Study suggests Millennials see diversity as “different experiences”

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A recent study looked at how Millennials approach diversity:

Millennials seem to be tilting toward that latter, more easily attainable vision. A recent study from Deloitte and the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, found that when it comes to defining diversity, rather than focusing on demographic features, such as race, or gender, Millennials—those born roughly between 1980 and 2000—are more concerned with hiring those who may have different cognitive viewpoints due to growing up in a different part of the country, or attending a different type of school. Differences in race or gender can play a role in those differing viewpoints, but they may not be singled out as important diversifying characteristics. “Diversity means to me your background based on your previous work experience, where you were born and raised, and any unique factors that contribute to your personality and behavior,” said one Millennial who was surveyed.

This is a departure from what older generations understand diversity to mean. “Millennials frame diversity as a means to a business outcome, which is in stark contrast to older generations that view diversity through the lens of morality (the right thing to do), compliance, and equality,” the study of more than 3,700 individuals spanning different generations, races, and genders found. According to Christie Smith, one of the study’s authors, this generation is already comfortable with the idea of diversity in a traditional sense and they’re looking to expand the definition, which could be a good thing…

Millennials are the most diverse group of young adults the nation has seen. And for some, that may mean that the idea of diversity, at least when it comes to race and ethnicity, feels like a given. Though inequalities that have existed for generations persist, some Millennials might think of them as less of a problem. But research, and current events, would show that may not be the case. “We live in a more diverse world in a superficial sense,” Wingfield says. “When we think about where we live, where we go to school, where we work, that type of diversity hasn’t really happened yet.” That creates a gap between perception and reality she says. “Millennials have this reputation for having adopted this more progressive, forward-thinking viewpoint—at the same time, a lot of the institutions that structure their lives really haven’t changed so much.”

This could turn out to be diversity based on individualism and personal identity as opposed to any large-scale understanding of how different social markers, such as race, class, or gender, contribute to different life chances. And the broader data in the United States continues to suggest that those broader social forces still have a large impact on people’s lives.

Time seems to suggest urban politics = dealing with crime

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The latest issue of Time has an article on how the 2016 presidential contenders are tackling urban issues. Yet, the article only discusses crime and violence:

It’s an improbable plot twist after two decades of Republicans and Democrats embracing the tough-on-crime mantra of more cops and tougher sentencing. And like most political shifts, it’s driven by calculation as much as courage. As crime rates tumbled and budgets tightened, concern has grown over the financial and human cost of mass imprisonment. A recent Reason-Rupe poll found that 77% of Americans now favor eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, while 73% support allowing nonviolent drug offenders who have served their sentences to vote.

In response, nearly every candidate this year has jumped into a new national debate about how to reshape the criminal-justice system. “It’s an incredible political shift,” says Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute at New York University School of Law…

Urban politics has been fraught for liberals for the past 25 years, and arguably longer. The scars of the 1988 election were slow to fade: a generation of ambitious Democrats had watched Michael Dukakis get pilloried as a wimpy, soft-on-crime liberal, and they vowed to avoid the same trap. “You have moderates in the Democratic Party who frankly have been raised up with this deep faith that their political success is dependent on them being tough on crime,” says Ben Jealous, the former president of the NAACP. “You’re asking them to challenge an article of their political religion, and it’s very scary for them.”…

Of all the 2016 hopefuls, perhaps nobody else grasps the complexities of urban policy like O’Malley, Clinton’s closest rival for the Democratic nomination. The former Maryland governor spent two terms as Baltimore’s mayor, transforming the crime-ridden city into a laboratory for urban policy, wielding data-driven crime-fighting techniques like CompStat and a zero-tolerance approach to community policing. Crime plunged. But in the eyes of some critics, his tactics laid the kindling that was set ablaze when 25-year-old Freddie Gray died April 19 of injuries suffered in police custody. (Six officers have been charged in connection with his death.)

In an article that is supposedly about how more politicians are now getting it right (turning to the large issue of the criminal justice system/mass incarceration), they miss the boat in tying urban politics to dealing with crime. Cities are only about crime and violence? Doesn’t this just feed the same stereotypes of urban areas that have been held for decades and are consistently portrayed through the media?

