[rajin444]

Why would the authors say otherwise?

Additionally, why is it framed in a way that makes it seem like white people having more of an impact is a bad thing?

10 years ago if you'd told me articles like this were coming I'd have laughed. How did misconstruing the truth to further the "white people bad" notion become not just acceptable but popular? And it doesn't even stop there - the article implies that more diversity (i.e less white people) is an ontological good. How does this stuff even get published?

[cafeoh]

> Additionally, why is it framed in a way that makes it seem like white people having more of an impact is a bad thing?

Is it really? This is definitely not the point of the article, which talk about the bias that people grow more conservative when that is at least partially explained by a survivor bias. You decide to read this as "white people bad", when the article simply highlights some democratic bias that isn't talked about that often, and I think your reaction says more about your own obsidional way of thinking than the author's.

> And it doesn't even stop there - the article implies that more diversity (i.e less white people) is an ontological good. How does this stuff even get published?

Can you please for the love of god point to me where in this article it's said that more diversity is an ontological good? Are we reading a different article altogether?

[majormajor]

> Additionally, why is it framed in a way that makes it seem like white people having more of an impact is a bad thing?

I don't really see this framing. I see an examination of "are older voters more conservative" "is that a change or is it other factors" that then briefly veers into predominant political leanings by race (in a sloppy, only-looking-at-two-races way), but not a lot of harsh judgemental terms there. More descriptive.

If indeed "some races have less political influence because they die earlier because they're poor" is true, though, and then you factor in "why are they poor" for some of those races and find some nasty answers... why wouldn't that be bad?

[klipt]

There's also a gender lifespan gap that's even bigger than the black-white racial lifespan gap. E.g. black women live longer than white men on average.

Consequently, more than half of elderly voters are women.

[commandlinefan]

> 10 years ago if you'd told me articles like this were coming I'd have laughed

People were predicting this _thirty_ years ago and yes, they were laughed at.

[lazyasciiart]

Probably, if you make the comparison the authors make, you get the numbers they got. If you compare five different groups instead of the two groups they used, then what a shock, the order of the five doesn’t match the order of the original 2.

Why would the commenter have made the comparison they do, if they wanted to consider the matter in good faith?

[nathan_compton]

Because the article is specifically about disparities between black and white americans, not between white and "all non-white" americans.

[rayiner]

Except in this case adding the other races as additional data points changes how you view the black-white comparison. For example, native Americans live almost as long as whites, but are as poor as blacks. And Hispanics are closer to blacks than whites in income, but live much longer than whites.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't fully understand why this happens, but it's pretty common to see people say "nonwhite" when they clearly mean "black". The author goes on to quote statistics for black people age 18-64, so that has to be what he had in mind.

[rayiner]

> I don't fully understand why this happens, but it's pretty common to see people say "nonwhite" when they clearly mean "black".

Americans’ conception of race really only has white and black. They don’t know much about other races, so they project their mental conceptions about black people onto other races.

This is obvious when you see “people of color” applied in ways that really only make sense if you’re talking about black people. But also consider affirmative action. Hispanics as a group have similar economic status to blacks as a group, because many are recent migrants from poor countries. But while blacks have much lower economic mobility than whites in the same income level, Hispanics have similar economic mobility to similarly situated whites. So the logic for preferring a black person over a white person with similar economic level doesn’t apply to Hispanics. But people never think about that, because they conceptualize Hispanics as a “kind of black person.”

[nathan_compton]

Sorry, but your whole post is rhetoric.

1. more diversity doesn't equal "less white people." It means less white people proportionally, of course. But if your view is really "all people are the same" than it doesn't even matter whether there or more or less white people. Reading between the lines you seem to be suggesting that you, at least, think "more white people" is good. Just come out and say it, if that is your belief. No need to beat around the bush. 2. You don't have to be a genius to get the idea here: even if you imagine that white people are 100% not racist, wealthier white people may simply not have similar political priorities to poorer black people (your parent comment is also disingenuous to indicate asians and hispanics have longer lifespans, since this article is primarily about poorer black people). If it is the case that poorer black people die earlier then it stands to reason that their political interests are less served. No one has to be racist or "bad" for this to be the case. And, in a society which purports to want equal representation for all people, a systematic difference in literal years of life is a reasonable barrier to wish to overcome insofar as it affects voting. 3. this "stuff" gets published because differences (in for example, health outcomes) between black and white americans are profound and are directly correlated with segregation and political disenfranchisement. You might be some kind of weirdo who somehow believes society is 100% equal and everything black americans suffer is "their fault" but that view is, at the very least insufficiently universal that its pure and disingenuous rhetoric to assert it as if it is obvious and true. There is a shit-ton of research on this in public health: https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/report/k...

As to the fact (indicated by the parent comment) that one's ethnic identity affects different ethnicities differently, well "no shit Sherlock." It is asinine to collapse the discussion about how race operates in our society to "white people" and "non-white people" and this article does not do that and does not even gesture in that direction.

[mecsred]

Regards to the last paragraph, did you miss the part where the quote parent opens with is directly from the article, and explicitly makes that distinction? If your going to write an essay for everyone to read, at least try not to end it with evidence you didn't process the original post...

[nathan_compton]

Sorry, this isn't "critical race theory." Like how is making observations about the demographics associated with old age and voting "critical race theory?"