afrocentric

The list of Afrocentric “educators” whom the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has invoked in his media escapades since Sunday is a disturbing reminder that academia’s follies can enter the public world in harmful ways. Now the pressing question is whether they have entered Barack Obama’s worldview as well.

Some in Mr. Wright’s crew of charlatans have already had their moments in the spotlight; others are less well known. They form part of the tragic academic project of justifying self-defeating underclass behavior as “authentically black.” That their ideas have ended up in the pulpit of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, where Mr. Wright spoke at the NAACP’s Freedom Fund dinner on Sunday, reminds us that bad ideas must be fought at their origins — and at every moment thereafter.

At the NAACP meeting, Mr. Wright proudly propounded the racist contention that blacks have inherently different “learning styles,” correctly citing as authority for this view Janice Hale of Wayne State University. Pursuing a Ph.D. by logging long hours in the dusty stacks of a library, Mr. Wright announced, is “white.”

Blacks, by contrast, cannot sit still in class or learn from quiet study, and they have difficulty learning from “objects” — books, for example — but instead learn from “subjects,” such as rap lyrics on the radio. These differences are neurological, according to Ms. Hale and Mr. Wright: Whites use what Mr. Wright referred to as the “left-wing, logical and analytical” side of their brains, whereas blacks use their “right brain,” which is “creative and intuitive.”

When he was of school age in Philadelphia following the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision, Mr. Wright said, his white teachers “freaked out because the black children did not stay in their place, over there, behind the desk.” Instead, the students “climbed up all over [the teachers], because they learned from a ’subject,’ not an ‘object.’ ” How one learns from a teacher as “subject” by climbing on her, as opposed to learning from her as “object” — by listening to her words — is a mystery.

One would hope that Mr. Wright’s audience was offended by the idea that acting out in class is authentically black — it was impossible to tell what the reaction in the hall was to the assertion. But one thing is clear: Embracing the notion that blacks shouldn’t be expected to listen attentively to instruction is guaranteed to perpetuate into eternity the huge learning gap between blacks on the one hand, and whites and Asians on the other.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120952079425155103.html

surge

Hispanics now account for more than 15% of the U.S. population, and their surge is largely the result of births among people already in the country, according to new Census Bureau data. In an annual report, the Census said there are 45.5 million Hispanics in the U.S., up from 35.7 million in 2000, when they made up 12.6% of the population. It said growth among Hispanics was responsible for half of the U.S. population gains between 2000 and 2007.   …

Growth in spending by Hispanics is likely to outstrip that of the general population in coming years. Hispanics control more disposable income than any other minority group. The figure stands at $860 billion a year and is expected to hit $1.3 trillion by 2012, according to Jeffrey Humphreys, who monitors Hispanic demographic and economic trends at the University of Georgia’s Selig Center. In recent years, consumer-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble and other businesses have invested significantly more advertising dollars to reach Hispanics, both in Spanish and English.

Between 2000 and 2007, 16 states — among them West Virginia, Illinois and New Jersey — saw their white population decline, according to the new Census data. Over the same period, whites accounted for a majority of population growth in only 11 states. …  The center projects that the share of Hispanics in the working-age population will rise to 31% from 14%.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120959501599257567.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

working for Walmart

The issue in Hickory, like elsewhere in North Carolina, is not lack of access to higher education but the quality of jobs that should ensue from such an education. As Kenneth and Gwenn (“be sure to mention our chihuahua Petey”) told me, “people are finding that the college educations they gave their kids aren’t worth much, and both generations here in Hickory are working at Wal-Mart.” Realistically, that’s the problem with a degree from a third-tier school in a part of the country where good jobs are scarce. Likely there aren’t too many graduates of Duke and UNC Chapel Hill finding only Wal-Mart work.

Getting the nuances and particularities of a community just right is a problem, perhaps an inevitable one, for a candidate whose necessary life is in the campaign bubble. Not only do Senator Obama and his press entourage never really see towns like Hickory but they don’t see the opposition first-hand, as well.

Therefore, Senator Obama has no idea that, despite whatever her campaign may be up to, Senator Clinton hardly ever mentions him anymore. Despite his remark to Hickory that he’s told his staff the campaign needs to get away from going negative, Senator Obama laid into Senator Clinton, usually in conjunction with Senator McCain, several times during the afternoon. At one point he said, “Lately the other candidates aren’t talking about their ideas–they’re talking about me.” As far as Senator Clinton is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. She presents more ideas on the stump than she has time for. This misrepresentation incensed a group of women friends in Hickory. They had seen Hillary Clinton several times in North Carolina and had come to hear Barack Obama before finally making up their minds. Scratch twelve votes for him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/a-recharged-obama-alights_b_99347.html

the trajectory

What got Iceland in trouble was something more subtle: its banks got their money primarily from international investors, making the Icelandic miracle heavily dependent on foreign capital. …