If politicians were serious about tackling urban issues, how about they start with these two issues:

1. Residential segregation. A century or so of separating where people can live based on race (and class) has long-term consequences. Read American Apartheid by Massey and Denton again, particularly to see how white-black relationships have been shaped by residential patterns.

2. Economic opportunities. Globalization and deindustrialization have devastated numerous urban neighborhoods as jobs – particularly in manufacturing – disappeared. Read William Julius Wilson’s work in The Truly Disadvantaged and When Work Disappears. How are jobs and capital going to flow to poor neighborhoods?

How to pronounce McMansion (courtesy of YouTube)

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The Internet might bring some wonderful things but it can also make you scratch your head. Here is a YouTube video for how to pronounce McMansion. The video doesn’t exactly have a lot of views – 1 after I watched it! – and comes courtesy of DictionaryVoice.com.

Two quick thoughts:

1. I admit that I have looked up pronunciations through online dictionaries and had the site read to me. This can be a very handy Internet tool.

2. The next video YouTube plays after this one is the song “Jesusland” from Ben Folds. This is one of the few pop songs I know that mention McMansions and, fitting the common use of the word, Folds uses it as part of this critique of Middle America. Here is the portion of the song where it comes up:

Down the tracks, beautiful McMansions on a hill
That overlook a highway with riverboat casinos
And you still have yet to see a soul

Not too different from those depictions in Gone Girl…

Predicting riots using social media

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In addition to the identified factors from research coming out of the 1960s and 1970s, one sociologist suggests social media activity can show how riots and protests spread:

The most promising method of “predicting” unrest might be through social media. Dan Braha, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and affiliate of the New England Complex Systems Institute, has studied unrest in hundreds of countries and the phenomenon of “contagion,” or how it spreads. In the past, printed newspapers, televisions, and other media played an important role, he said. “Today, the use of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms is fundamental to the rapid self-organization and spreading of unrest activities—much like the spread of fire in a forest.” And the data from these media can be tracked. Riots, he claims, are certainly foreseeable, but “prediction regarding ‘when’ and ‘where’ becomes more precise on short time scales.”

It sounds like social media is just part of the puzzle here. There are certain underlying conditions mentioned in this article – such as hot weather or precipitating incidents (such as police violence) – but these do not always lead to riots. (In fact, given the inequalities present in many American cities, riots and protests could be considered relatively rare.)  Just as with the analysis of the Arab Spring activity, social media does not cause protests or riots but it can help facilitate it. This was reported in Egypt as protestors shared information through social media and even peer-to-peer options. This was also reported in Baltimore as protestors selected places to show up. This is not a new phenomena; riots in the 1960s spread in a contagion like manner and the dispersion could be tracked through news coverage in the New York Times. But, the availability of social media now makes it theoretically possible to watch things develop in real time, an advantage for both protestors and authorities.

Thinking to the future, what happens when protestors make use of non-public social media or peer-to-peer options that cannot be viewed by authorities?

Religious change: Americans identifying as Christian drops to 70.6%

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New data from Pew Research shows a drop in how many American adults identify as Christians:

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men.

To be sure, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.1 But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base.

Changing U.S. Religious Landscape

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the drop in religious affiliation will get a lot of attention, this report has other interesting information: American Christians have become more non-white; religious intermarriage is up; Black Protestants have been stable while Evangelical Christians are growing whereas Catholics and Mainline Protestants have lost large numbers; and non-Christian groups have grown but are still quite small.

Social scientists critique Facebook’s study claiming the news feed algorithm doesn’t lead to a filter bubble

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Several social scientists have some concerns about Facebook’s recent findings that its news feed algorithm is less important than the choices of individual users in limiting what they see to what they already agree with:

But even that’s [sample size] not the biggest problem, Jurgenson and others say. The biggest issue is that the Facebook study pretends that individuals choosing to limit their exposure to different topics is a completely separate thing from the Facebook algorithm doing so. The study makes it seem like the two are disconnected and can be compared to each other on some kind of equal basis. But in reality, says Jurgenson, the latter exaggerates the former, because personal choices are what the algorithmic filtering is ultimately based on:“Individual users choosing news they agree with and Facebook’s algorithm providing what those individuals already agree with is not either-or but additive. That people seek that which they agree with is a pretty well-established social-psychological trend… what’s important is the finding that [the newsfeed] algorithm exacerbates and furthers this filter bubble.”

