dagblog - Comments for "White threat in a browning America; How demographic change is fracturing our politics."

the article really wasn't

artappraiser — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 19:55:13 +0000

In reply to Good points. Factories have

the article really wasn't about that, wasn't about workplace issues, that was just a side excursion about the boyfriend. It was about socialization. The girl likes the job just fine, and all the Spanish workers have no complaints. It's that she has no one to talk to there and she'd like to have someone to chat with while she works. It's the stranger in a strange world thing (or the high school cafeteria clique thing if you like.) Meant to get across how whites are finally being subjected to that in rural areas by situations like this, and it explicitly gets into how the surrounding towns are highly segregated as to whites and immigrants. The girl is 19, and not the smartest. She's lonely, work just like to be able to chat with some pals while she works, just like a 19-yr.-old Latina Spanish-speaking immigrant might be in a 100% white English-speaking workplace. She relies heavily on the boyfriend, on seeing him at lunch. Her current solution was trying to get a job at the Home Depot in the white area, and she failed at that.

The only real workplace issue that raises it's head in the article is that when they have meetings, the supervisor doesn't even bother to do the whole thing in English, because she's the only person that doesn't understand Spanish, and the person trying to translate doesn't get it right. If they have bi-lingual laws in the state, that might be a legal issue that a 19-yr. old doesn't know or care much about. Spanish or English 19-yr.-old, they just figure they should take the situation as it is lying down. We are not talking about rocket scientists in either case.

So she really has it just like a foreigner, real isolated and that's her life. She never wanted to travel or move, it's just that her environment and people changed on her. The upside: once she gets a little older, she might see, like my 80-yr. old Irish immigrant neighbor said about a Muslim woman wearing a hijab I get a little upset but then I think, no, don't go there because she is like me 60 yrs. ago.

Good points. Factories have

NCD — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 18:12:43 +0000

In reply to I understand your points and

Good points. Factories have floor supervisors and white collar people above them. The floor guy is responsible to get a job done right and efficiently. Their job is to assign personnel with tasks.

I didn't waste my time reading this as it seemed ridiculous. Supervisors do not like employees creating any kind of personnel disputes. If the supervisor is off, there is a deputy supervisor. I take it the reporter did not query a supervisor?

I understand your points and

rmrd0000 — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 17:50:26 +0000

In reply to All I was getting at is that

I understand your points and the point of the story. I think one researcher in the Vox article talked about the democratization of discomfort. Other ethnic groups experienced the isolation when they were allowed to enter the workplace. Unfortunately, “firsts” are still happening. It would have been interesting to have had the perspective of the Spanish speaking workers. They are screwed if they don’t learn English. Hopefully, their children will be their teachers. White factory workers may learn Spanish from their children.

Flight of ideas here. Consider the photographer who is the first black person to shoot a Vogue cover in the magazine’s history. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure to produce. Beyoncé was the reason he was hired. It is possible that he was not welcomed with open arms by some on the Vogue staff. Many ethnic minorities have to learn to maneuver in unfriendly environments. The language barrier is present in the factory. The isolation in being “ one of only a handful” is not uncommon.

All I was getting at is that

artappraiser — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 17:23:56 +0000

In reply to The WaPo article quoted a

All I myself was getting at by mentioning that sub-story is that interacting with some kind of communication, even with bad initial results, is better than no communication between groups at all. It's the whole principle of free speech and diplomacy and trade, etc.: starting to communicate. Without communication, you've got nothing, no chance, except fear of "the other" and maybe wars sometimes. It's not always going to be positive, people are going to yell and disagree and haggle and argue, but they will often learn to tolerate rather than just tribalize further.

To be fair, the article did mention a bit of non-verbal communication activity with the woman, where the other women hugged her one day. Struck me that she's partly such a difficult case because she's very shy, and the author noted that. The boyfriend was a less shy person and she seemed to need, to want to lean on, someone like him to navigate the world. A lot of people who take jobs at the bottom of the food chain without a desire to get anything better are often going to be like this: followers. (As the article noted in something about talking with her rather, she liked the work well enough, it didn't bother her! Work that is often described as notoriously numbing, she was okay with that.) No matter what language or race. No "gumption" to reach out, as the old folks might call it. I happen to think that's why a universal minimum income might work out better than one would think as a lot of jobs are automated. Some people just don't have the constitution to mingle much with anyone nor reach out. It's not even always about smarts, think of hermits and Emily Dickinson types.

The WaPo article quoted a

rmrd0000 — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 12:30:59 +0000

In reply to White threat in a browning America; How demographic change is fracturing our politics.

