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A commenter responds to the NYT article about how we don’t have enough welfare programs for all the poor people in the oil boom region of La Salle County, Texas by checking out the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts page.
Noah172 says:
June 30, 2014 at 10:13 pm (Edit)
Census data for LaSalle County, Texas, the focus of this article:
Only 7% foreign-born, vs. 16 for Texas and 14 (IIRC) for the US.
According to the Census Bureau, 97% of the locals identify as white racially, but 85% say they are Hispanic ethnically.
This low immigration number of immigrants is common in places that have been heavily Hispanic for a long time, such as the state of New Mexico. In the long run, highly Hispanic populations aren’t economically dynamic enough to keep attracting more immigrants.
Yet, there’s an oil boom going on right now in La Salle County (although it might have been more nascent during the 2010 Census). My impression is that oil and gas service firms aren’t as aggressive about hiring cheap illegal alien labor as many other businesses. Look how high blue collar wages have gotten in North Dakota.
Oil drilling is serious stuff. Granted, Mexico is an oil producing country, but Pemex workers have a famously powerful and nepotistic union, so the only people with oil experience in Mexico aren’t in any hurry to leave.
63%(!) speak a foreign language at home. (Guess which one.)
A triumph of assimilation: 7% foreign-born, 63% Spanish speaking. And La Salle County isn’t even on the border.
Barely half the adults 25+ are high school graduates.
Big gender imbalance: 59% male. Must get a lot of transient oil workers. (Can’t the broad in the article snag one of them to take care of her? Is she that ugly?)
Homeownership rate 68%, higher than the Texas average (and I think higher than national). Somehow owning their own homes (and are these prime or subprime?) has not transformed the local residents into middle-class Republicans. Thanks, Karl Rove.
Median value of owner-occupied homes: $47,700. Median household income: $26,700. Home value-to-income ratio 1.8, vs. 2.5 for Texas and 3.5-ish nationally IIRC. Affordable Family Formation — but not in wedlock, I presume. Pretty screwed up people given the cost-of-living advantage they have.
census: white deaths outpace births.
Not that long ago there was an article titled something like ‘It’s all over for Anglos in Texas’, meaning the demographic fate of Texas is sealed: Whites are no longer a majority there, and eventually will not even be the largest ethnic group — they’re being displaced by (mostly) Hispanics. In view of that, perhaps the NYT should re-title this piece ‘It never began for Latinos in Texas’.
http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/05/30/prepare-find-nsa-spied-personally/
Did this come out already?
I wanna know if I’m on the list.
Great post. People love statistics and infographics!
So how do poor rural Texans compare to the poorest whites in America? While there is some extreme white poverty in the deep south, there are so many blacks and mixed race people it is hard to get the clear data. So let’s compare with a 0% hispanic 98.5% white Calhoun County, WV, with a random 96% white rural middle class county in Michigan.
http://www.statsamerica.org/profiles/sbs_profile_frame.html
The Texan native hispanics have higher incomes than WV and the same as MI, but many fewer are employed. They also have extremely low HS and college graduation rates.
That is really remarkable. Rural WV whites in the poorest part of this very poor state have half the HS dropout rate and three times the college degree rate as this county of mostly 3-6th generation Mexican Americans.
census: white deaths outpace births
Wouldn’t be such a big problem if not for the 1) debt-based money system combined with the irresponsible fiscal behavior of government, and 2) Ponzi entitlement schemes like Social Security.
Rural WV whites in the poorest part of this very poor state have half the HS dropout rate and three times the college degree rate as this county of mostly 3-6th generation Mexican Americans.
That can’t be right! TV and movies constantly remind me that rural whites are violent, racist, inbred perverts while hispanics are humble hard workers and blacks are wise and knowing. And they wouldnt lie about such a thing.
That is really remarkable. Rural WV whites in the poorest part of this very poor state have half the HS dropout rate and three times the college degree rate as this county of mostly 3-6th generation Mexican Americans.
Are you talking about LaSalle County? Those Mexicans have arrived in the last 50 years, so they’re mostly first- and -second-generation.
“63%(!) speak a foreign language at home. (Guess which one.)
A triumph of assimilation: 7% foreign-born, 63% Spanish speaking. And La Salle County isn’t even on the border.”
I bet the majority of the residents of La Salle County, Texas would boo the USA national soccer team if they were to play in a stadium in their backyard, especially if it was against the Mexico national soccer team.
The only thing most Mexicans love about the U.S is our generous welfare system.
Hispanics ARE a success. A massive one. Blacks too. Far FAR more than Whites. They have a lot more kids. The gov is on the hook for the kids. They have more privelges and enhanced legal status vs Whites. Even Bill Gates cannot say or do things that Black or Hispanic people can.