Sociologist and social-media expert Zeynep Tufekci points out in a post on Medium that trying to separate and compare these two things represents the worst “apples to oranges comparison I’ve seen recently,” since the two things that Facebook is pretending are unrelated have significant cumulative effects, and in fact are tied directly to each other. In other words, Facebook’s algorithmic filter magnifies the already human tendency to avoid news or opinions that we don’t agree with…

Christian Sandvig, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, calls the Facebook research the “not our fault” study, since it is clearly designed to absolve the social network of blame for people not being exposed to contrary news and opinion. In addition to the framing of the research — which tries to claim that being exposed to differing opinions isn’t necessarily a positive thing for society — the conclusion that user choice is the big problem just doesn’t ring true, says Sandvig (who has written a paper about the biased nature of Facebook’s algorithm).

Research on political echo chambers has grown in recent years and has included examinations of blogs and TV news channels. Is Facebook “bad” if it follows the pattern of reinforcing boundaries? While it may not be surprising if it does, I’m reminded of what I’ve read about Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions for what Facebook would do: bring people together in ways that wouldn’t happen otherwise. So, if Facebook itself has the goal of crossing traditional boundaries, which are usually limited by homophily (people choosing to associate with people largely like themselves) and protecting the in-group against out-group interlopers, then does this mean the company is not meeting its intended goals? I just took a user survey from them recently that didn’t include much about crossing boundaries and instead asked about things like having fun, being satisfied with the Facebook experience, and whether I was satisfied with the number of my friends.

Paying for Austin’s permitting backlog which may be partly due to its McMansion ordinance

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Several years ago, Austin enacted an ordinance intended to reign in McMansions. But, that ordinance may have contributed to a backlog of permits which the city is now trying to tackle:

The directors of the city’s planning and permitting departments estimate it would take $400,000 to hire temporary workers and pay for overtime to eliminate the current backlog in the next 90 days…

Next year the department plans to ask for $1.6 million in additional money to fund 11 new positions. This memo comes as the city is just launching its annual budget process. Over the next few weeks, every department is going to be compiling a budget wish list, which eventually is sent to the City Council…

Some of the blame for the three-week delay in residential planning and permitting was placed on the “complexity” of the city’s McMansion ordinance, which limits housing sizes in certain neighborhoods. “As such the department will recommend changes to the (land development code) that will simplify the McMansion provisions and will extend turnaround times for those types of reviews to ensure that there is sufficient time to perform a thorough review,” the memo states.

The planning and permitting departments, which used to be one department called Planning and Development Review, are responsible for approving all real estate development in the city, from housing remodels to new subdivisions.

It can take some time to see how ordinances actually play out and perhaps the initial ordinance can be “smoothed out” for this sort of process. Communities can also run into this problem if they have high rates of growth. Austin is a desirable place for construction so it may make sense that it has a lot of permits to deal with.

I wonder how much these decisions to speed up the permitting process are driven by builders and developers who generally want to move as quickly as possible. If there is a bit of a delay in the process, would these builders actually cancel their projects or go elsewhere? Builders and developers are often powerful and are viewed as important harbingers of economic growth. Yet, isn’t Austin so desirable that a delay won’t harm things much? Granted, lots of people might want more efficient government but that also may just require more government employees.

Tolls to “never” go away on Illinois tollways

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The acting secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation recently discussed the ongoing presence of tolls on Illinois highways:

Acting Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn Friday answered the question that’s been on commuters’ minds since the state’s first three tollways opened in 1958: When will the tolls go away, as promised.

“Never,” Blankenhorn told a gathering of Kane County leaders. “The existing tolls are going to be on the tollway. That’s the way it’s going to be. The truth is unless we are willing to put significantly more state and federal money into the system, tolls are going to be the way we fund the system. It’s not going to be the only way, but it’s going to be part of the package.”…

Blankenhorn, calling himself “a user fee kind of guy” stuck to his support for existing and new tolls throughout his answers. The history of borrowing money to fund all segments of transportation, including ongoing maintenance, must end, he said.

