Demographics

As demographer Phillip Longman observes, young white men since the 1970s have seen a 40% decline in income relative to their fathers--for young black men the ... and more »

What's going on? All along I thought hordes of angry young men posed the greatest threat to society. Experts are always telling us to worry about the social menace from brooding young Turks with too much energy and time on their hands. They commit the lion's share of crimes and terrorist acts. They generally have the least to lose.

World population will hit 7 billion by 2012, according to a recent United Nations report. Given that we just hit the 6 billion mark in October 1999, it is easy to conclude that there are just too many people in the world. How are we ever going to overcome global warming, feed the masses, get that beachfront property, let alone find parking, if the population keeps jumping by nearly one billion per decade?

Now that we've had time to let it sink in that Barack Obama will be the first African-American president, it's time to deal with the implications of this historic election for American race relations. Some observers have already hammered a marker into the road of history that designates the past as "Before Obama" and time going forward as "After Obama." As they see it, After Obama is the period when racism is no more. But they are letting the bright light of Obama's election blind them. We've… more

Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, made a lame attempt to invalidate the idea that Barack Obama's victory is a symbol of American racial progress. It's not a surprise really. The United States' enemies long have used racial inequality as the stick with which to beat us. And unfortunately, it's a stick that we've handed them over and over again. Domestic discrimination has been at odds with our national mission of democratizing the world. But Zawahiri's message suggests the ascendance of a black… more

The chattering classes on the post-racial right say Barack Obama's win is one more nail in the coffin of affirmative action. It proves blacks are equal, they say, and therefore they don't need "special considerations" anymore. Abigail Thernstrom wrote it in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Maybe they're right, and gays' attack on blacks for voting to ban gay marriage is the proof. Since when have blacks been the target of left-wing opprobrium about the way they vote? At least since Obama was elected… more

As the authoritative 2004 Phillip Longman study The Empty Cradle explained, aging populations and plummeting birthrates are now a fact of life everywhere, including the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. LINK

There's little doubt that Barack Obama's redemptive message of change grabbed Americans by the throat. After all, it's in times full of fear and despair that people are hungry for hope. Obama's triumph and victory speech were moving not only because they reminded us that this country is based on the idea of possibilities but because, for at least a moment, much of the nation believed that hope was reborn. And that raises a question: Why are Americans so obsessed with hope? The American dream… more