the word "white" is a smear of peanut butter that all by itself brings out the roaches.
"So, that leaves the main exception, South Asians, who tend to be very well-educated, quite verbal, and quite interested in politics and public affairs."
If they can figure out the politics in India, commenting on American politics must be like child's play for them.
Wow. Steve Sailer's 5:31 post managed to include every lazy stereotype I've ever encountered. "Asians are good at math. Women like to keep their opinions to themselves." (yeah, tell that to my wife! ha!)
"What's particularly striking is the under-representation of Hispanics"
Steve, why is YearlyKos so named?
As ethnic diversity increasingly undermines communal values (Putnam's study only confirming what everyone knew anyway), the Internet has become the conduit where us whites can still get together and have a good time.
Good point: Markos Moulitsas, while not Spanish-surnamed, is half-Salvadoran.
"Good point: Markos Moulitsas, while not Spanish-surnamed, is half-Salvadoran."
And he's half-greek. is the half-greek part white? Buehler?
Something else fascinating was how apathetic white liberals below the Washington DC insider level were about Ted Kennedy's recent immigration bill.
"Something else fascinating was how apathetic white liberals below the Washington DC insider level were about Ted Kennedy's recent immigration bill."
I wish you were fascinating, Sailer, instead of just being a creepy dude who's obsessed with how the darkies are about to overrun civilization.
Maybe they appreciate that legitimising so many illegals will only hasten the bankrupting of their beloved welfare system.
- Hispanics are vastly under-represented in most influential fields of civil society, perhaps for deep cultural reasons -- e.g., there's little civil society in Mexico.
Okay, Isteve. I don't agree with you much, but I seldom find you ignorant. Why suggest that there is little civil society in Mexico? My visits indicate that there is considerably more civil society in Mexico than in the United States.
Always count on the wretched Steve Sailer for vile racism.
Steve Sailscum, could you be more of a scummy racist? I do not think so.
Useful proxies for the level of civil society are rankings for democracy and corruption:
As a Quarter-Latino civil-society-deficient American Leftist, I must say: STEVE SAILER STFU! Your penis will always be small.
Damn, civil discourse is just beyond me. It must be racial.
You smarties so quick to dismiss Steve Sailer as an ignorant racist might be interest to read Harvard's Steven Pinker praise Sailer in this New Republic essay, Strangled by Roots. The Sailerman is gradually getting more mainstream cred, and he's doing it the hard way, but going where the facts lead him instead of where the politically correct riches are.
the netroots being stereotyped as all full of Matt Yglesias types: young, male, persons.
I love that last comma. Yes, there is a stereotype that the netroots consists mainly of persons. Pernicious, that.
Politically correct riches! Whoo boy, I can't wait to get me grubby mitts on some o' dems!
You smarties so quick to dismiss Steve Sailer as an ignorant racist....
Rhetoric aside, I'd say they fear Sailer precisely because they realise that he's so knowledgable about matters of race. White liberals live in a state of denial about race and ethnocentrism.
I just want to know how a Jew ended up with a surname meaning Church.
Serious Analyst asks:
"Why suggest that there is little civil society in Mexico?"
In Mexico, as New York Times correspondent Alan Riding wrote in his 1984 bestseller "Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans," “Public life could be defined as the abuse of power to achieve wealth and the abuse of wealth to achieve power.” Anyone outside the extended family is assumed to have predatory intentions, which explains the famous warmth and solidarity of Mexican families. “Mexicans need few friends,” Riding observed, “because they have many relatives.”
Mexico is a notoriously low-trust culture and a notoriously unequal one. The great traveler Alexander von Humboldt observed two centuries ago, in words that are arguably still true, “Mexico is the country of inequality. Perhaps nowhere in the world is there a more horrendous distribution of wealth, civilization, cultivation of land, and population.” Jorge G. Castañeda, Vicente Fox’s first foreign minister, noted the ethnic substratum of Mexico’s disparities in 1995:
"The business or intellectual elites of the nation tend to be white (there are still exceptions, but they are becoming more scarce with the years). By the 1980s, Mexico was once again a country of three nations: the criollo minority of elites and the upper-middle class, living in style and affluence; the huge, poor, mestizo majority; and the utterly destitute minority of what in colonial times was called the Republic of Indians…"
Castañeda pointed out, “These divisions partly explain why Mexico is as violent and unruly, as surprising and unfathomable as it has always prided itself on being. The pervasiveness of the violence was obfuscated for years by the fact that much of it was generally directed by the state and the elites against society and the masses, not the other way around. The current rash of violence by society against the state and elites is simply a retargeting.”