“We’ve got to be able to pay for maintenance as we go,” Blankenhorn said. “We need a stable funding source that grows. User fees, I think, have to be part of this solution. If we don’t do something soon, we will have 5,000 miles of roadway in Illinois that will be in need of immediate repair. How long do we want to fund infrastructure on cigarette taxes and gambling?”

Given that the federal government nor states seem particularly interested in big infrastructure/highway funding (and even if they wanted to, money isn’t exactly flowing these days), I would guess that tolls will continue to grow. You the driver want a road, particularly a new one that cuts through already-developed areas? Be prepared to pay tolls.

Self-driving semis to bring safety, limit unwanted jobs – and lower the costs of products?

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Wired sums up some of the advantages autonomous semis might offer but leaves off a third possible advantages: cheaper shipping costs which leads to cheaper goods.

In 2012 in the US, 330,000 large trucks were involved in crashes that killed nearly 4,000 people, most of them in passenger cars. About 90 percent of those were caused by driver error. “Anything that can get commercial vehicles out of trouble has a lot of value,” says Xavier Mosquet, head of Boston Consulting Group’s North America automotive division.

So it’s no surprise some of the country’s largest freight carriers have in recent years started equipping their vehicles with active safety features like lane control and automatic braking. The economic case for these measures—the predecessors to fuller autonomy—is clear, says Noël Perry, an economist who specializes in transportation and logistics…

Another point in favor of giving robots control is the serious and worsening shortage of humans willing to take the wheel. The lack of qualified drivers has created a “capacity crisis,” according to an October 2014 report by the American Transportation Research Institute. The American Trucking Associations predicts the industry could be short 240,000 drivers by 2022. (There are roughly three million full-time drivers in the US.)

That’s partly because long haul trucking is not an especially pleasant job, and because it takes time and money to earn a commercial driver’s license. The shortage will get worse, Perry says, thanks to a suite of regulations set to take effect in the next few years. A national database to collect company-performed drug and alcohol tests will make it harder for drivers who get in trouble at one job to land another. Speed limiters could keep trucks to a pokey 64 mph. Mandated electronic reporting of hours driven will make it harder to skirt rest rules and drive longer than allowed. These are all good changes from a safety perspective, but they’re not great for profits.

Safety is good and more meaningful jobs might be helpful – though losing a bunch of driving jobs won’t look good to many. But, what about the added benefit of cheaper shipping costs in the long run? Perhaps it will take some time for this technology to become cheap and widely adopted. Yet, if trucks can drive themselves and drivers don’t need to be paid, can’t these trucks run all day long making runs back and forth? And imagine if they could utilize greener technologies as well, limiting fuel costs. Americans like their cheap consumer goods and having everything shipped by semi just a little bit cheaper on store shelves may help Americans enjoy self-driving trucks even more.

Guatemalan McMansions built with remittances

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There may be McMansions built in Guatemala with remittance funds but they require a lot of resources:

The paradoxical strength of Guatemalan migrants’ transnational dreams is nowhere more evident than in the clash between these McMansions — often decorated in red, white and blue — and below-subsistence everyday life in largely indigenous areas like Cabricán…

The remittances they send have increased nearly sevenfold since 2001, according to the International Organization for Migration. The money is projected to reach a record $5.9 billion this year, according to the Banco de Guatemala – over 10 percent of the country’s GDP…

Worse, many experts argue that big houses — unattainable with quetzales, the Guatemalan currency — are risky investments for remittance dollars, too, especially since most migrants already used what little assets they have — land and their existing homes — as collateral for the large loans necessary to pay smugglers’ fees.

A home like the one built from the money sent by the Rojas children’s in San Antonio costs around 500,000 quetzales ($64,000) to build there.

Critics of McMansions might note that such homes in Guatemala reflect the illusory nature of all McMansions: lots of space and an impressive facade but difficult to sustain in the long run with what they cost to build and maintain (and how that money might be better spent elsewhere) and their dubious quality. The Guatemalan McMansions illustrate the downsides of globalization where cultural tastes and spending habits (big homes, lots of features) may cross borders but not all the potential consumers are able to realistically purchase the goods they see.

At the same time, given the cheaper costs for such homes in Guatemala, how long before we see HGTV featuring American retirees looking at McMansion neighborhoods in Guatemala as they try to escape higher costs in the US but still want the private home of the American Dream?