European and American political systems, locality and minority political power

This is, I think, interesting. The genesis to the question (which I'll get to in a moment) is a series of conversations over the past few years with a number of European friends and colleagues. There is in general, a deep ignorance in Europe of the fundamental differences between the political systems of Europe and that of the US, largely grounded on the 10th Amendment, one of the simplest concepts with the most profound implications:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the State, are reserved to the State respectively, or to the people.

In most of Europe, the citizen looks to the centralized state for resources and policies and answers. The individualism (in culture and enumerated rights) of the US is difficult to conceptualize for many Europeans; from the power of local communities to tax both income and consumption; to the election of citizens to positions which in Europe are reserved to the central government and the civil service ranging from dog catcher through Sheriff to Judges; to enumerated rights realized in practice (separation of church and state, unregulated speech, right to bear arms, equality of all citizens, etc.). By-and-large, these are alien concepts in the European context.

This strong individualism and localism of the American system, enshrined in the Constitution with all its checks and balances has a lot of implications. In some of the conversations, the issue of ability to assimilate emigrants, and more largely to accommodate different cultures within the same political system comes up. No one has a good track in this area. Europe's is dreadful in both variety and volume. There are a few stellar examples, such as Switzerland, who seem to have a settled and productive track record. There are some, such as Britain, who muddle through with some pros and some embarrassing cons. But broadly the experience of emigrants (such as the German gastarbeiters) and of indigenous peoples such as Roma, Sami, and Basque, and of religious minorities such as Jews and ethnic minorities of all stripes (Hungarian, German, Greek, Albanian, Polish, etc.) have been one of pogroms, genocide, mass clearances, and systemic discrimination (de jure or de facto).

Obviously the US also has its tragic history, but I think the checks and balances (three branches of government), the structural protection of minorities from the tyranny of the majority (three levels of government, bicameral systems, etc.), and significant localization (10th Amendment) have served the US well compared to the experience in much more centralized Europe.

In a couple of those conversations the work of Schelling came up, particularly the implications of his paper Dynamic Models of Segregation. Schelling's work revealed that even a modest preference to simply not be the only one of your kind (by religion, race, income, social class, education, ethnicity, etc.) in a space, would, in a few iterations, quickly lead to self-segregation. Given the distinctly high level of mobility among Americans (compared to Europeans) it doesn't take long for these weak preferences to take effect. In Europe self-segregation occurs primarily around class. In the US, there is an element of that but also very clearly around all the other factors as well including race (which is what draws the greatest attention.)

My point in these conversations is that Americans exercise an enormous amount of choice in their environments through choice of place to live and local elections. Through these choices, there are all sorts of unexpected revealed preferences which highlight both the complexity and extent of innumerable (and difficult to identify) trade-off decisions made by individuals. No matter what classification taxonomy we seek to impose on individuals, they are all making decisions on their own bases and their own considerations. Regardless of who I am, when I move into a neighborhood, am I seeking people of my own type (race, ethnicity, religion, age, class, education attainment, profession, etc.), am I seeking some financial benefit (property speculation, economic opportunity, employment proximity, etc.), am I seeking local government amenities (schooling system, libraries, roads, security), am I seeking some other resolution (larger or smaller house, shorter commute, better access to some other location), or are there other factors? There might be patterns to these considerations which correlate with race, but they also correlate with ethnicity, class, age, profession, religion, etc.

Another surprise for Europeans is the complexity of variety of taxation regimes. In the US, below the top quintile of income earners, the bulk of taxes you pay are at the state and local level (income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc.) and the bulk of the services you receive are provided locally. Just over 50% of citizens pay no federal income tax but all citizens pay local taxes. So for the bulk of Americans, the cost of government is the cost of local government.

Finally, it is usually a surprise to them the extent to which everyday services are provided by jurisdictions under local control and how much (both in variety and volume) this varies between states. Cheek by jowl you have big welfare, comprehensive safety net, expansive services states such as New York, with minimalist states such as Vermont.

There is occasionally a particular fascination among my friends with the notion of minority-majority states - usually with the implication that this is somehow a threat to the long run well-being of the USA, a position which I believe to be incorrect. Americans are, I believe, too individualist to be constrained by one unifying identity; i.e. they define themselves not just by race but all the other panoply of identities such as ethnicity, age, religion, social economic class, income, etc.