These deep-rooted Mexican attitudes largely account for why, in Harvard scholar Robert D. Putnam’s “Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey,” Los Angeles ended up looking a lot like it did in the Oscar-winning movie “Crash.”
But what primarily drove down L.A.’s rating in Putnam’s 130-question survey were the high levels of distrust displayed by Hispanics. While no more than 12 percent of L.A.’s whites said they trusted other races “only a little or not at all,” 37 percent of L.A.’s Latinos distrusted whites. And whites were the most reliable in Hispanic eyes. Forty percent of Latinos doubted Asians, 43 percent distrusted other Hispanics, and 54 percent were anxious about blacks.
Some of this white-Hispanic difference stems merely from Latinos’ failure to tell politically correct lies to the researchers about how much they trust other races. Yet the L.A. survey results also reflect a very real and deleterious lack of co-operativeness and social capital among Latinos. As columnist Gregory Rodriguez stated in the L.A. Times: “In Los Angeles, home to more Mexicans than any other city in the U.S., there is not one ethnic Mexican hospital, college, cemetery, or broad-based charity.”
Mexicanz R dum.
Steve, that's either a heck of a post, at short notice, or it's lifted from a recent VDare column. ;)
Thanks. It's lifted from my "Fragmented Future" cover story on Robert D. Putnam's survey of social capital in forty American towns in the January 15, 2007 issue of The American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_01_15/cover.html
By the way, this trend over the last 20 years or so of the de-assimilation of African-Americans, who are leaving fields they don't dominate like baseball, mostly applies to black men. African-American women, in contrast, appear to be getting along better all the time with white women and making slow but steady progress assimilating.
I suspect among men, however, that issues of who has the dominant personality get in the way.
"I suspect among men, however, that issues of who has the dominant personality get in the way."
I am so glad that we have Matlock here to explain in simple, monocausal terms precisely what it is that leads to cultural segregation. Black men are just too egotistical to engage in activities like political blogging. Not with all those white people doing it so well already, anyhow. But if white dudes gave up, decided they were too lame to blog, why then, we'd see a surge of african-american commentary on the web. Why it's totally obvious! I see it all now. Except, well, if I recall my history, didn't, at one point, white dudes dominate all aspects of professional endeavor? Ah, you know what, I probably shouldn't think too hard about this, it might ruin the explanation for me, and I'm too stupid to think for myself anyway.
Wow, between all the times Sailer prefaces his comments with "I suspect that.." and "Maybe its because..." and "Apparently..." I was beginning to have doubts about the hard evidence and incontrovertible facts that he has to back it all up. But then I remembered that he said something about "stochastic" and I felt much better. I bet all those white, politically correct liberals don't even know what stochastic means!
The vDare scum have been poisoning the water both here and at Ross' place. This thread is the worst infestation I've seen in quite a while.
No, Sailer isn't "fascinating". He has some of the traits of an old fashioned USENET troll -- maniacal monomania, obsessive monitoring of posts for his pet topic, a tendency to flood comment threads, often with cut and paste text, and an inexplicable obliviousness to any opposing arguments. He's the Serdar Argic of the blog world.
On top of it, Sailer under the delusion that his professional failure is due to the fact that "The Man" (MSM, whatever) is trying to hide "the truth" that he's peddling. The prosaic reality is that Sailer is a failure becuase he just isn't very good at his job.
His writing lacks any sparkle. His opinions, far from iconoclastic, are dull retreads of 50s prejudices. He doesn't do investigative reporting, is crappy at popularizing scientific or social science breakthroughs (a la John Tierney), and just isn't smart enough to do high quality punditry.
Steve Sailer undoubtedly appeals to those who thought Steven Den Beste was a major thinker on world affairs. There's a niche for that, but I wouldn't call it "fascinating". More like "sad".
Steve Sailer,
I'm not sure you have thought through the logic of your supposition about why Hispanic Americans are underreprsented in the netroots community. If the lack of a civil society in countries such as Mexico (due to its elites running the society's institutions in a feudal & anti-meritocratic way) creates a strain of widespread cynicism and distrust towards non-Hispanics that is deep-rooted in Hispanic culture, why would that necessarily lead to an underrepresentation of Hispanics in the netroots community. After all, much of what has motivated the creation of the netroots community is a deep and abiding distrust of our society's elite institutions, such as the government, Big Business, organized religion, and the mainstream news media. If there was a societal venue that us sllegedly distrustful and cynical Lations should be drawn to, it is the netroots (which also has no national borders or official language to boot).
