Saw this earlier:
This reminds me of, well, me. I'm a white man, and I have privileges associated with being a white man that others do not enjoy. I've written about this before, so I won't belabor the point. But I would disagree with one statement made in the work cited above. It states - the vast majority of Congress, the Supreme Court, and other powerful decision makers are white and male. This is true. However, I would change "vast majority" to "disproportionate majority". This changes the tenor of the sentence away from hyperbole (albeit probably true) to something that feels more accurate and rational.
If the Congress (and other government) were truly representational, the numbers would correspond to the actual population. For 2013, the numbers look like this for male/female proportions:
Total Population: 316,128,839
Male: 155,651,602 - or 49.24%
Female: 160,477,237 - or 50.76%
This means that of the 535 members of Congress, 272 would be female and 263 would be male. That would be the truly representative proportion.
Further, with regard to race, it would look like this:
Total Population: 316,128,839
White: 245,499,216 - or 77.66%
Black/African Am: 41,623,897 - or 13.17 %
AI/AN: 3,910,028 - or 1.24%
Asian: 16,632,553 - or 5.26%
NH/PI 722,417 - or 0.22%
Two or more: 7,740,728 - or 2.45%
This means that the Congress should be made up of 415 white folks, 70 black folks, 7 American Indian/Alaska Natives, 28 Asians, 1 Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and the remaining 14 would be of two or more races. This also gets further complicated if you were to consider "Hispanic" in there. The Census Bureau does not classify "Hispanic" as a race, rather as an ethnicity, and so it does not get tabulated into this kind of formula. Hispanic folks identify largely with the same kinds of proportions as we see above, racially speaking, with most folks identifying either as "White Hispanic" or "Black/African American Hispanic", with about half of the remainder being split between "American Indian/Alaska Native Hispanic" and "Two or more Hispanic".
This article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/05/the-new-congress-is-80-percent-white-80-percent-male-and-92-percent-christian/
describes the way the Congress actually looks. I particularly liked the charts at the bottom of the article, showing how the trends have gone over time. There is of course a very long way to go, yet. But the dialogue is happening, and the future looks bright. Shucks, it can only get better from here, right?
This reminds me of, well, me. I'm a white man, and I have privileges associated with being a white man that others do not enjoy. I've written about this before, so I won't belabor the point. But I would disagree with one statement made in the work cited above. It states - the vast majority of Congress, the Supreme Court, and other powerful decision makers are white and male. This is true. However, I would change "vast majority" to "disproportionate majority". This changes the tenor of the sentence away from hyperbole (albeit probably true) to something that feels more accurate and rational.
If the Congress (and other government) were truly representational, the numbers would correspond to the actual population. For 2013, the numbers look like this for male/female proportions:
Total Population: 316,128,839
Male: 155,651,602 - or 49.24%
Female: 160,477,237 - or 50.76%
This means that of the 535 members of Congress, 272 would be female and 263 would be male. That would be the truly representative proportion.
Further, with regard to race, it would look like this:
Total Population: 316,128,839
White: 245,499,216 - or 77.66%
Black/African Am: 41,623,897 - or 13.17 %
AI/AN: 3,910,028 - or 1.24%
Asian: 16,632,553 - or 5.26%
NH/PI 722,417 - or 0.22%
Two or more: 7,740,728 - or 2.45%
This means that the Congress should be made up of 415 white folks, 70 black folks, 7 American Indian/Alaska Natives, 28 Asians, 1 Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and the remaining 14 would be of two or more races. This also gets further complicated if you were to consider "Hispanic" in there. The Census Bureau does not classify "Hispanic" as a race, rather as an ethnicity, and so it does not get tabulated into this kind of formula. Hispanic folks identify largely with the same kinds of proportions as we see above, racially speaking, with most folks identifying either as "White Hispanic" or "Black/African American Hispanic", with about half of the remainder being split between "American Indian/Alaska Native Hispanic" and "Two or more Hispanic".
This article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/05/the-new-congress-is-80-percent-white-80-percent-male-and-92-percent-christian/
describes the way the Congress actually looks. I particularly liked the charts at the bottom of the article, showing how the trends have gone over time. There is of course a very long way to go, yet. But the dialogue is happening, and the future looks bright. Shucks, it can only get better from here, right?
Comments
I mean, I know what you are getting at, but hyperbole is exaggeration. This isn't an exaggeration. What it is, is pathetic.
And yes. It's pathetic.