Springing from these conversations it occurred to me that from the time I returned to the US at sixteen, I have almost always lived in minority-majority environments. My first two years back were at a boarding school out in the country but otherwise, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Atlanta.

From that observation I wondered about the frequency of that circumstance and then from that to the mirror question; how many minorities (recognizing all the US Census groups) live in minority-majority local environments in which they exercise (or potentially exercise) local authority?

There are four states with minority-majorities: California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. 40 million minorities live in those four states, 34% of all minorities.

At a more granular level, and closer to home, i.e. closer to local political power, of 3,143 counties in the US, 353 (11%) are majority-minority. However, because of self-segregation and patterns of historical settlement, 54% of all minorities live in those 353 counties.

19 million minorities live in majority-minority major cities. I have used legal jurisdictions rather than the vernacular SMSA numbers. For example, the city of Atlanta has a population of 430,000 people but is part of a metropolitan area of 5.5 million. I have looked at all cities with populations greater than 100,000. These include Milwaukee, Atlanta, Memphis, Durham, Cleveland, New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, etc. There are 34 such cities outside of the four states that are already majority-minority.

I have excluded cities from this analysis simply because of the complexity of overlap between counties and cities (sometimes a city is entirely encased within a county and sometimes it is within a county and sometimes it is constituted of multiple county jurisdictions).

Now there are a number of nuances to this analysis. For simplicity, I am looking at all minorities not just a particular group (African American, Hispanic, Asian, etc.). In 102 counties, African Americans are an absolute majority, in 90 counties Hispanics are an absolute majority, and in 161 counties some combination of all minorities are a majority. Further caveats: The minority-majority exercise of power in those 161 counties is dependent on there being some commonality of interests which may or may not exist among all minority groups. Additionally, these numbers are all based on the US Census which counts all people in the US regardless of their citizenship. This is especially relevant to the Hispanic numbers. The US Census counts some 53 million residents of Hispanic origin. However, estimates of illegal Hispanic emigrants ranges from 10-20 million. Assuming that they do not vote and therefore subtracting them from the count of 53 million would materially reduce the number of jurisdictions with a minority-majority. Finally, the exercise of local power is a function of both voting registration rates (an area with disparities in the past but largely resolved now) and voting participation (blacks and whites vote at about the same rate but a good deal higher than Hispanics and Asians).

The upshot of this analysis is that 59% of minorities live in counties and/or states in which they are the majority. The actual number is likely somewhere around 60-70% if one were to take into account major cities as well as medium sized towns (10,000-100,000).

I am very surprised by this outcome. On the one hand, in the context of my discussions with European friends, it fully vindicates my position about the localism of American individualism. On the other hand it runs full tilt against the prevailing political discourse in terms of concerns about systemic discrimination in terms of justice, education, health provision, etc. If 60-70% of minorities live in areas in which they have the capacity to exercise political control, and given that justice, health, education, etc. are largely locally provided, then the narrative of systemic discrimination is substantially undermined.

Now I do believe that the narrative of systemic discrimination is dramatically overstated. Obviously there are select instances where individual or systemic discrimination occurs, but I suspect its materiality is very low (though potentially tragic where it does occur). But even with that assumption, I am challenged to reconcile 60-70% control with the disparities that do demonstrably exist between the racial groups. How to reconcile this?

I suspect that there are three parts of the answer: 1) That race/ethnicity is not as large a controlling variable as it has been made out to be. In other words that individuals make decisions on a variety of other factors having nothing to do with race such as religion, income, profession, education, etc.. We are oversimplifying by focusing too much on race alone. 2) By focusing on the simple variable of race and pursuit of race equity, we have avoided the more critical policy challenge of personal productivity; people's life outcomes and range of choices and degree of control all increase with personal productivity. If you have low personal productivity all outcomes are worse. Imparting the skills, knowledge, experience and wisdom to facilitate personal productivity is a much greater challenge (particularly if it works against embedded cultural assumptions) than simply redistributing resources. 3) We have dismissed the role of culture from the equation of good life outcomes and are uncomfortable and ill-equipped to address the consequences of culture in how it shapes individual decision-making and life outcomes.

As I said, interesting.