In order to prop up the króna, and keep foreign capital from fleeing, Iceland’s central bank has had to raise interest rates to an astounding fifteen per cent, a move that will slow the economy to a crawl.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/04/21/080421ta_talk_surowiecki

GUANGZHOU, China — Facing the double-barreled threat of a falling dollar and weakening American demand, some Chinese exporters are starting to ask European customers to pay in euros.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30yuan.html

April 28 (Bloomberg) — Add another ailment to the U.S. misery index of soaring gasoline and wheat costs and falling home values: a federal deficit that is burgeoning as foreign investors led by the Japanese recoil from the slumping dollar. The Japanese, who own $586.6 billion, or 12 percent of U.S. government debt, had their worst quarter in Treasuries this decade, losing 7 percent in the first three months of the year as the dollar fell to the lowest since 1995 versus the yen, Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes show. Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co., Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. and Sumitomo Life Insurance Co., three of the nation’s four-biggest insurers, would rather accept the world’s lowest bond yields in Japan than buy U.S. debt.

“It’s too early to say the dollar will stop falling,” said Masataka Horii, head of the investment team in Tokyo for the $53.1 billion Kokusai Global Sovereign Open, Asia’s biggest bond fund. “The U.S. economy will be slow for a while.”

Japan owns more Treasuries than any other nation. After raising their holdings by $9.2 billion to $620.6 billion between March and July 2007, Japanese investors trimmed that stake by $34 billion through February, the Treasury said April 15. America relies on foreign investors, who own more than half the U.S. government debt outstanding, to finance a deficit that New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts will expand to a record $500 billion for the year ending Sept. 30, after a $163 billion gap last year. Without their support, long-term interest rates would be 0.9 percentage point higher, a 2006 Federal Reserve study found.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aYn0pNknEXOk&refer=exclusive

recession

“It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.” ….

Retail sales figures and consumer surveys confirm that Americans are strategically cutting corners, whether it is at the coffee house or the airport. (In: brewing coffee at home and flying coach. Out: Starbucks and first class.) In March, Americans spent less on women’s clothing (down 4.9 percent), furniture (3.1 percent), luxury goods (1.3 percent) and airline tickets (1.1 percent) compared with a year ago, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, a service of the credit card company that measures spending on 300 million of its cards and estimates purchases with other cards, cash and checks.

Wal-Mart Stores reports stronger-than-usual sales of peanut butter and spaghetti, while restaurants like Domino’s Pizza and Ruby Tuesday have suffered a falloff in orders, suggesting that many Americans are sticking to low-cost home-cooked meals. Over the last year, purchases of brand name cookies and crackers have fallen, according to Information Resources, which tracks retail sales. Sales of Nabisco graham crackers have dropped 7.5 percent, and Keebler Fudge Shoppe cookies have slipped by 12.3 percent. Not even beer is immune. Sales of inexpensive domestic beers, like Keystone Light, are up; sales of higher-price imports, like Corona Extra, are down, the firm said. Some are skipping drinks altogether. The number of people ordering an alcoholic drink fell to 31 percent last month from 42 percent last summer, according to a survey of 2,500 people conducted by Technomic, a restaurant industry consulting firm.

“People have started to shift spending as if we were in a recession,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard. ……

By no means has the economic downturn been bad for all product categories. For instance, sales of big-ticket electronics, like $1,000 flat-panel televisions and $300 video game systems, are on the rise, according to retailers and research firms. Falling prices for such devices and a looming government deadline to convert to digital television have helped. So has the view, sensible or not, that the technology is a good investment. At a Best Buy in Southfield, Mich., James Szekely, 28, a mechanical engineer, was shopping for a big high-definition TV that he expected would cost at least $2,000, an expense he rationalized because “at least we can watch movies at home.” (In a survey conducted this month by the NPD Group, a research firm, consumers suggested that they would sooner cut spending on clothing, furniture and eating out than on video games.)

At Home Depot, sinks and faucets are selling briskly. Managers at the chain suspect that consumers, loath to spend money on a splashy kitchen renovation or new roof, are settling for a cheaper bathroom “refresh.” Another top seller at home improvement stores: programmable thermostats and insulation, which can cut fuel bills. Many retailers are struggling to adjust to the new needs. Clothing sales have started to sink at department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and J. C. Penney. So have furniture sales at companies like Bombay and Domain, both of which have filed for bankruptcy protection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/business/27spend.html

the political sociology of the American electorate?

(Obama’s) is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political sociology of the American electorate.

What is even more remarkable is that it is wrong on virtually every count. Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

For the sake of concreteness, let’s define the people Mr. Obama had in mind as people whose family incomes are less than $60,000 (an amount that divides the electorate roughly in half), who do not have college degrees and who live in small towns or rural areas. For the sake of convenience, let’s call these people the small-town working class, though that term is inevitably imprecise. In 2004, they were about 18 percent of the population and about 16 percent of voters.