You are thinking about money. Like Ahnuld said, “Big mistake.” Non elite Whites will have to support these people and their kids, forgo their own families to support these kids, and be subsevient and third class status to them.
That sounds like a huge success to me. Whites are the failure. Failure to match birthrates kid for kid, failure to embrace single motherhood, failure to demand others be subservient to them, failure to get others to pay for them.
I may be wrong about the number of Hispanics in LaSalle County whose roots go back more than two generations. The census data are at odds with what I heard from my wife’s grandmother about the extent of the change between the 1950’s and 1980’s.
“That can’t be right! TV and movies constantly remind me that rural whites are violent, racist, inbred perverts”
Not just rural Whites, but even Whites in big cities/major metropolitan areas are portrayed as being very violent. In the world of Robocop for example, it is White males who commit blood baths in Detroit. On Law & Order, White people are responsible for 95%-99% of all homicides in New York City.
OT:
Vice president for marketing at Tinder (casual sex app) is suing company Tinder because of sexual harassment (and racism).
link to tinder story
http://valleywag.gawker.com/ex-vp-sues-tinder-alleging-coworker-called-her-a-whore-1598345367/+laceydonohue
What is Tinder?
http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/2014/06/si-section.html
Apparently, Tinder is the dating site for people who get photographed with their mouths open. Five out of the six people pictured at the home page are giving it the Hillary Clinton “I’m so surprised and thrilled!” pose.
That was my impression in Bakersfield in the 1980’s, too – lots of second or third generation Mexican-Americans around, but hardly any in the oil fields. Of course, that could have been straight race discrimination.
Tinder is the mainstream online dating app for young city-dwellers.
From watching my little sister use it, it appears to be like OKcupid and Match.com, but more streamlined.
It shows you photos with a short description, and you swipe on your mobile phone to indicate yes or no. It doesn’t require a lot of reading, and it kind of feels like a game. Most of the candidates you see are friends of friends on Facebook, which increases trust.
If both users swipe yes, then they can exchange pretentious messages.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118062/last-sentence-review-jan-troell-and-jesper-christensen
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118000/edge-tomorrow-tom-cruise-and-emily-blunt-reviewed
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117906/immigrants-review-james-grays-film-stars-marion-cotillard
OT: It has been reported that Donald Sterling likes to dine in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, owned by the Sultan of Brunei. If you somehow work Hobby Lobby into this, all the liberal sacred cows will be offended.
Just an idea, if you were a Mexican born undocumented resident of La Salle Country, would you answer truthfully the question of your nationality? Would you even answer the door? If you were a sympathetic spanish speaking census-taker, would you press a person with a Tabascan accent when he told you he was born in Brownsville?
The first thing you need to understand about Hispatistics is they are invariably crap: “as bad as bad could be, ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and ill dressed.”
It’s a shame Steve doesn’t know about Tinder.
It captures two big secular trends:
1. Rise of the matriarchy; Tinder is female friendly by forcing you to flirt by being “safe”. Takes away the advantage of being an alpha male. Hispanics love alpha males by the by.
2. Female education; said female is a “founder” and what not. Despite trying to impose the matriarchy in the workplace, females tend to get squeezed out pretty quickly. Matriarchy by essence is very anti worker which explains female household poverty pretty quickly. If i’m working 80+ hours at an oil rig I expect my wife to show up with the kids in bed, supper on the table, and preferably in a bikini. Well two out of three.
My impression is that oil and gas service firms aren’t as aggressive about hiring cheap illegal alien labor as many other businesses.
Maybe not the oil/gas industry itself, but oil boom towns require lots of other kinds of workers, and that’s where the comprehensive reform crowd can insert itself. Last year, there was a Hispanic-on-Hispanic murder in St. Louis, involving a small crowd of illegals that were said to be on their way to North Dakota to look for work.
Pemex has more than 150,000 employees, even though it operates basically only in Mexico.
ExxonMobil, which has operations in just about every oil-producing region in the world (as well as downstream operations like refineries) has around 80,000.
In other words, probably more than half of Pemex’s employees don’t really do anything but collect a paycheck.
In total, the taxes that Pemex pays account for one-third of Mexico’s government revenues. It is the very definition of a state-run monopoly that provides jobs for the well-connected and cash for social services.
It will be interesting to see how energy reform works in Mexico. If the government is successful in modernizing Pemex and attracting foreign investment, it could create jobs and help slow the migration north. But that’s a real long shot.
I bet the majority of the residents of La Salle County, Texas would boo the USA national soccer team if they were to play in a stadium in their backyard, especially if it was against the Mexico national soccer team.
In fairness, no, this would not be the case. Most of the Mexicans I grew up with in South Texas are very patriotic, and almost none of them had any real interest in soccer. They’re more into the Cowboys, the Longhorns and the Aggies.