The WaPo article quoted a worker saying that the white boyfriend is the best mechanic at the factory. There is a complaint that the Spanish speaking mechanic, who is named in the article, is not as good. The Spanish speaking workers are said to prefer calling the Spanish speaking mechanic. The question is why the boyfriend is not called first. The Spanish speaking mechanic and the Spanish workers are not given the chance to defend themselves.

From the article

The truth was that he (the boyfriend) loved this job. He didn’t have a vocational degree, like some of the mechanics, or any experience, like others. But in just one year, he’d gotten so good at it that his bosses had bumped his hourly pay from $13.50 to $17. When the Pacmac or the DSI Portioning System acted up, he was the one who knew what to do, not because he was a savant, but because he’d worked at it, day after day, which was why he became so frustrated when workers in that department didn’t ask him for assistance. They wanted help only from Juan Leon, the shift’s lone Latino mechanic, a Puerto Rican transplant whom Venson genuinely liked and appreciated, but who didn’t know those machines. Venson did. So why didn’t they ask him for help? Why did they want solely another Latino? How did it get to be this way?

What would bring these two

rmrd0000 — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 01:10:22 +0000

In reply to I see parallels in the

What would bring these two groups together? Both groups are in jobs that are at high risk of being outsourced to automation. Both are going to need retraining. Whites who speak Spanish have an advantage. Spanish speakers who learn English have an advantage. Both groups are going to have to adapt and learn skills that will carry them into the future. The problem then becomes determining what skills carry you into the future.

We are tribal. Tribalism is built in. You tell a story that deserves empathy, you get met with a response from another tribe with an equally compelling story. We are tribal, you have to offer solutions that appeal across tribal barriers. We are not very good at achieving that goal. You cannot operate in a tribal vacuum.

The WaPo story could have

artappraiser — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 21:10:22 +0000

In reply to These European kids selling

The WaPo story could have been more useful by going more into the mechanics group of the boyfriend, they obviously had the beginnings of rudimentary communication because they were forced to by the situation.

Communication on "the line" is all social, and that makes me think of the whole Facebook thing, tribes, just not based on language, YET, that is, )as in new ones could be created, like when young twins do it so their parents don't understand). And how much communication do we really need when our Silk Road is Amazon.com, with tariffs in place everywhere and you're only snapchatting with friends and family..I digress to excess, scuse....

I see parallels in the

rmrd0000 — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 20:35:38 +0000

In reply to Do you know of a story where

I see parallels in the example of the influx of competing labor when slaves gained freedom. Southern states established Black Codes to restrict wages and movement of black workers. The threat of labor competition resulted in restrictions on blacks. At that point in time, white laborers had enough power to prevent a low wage work force from competing. When blacks returned from the World Wars, their ability to compete in the workplace was halted by Jim Crow Laws, redlining, etc. White anxiety has always been present. However, whites had higher salaries and twice the employment rate of blacks. Once the workforce went from all white to employing blacks, white workers were displaced. The white anxiety was in place, even when numbers of black labor was small. Currently, white laborers have zero clout and businesses are likely going after cheaper labor. From that standpoint, the anxiety is higher. I think the anxiety would be high even without the language barrier. I suspect, as noted above, that the original Spanish speaking workers felt their own anxiety The difference from the past is the inability to stunt the mobility of the new group of laborers.

These European kids selling

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 19:54:12 +0000

In reply to My own explanation is simple:

These European kids selling junk on the corner can have a tightly defined working knowledge of 5 or 6 languages easy. If they could only study, or maybe they don't process that way...

Do you know of a story where

artappraiser — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 19:48:42 +0000

In reply to The common tread is isolation

Do you know of a story where the first black workers didn't just speak a different language but quickly became the majority?

How about if we go to a different country to try to put the story in a new context. In England, there are plenty of people with black skin born right there in England, and they consider themselves fully English. And some of those are for Brexit because they don't like outsiders coming in and diluting or changing their culture much less becoming dominant in numbers.

And let's go to the point of Ezra Klein's article. As in like: the state of California. It is now majority Latino. Both whites and blacks are minorities there, both are shrinking.

This is what the Pennsylvania article is also trying to show. Not just tribalism, but who are minorities and this flies in the face of the white privilege meme; both articles would suggest that white privilege is in the process of dying. Stay away from preaching whether that is good or bad, but think on: it just is, it is what is happening. And eventually there will be intermarriages with the dominant Latino population. Hence "the browning of America". Not the blacking of America, nor the whiting of America.

We were always a melting pot as opposed to old world countries but there is always blowback and a time of adjustment when there is a mass influx of newcomers who also have lots of children. It was once the Irish. Today many Americans who are generations removed from immigrants both have some Irish blood and no longer worry about the Irish taking over the country.