Moreover, I would think a similar dynamic would apply to African-Americans, who also tend to more cynical and distrustful about American society's elite institutions than whites would be. Again, if there was one venue the young, gifted, and Black should be drawn to in order to express their anger towards, cynicism about, and mistrust of white society, it is the netroots. No other mass media venue in our society gives African-Americans the unparalleled ability to confront white society's shortcomings without having to water down and adulterate their points of view, as demonstrated by the work of the late, great African-American blogger Steve Gilliard. Unlike other mass media, whose ownership is increasingly concentrated in white-dominated corporations who are concerned primarily with appealing to, and placating the concerns of, the American mainstream (i.e. middle-class whites who display little or no hallmarks of ethnicity), the netroots have virtually no institutional methods of censorship. Moreover, as you very well know, the blogosphere is very conducive to people of strong egos who like to call their own shots, without concern for the conventions & compromises of elite society.
For those reasons, your explanation for why Hispanics and Blacks are underrepresented in the netroots community is very lacking. Isn't the more likely answer that the netroots community tends to consist of people who possess at least an undergraduate level of education, and that Hispanics and Blacks tend to be underrepresented in that demographic in the first place, which is highly correlated with attributes found among members of the netroots class, such as being a reader of newspapers, a follower of political events, a frequent, consistent, informed & engaged voter, and being a professional with the skill sets and financial resources to own a PC and make frequent use of the resources of the Internet, isn't underrepresentation among the pool of college graduates in this country going to lead to underrepresentation in things such as the netroots class?
Request for more like this!
As a reader who comes back time and again expecting a nonconformist, individualist view that also pays attention to cultural change, I'm interested in hearing much more detail about "the attendee pool" from you.
"Kossacks" will be reporting what the speakers say and what they themselves see as important. I am less interested in hearing the same thing from you (what the speakers say and whether you disagree or argee,) than I am in hearing how the attendees react to the speakers, who they are, and what they are doing.
Be sort of an FBI infiltrator into Kosworld conformism for us at home, as it were, and also tell us all about those agitators. :-)
I hope Steve Sailer gets his ass beat by an unassimilated black man and an uncivil mexican working in harmony, and that he is repaired by an incompetent Indian doctor.
Isn't Matt technically... hispanic?
No, you're thinking of Matt's cousin, Tristan:
By the way, this trend over the last 20 years or so of the de-assimilation of African-Americans, who are leaving fields they don't dominate...
Indeed. I too have noticed over the last few decades that African-American men seem to be leaving the fields of managers, captains of industry, wealthy industrialists, etc., for their increasing inability to dominate those fields.
Oh my god, guilty white liberalism.
It's not guilty white liberalism to notice a lack of diversity. It's a sound concern. If progressives do not want to find themselves in the position of being resented by a portion of the Democratic base whose interests they do not represent and do not empathize with, then their lack of diversity is something they need to pay attention to.
Also, it really should be possible to distinguish a conservative convention from a progressive convention by looking at the attendees.
By the way, this trend over the last 20 years or so of the de-assimilation of African-Americans, who are leaving fields they don't dominate...
Not one of Steve's best points, but, to be fair, he's only made it in relation to sports, in particular, golf and baseball.
I'm not sure you have thought through the logic of your supposition about why Hispanic Americans are underreprsented in the netroots community. If the lack of a civil society in countries such as Mexico (due to its elites running the society's institutions in a feudal & anti-meritocratic way) creates a strain of widespread cynicism and distrust towards non-Hispanics that is deep-rooted in Hispanic culture, why would that necessarily lead to an underrepresentation of Hispanics in the netroots community.
Because the netroots community is white, and believe it or not, ethnocentric Hispanics and blacks don't really care about white people and their politics. There are plenty of forums where these people do their own thing, but it's practically invisible to us whites because we're not really interested in them either.
For those reasons, your explanation for why Hispanics and Blacks are underrepresented in the netroots community is very lacking. Isn't the more likely answer that the netroots community tends to consist of people who possess at least an undergraduate level of education..
Sailer is the last person you have to tell about the underachievement of blacks and Hispanics. The white blogosphere is a pretty meritocratic place where the higher IQ cream tends to rise to the top. One would expect most of the best bloggers to be white, simply due to the numerical superiority of whites and their higher average IQs.
Comments closed August 16, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Oh my god, guilty white liberalism. I'm not sure if that shrew Amanda Marcotte stole Yglesias's laptop, or if he's actually serious.
Posted by JFD | August 2, 2007 4:25 PM