Gov. Pat Brown welcoming the wave of illegal aliens…
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80646857/
Best line:
“Because it’s not really justice to treat unequals equally.”
http://acculturated.com/amy-adams-class-act/
I think this cultural phenomenon was explained in the Liz Taylor-Rock Hudson-James Dean classic movie “Giant.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efNVpovcZv0
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/back1301.html
“It is simply astounding to contemplate the recent historical rise in Mexican immigration. In 1970, there were fewer than 800,000 Mexican immigrants; 30 years later the number is approaching 9 million, a 10-fold increase in one generation. For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Jewish community is thus in a position where it will be able to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas. But the day will surely come when an effective Asian-American alliance will actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and the rest closer together.”
“In fairness, no, this would not be the case. Most of the Mexicans I grew up with in South Texas are very patriotic, and almost none of them had any real interest in soccer. They’re more into the Cowboys, the Longhorns and the Aggies.”
I agree. I’ve known quite a few “assimilated” hispanics, most of whom were from Texas. Definitely bigger Cowboy fans than soccer fans. I would argue that there has been less assimilation of hispanics in the other border states: California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Why the difference between Texas and the other border states? Not sure, but perhaps the overall Texas pride and the fact that Hispanics played an important role of the Texan revolution against Santa Anna. This is not the case for those involved in the Gadsden Purchase and other border developments. Is there a difference between Texan Hispanics and Gadsden Hispanics in speaking of US American assimilation? That is an interesting sociological question.
Steve Sailer: What is Tinder?
Are you flaunting your qualifications for a job as an English judge?
What is Tinder?
It’s a ‘dating’ app based on pictures–swipe yes or no and mutual matches are notified.
A lot of the comments here are mistaken regarding its reputation: in truth, it’s all about hook-ups, i.e. no strings attached sex. It’s grindr for heterosexuals.
It does not level the playing field b/w alpha and beta men. Quite the opposite, it exacerbates the divide by facilitating easy, bulk access for the guys atop the SMV totem pole. It lowers their time/energy investment from the already paltry levels they were beforehand…
God, all this alpha/beta male stuff. Geez I feel like the poor guy that was the last person left alive at the end of “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.”
Do you guys ever get tired of that? I mean ever?
“Most of the Mexicans I grew up with in South Texas are very patriotic”
Why do most Mexican households in South Texas speak Spanish instead of English if they are very patriotic ?
South Texas has some of the lowest percentage of English speaking households in the country. South Texas is not exactly culturally American as apple pie.
Tinder is a triumph of hype over reality. I’ve known a lot of people who’ve tried it and almost none who’ve ever met up with anyone. It’s designed to be Grindr for straight people, but the concept simply doesn’t work with women. Of course, this hadn’t stopped middle-aged tech journalists from breathlessly reporting about this epochal yoof “hook-up app,” nor has it stopped “sex-positive” feminist bloggers from hailing the market for FINALLY responding to the pent-up female demand for anonymous casual-sex technology. It’s a bust. I doubt it will be around in 5 years. I predict hetero dating sites will get more sophisticated, not more streamlined.
National Journal tries to put lipstick on the pig:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/economic-empowerment/hispanic-wealth-could-triple-by-2025-20140701
Thoughts?
As someone who grew up in The Valley, and with roots in LaSalle County that go back to the 30s, I can assure you 90+ percent of Mexicans born on this side of the river don’t give a rat’s ass about soccer, They’re Cowboys, and since the Oilers left, Texans fans.
As far as the number of white people in LaSalle County right now ( I was just there last week), I would bet they are now on par with Hispanics, if not the majority (Cotulla’s population went from 2,700 a few years ago to an estimated 10,000 since it was discovered to be) the sweet spot of the Eagle Ford. Of course the overwhelming majority of whites in LaSalle County are oil field transients, so in a couple of years, it’ll probably revert back to the 80-20, or so, split that it was.
Another reason for the dearth of whites in South Texas south of San Antonio is there’s nothing for them to do. Unless your family owns a business, or you work for the government in some fashion, there’s really no work for you, so everyone (like me) leaves.
“Another reason for the dearth of whites in South Texas south of San Antonio is there’s nothing for them to do.”
The land south of San Antonio, until the Rio Grand valley, is essentially a plain full of mesquite. (I’ve done my share of “brush popping” chasing after cattle there, which might give away my age.) So it’s mostly been ranch land. Not very good ranch land, either (notwithstanding the big King ranch down near the Texas tip, >800,000 acres). South Texas never had the ecology to support animals much larger than whitetail deer. Lots of limestone, the weather is unpredictable, cold snaps can be cold, and lots of little rivers that surprisingly have the steepest average gradient in the US (lots of flash floods). Many of the people that live there are the type of people that have lived in such ranching areas forever. Someone has to shear sheep, there are always post holes to dig, etc..