"The active-duty Army stands at 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021 & the smallest it has been since 1940."

Why? There are a number of important factors left out of this Vox explanation.

A thread.

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1830215966136910187

The military faces a recruitment crisis b/c fewer young people feel positively about the military. E.g. Since 2002, the % of young Democrats saying the military does a "good job" for the country has fallen from 84% to 39%.

Blacks have worse jobs, income & housing than Whites.

White libs & blacks believe "racist policies & practices" explain this.

White cons reject this explanation. They also, however, reject "culture" & "biology" as explanations. So there's no theory they endorse.

A data thread: To what extent is racial inequality due to "cultural differences"?

Despite being polarized on most other racial issues, white liberals & white conservatives agree (w/ 25% of both groups saying “a great deal" or "a lot").

By contrast, 43% of blacks say "a great deal" or "a lot."

Is the "Great Awokening" over? There's been a flood of data on this question in the last 2 months. Almost all of it suggests that while we've passed "peak wokeness," we are far more "woke" than we ever were before.

This thread summarizes everything we know so far: New organizations are now discussing race & racism far less than they did in 2020 but far more than they did in 2010.

https://twitter.com/DavidRozado/status/1626077445370814466

Feminism is declining among all women except white liberals. In 2015, 80% of white lib. women identified as a “strong feminist”/“feminist.” In 2022, 81% did.

The % of white cons., black & Hispanic women identifying as a “strong feminist”/“feminist” fell ~26% b/w 2015 & 2022. 3 points:

#1: I present only subgroups with N>100 (so no Asians, no lib/con for nonwhites). This is standard. Smaller samples have MOE that are too large. E.g. there are 24 black cons women & 63 Asians in the 2022 ANES. Would be great to see ideo w/in all races but not possible.

Affirmative action is unpopular. Despite this, Google, Meta & Apple have filed a brief w/ the Supreme Court in favor of using racial preferences in college admissions. Sadly, their argument rests on the same, misappropriated social science I covered here:

https://twitter.com/data_depot/status/1542184378960183298

The pro-affirmative action argument presented in the brief relies heavily on 9 peer reviewed studies. It uses these to claim, “Empirical studies confirm diverse groups make better decisions thanks to increased creativity, sharing of ideas & accuracy."
supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/2…

My new Substack post (entitled “Cherry-Picking in the Endless Orchard of Diversity Studies”) is now up:
themissingdatadepot.substack.com/p/cherry-picki…
The post examines how the Navy is attempting to make a case for expanded DEI initiatives using highly selective references to social science research. The Navy’s “Task Force One Navy” report attempts to build a case for more aggressive diversity & inclusion efforts in the military by suggesting “diverse teams are 58% more likely to accurately assess a situation &…35% more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts.”

It looks like Hispanics are becoming less reliably Democratic. If this trend holds, it will change everything we know about public opinion on immigration. In fact, it may be the thing that returns us to the pre-2010's status quo.

A short thread:

https://twitter.com/Cavalewis/status/1520095372949049346

Prior to 2010, Democrats were deeply ambivalent about immigrants and immigration. For example, in 2010, less than half of Democrats believed that immigrants "strengthen our country." Today, endorsement of this idea is universal within the Democratic Party.

Everything depends on what the continuum represents. Three issues play an outsized role in the perception communicated by the cartoon (due to their importance and salience): immigration, race and speech. On these, there's a clear leftward "sprint" since 2008.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144

Democrats have moved a great deal on whether "immigrants strengthen our country."

Perhaps the most important set of changes over the last 50 years are those related to racism. According to
@coldxman, these changes have ensnared us in a Tocquevillian paradox: as racism has declined, pessimistic discussions of racism have increased.

Why did this happen? Traditionally and conventionally, racism is understood to be evident, intentional and individual. The Oxford Languages dictionary definition is representative of racism’s colloquial meaning and usage.

The Missing Data Depot's first post is up! It summarizes 50 years of change in American life with a discussion of 50 graphs.

themissingdatadepot.substack.com/p/50-years-50-…

The graphs affirm Hartley's claim that, “The past is a foreign country; they did things differently there.”

A thread: In a 2017 talk, @JonHaidt offered the "fine-tuned liberal democracy" hypothesis: as tribal primates, we are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless certain "constants" are finely adjusted to make possible the maintenance of stable political life.