For purposes of comparison, consider the people who are their demographic opposites: people whose family incomes are $60,000 or more, who are college graduates and who live in cities or suburbs. These (again, conveniently labeled) cosmopolitan voters were about 11 percent of the population in 2004 and about 13 percent of voters. While admittedly crude, these definitions provide a systematic basis for assessing the accuracy of Mr. Obama’s view of contemporary class politics.

Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government to do what’s right. In the 2004 National Election Study conducted by the University of Michigan, 54 percent of these people said that the government in Washington can be trusted to do what is right most of the time or just about always. Only 38 percent of cosmopolitan people expressed a similar level of trust in the federal government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/opinion/17bartels.html

hyper-power

It has been a while since policy mavens have used terms like “destiny” with a straight face. But that’s the kind of language we are beginning to hear, now that American “hyper-power” (as a former French foreign minister liked to call it) is being challenged. There are good reasons for skepticism about such grand forecasts. Economic statistics in autocracies such as China are notoriously unreliable, and it’s worth recalling all those breathless predictions, a few decades ago, of Japan’s imminent global domination. But, even if we aren’t so quick to write off America’s cultural, political, economic, and military clout, the fact that the American economy has to rely on infusions of cash from China, Singapore, and the Gulf states suggests that something important is taking place.

Exactly what is happening, and with what consequences, are matters of dispute. Some see great opportunities. At the start of “The Post-American World” (Norton; $25.95), Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, states that his book is “not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.” He’s among those who argue that the newly rich powers should be embedded quickly and snugly in international institutions such as the G8, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Others say that it’s naïve—so very “old Enlightenment,” as Robert Kagan, the author of “The Return of History and the End of Dreams” (Knopf; $19.95), puts it—to imagine that the aggressive ambitions of great nations can be muzzled that way. Protecting the Free World, Kagan thinks, will require a stiffer military backbone. He envisages a clash between the global constellation of democracies and the nouveau-riche autocracies. Khanna, for his part, describes a vigorous East united against a more and more decadent West. (He is fond of quoting Oswald Spengler—always a bad sign.)

Zakaria sees the future in less belligerent terms. His is the voice of what might be called the Davos consensus, after the Swiss resort where, under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, financial and political élites gather each year for convivial networking. What’s striking about that consensus, though, is how swiftly it can change. The first time I visited this august assemblage, around the turn of the century, the received opinion was that the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world that no one could ever catch up. This year in Davos, America’s fall was on everyone’s lips. Zakaria, who is judicious, reasonable, smooth, intelligent, and a little glib, predicts nothing so rash.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/04/21/080421crat_atlarge_buruma

the greater Depression

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families. Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.
The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze. Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country’s economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-2008-the-great-depression-803095.html

the big one

For more than a decade, we Americans have been living on an economic San Andreas fault–a foundation of fracturing competitiveness covered by unsustainable consumer spending with money borrowed from foreigners. A financial earthquake was inevitable. We don’t know how high on the recession Richter scale the current crisis will take us, but it increasingly looks like, as they say in San Francisco, “The Big One.”

Since the last Big One, the Great Depression of the 1930s, we have had eleven small to medium recessions, lasting an average of ten months. The most severe–two back-to-back downturns that began in 1979–drove price increases and the unemployment rate to double digits.
We’re not at those levels yet. But the structural supports underneath our shop-till-we-drop economy are considerably weaker. For starters, we have a historic depression in the housing market.

Americans’ total mortgage debt now exceeds their home equity, for the first time since 1945. Housing prices have dropped 10 percent since last spring, followed by record foreclosures. Most economists expect them to drop at least another 10 percent, which could leave more than 14 million households–at least 16 percent of the total–better off if they just walked away from their homes. Prices could go even lower.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/faux

building on krugman

The tradeoff facing Democrats is that Clinton’s economic advisers probably have more experience dealing directly with financial markets, but they’re also the people who helped deregulate Wall Street in the 1990s, laying the groundwork for some of our current problems. Most of Obama’s advisers aren’t as tainted by that experience. But he’s collected roughly as much Wall Street money as she has.

And, from what I hear anecdotally,* he seems to do better among hot shot hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers, who can be even more averse to financial-market regulation than the older, stodgier investment banker types who favor Hillary. So, like Krugman, I don’t see any real advantage for Obama on this issue.

*My former TNR colleague Clay Risen wrote a great piece about the candidates’ respective Wall Street supporters last year. But, given that our archives were subsequently vaporized, the best I can do is point you to this LaRouchie summary of his piece.

–Noam Scheiber

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/03/24/which-candidate-s-better-on-the-financial-crisis.aspx