Racial Groups

For hours, the Torrance teen-agers had tiptoed on the edge of the racial unknown. They talked at length about stereotypes and race. Some admitted their discomfort at revealing their true feelings. Some said nothing. And then they were ordered to make a choice. Four big signs hung in each corner of the lodge: Asian/Pacific Islander, Black African-American, Latino/Latina and White. "Which group do you identify with, racially and culturally?" an adult leader asked.

It's official! A new study by the Pew Research Center proves the old trope true: Asians are the new Jews. All those essentially positive stereotypes you've heard about - the hard work and the Tiger Moms - have made Asian Americans the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. Not only that, in the last few years, Asians have overtaken Latinos as the largest group of new immigrants to the U.S. This is all good news - both for Asian Americans and the United States - but the Jewish comparison has a dark side.

From the moment segregation in America had a name, it has referred to the separateness of blacks and whites. But during the last decade, while blacks were making some progress in residential integration, Latinos and Asians became more isolated from other racial groups in the vast majority of the nation's large metropolitan areas, from Chicago's red-bricked grid to Phoenix's beige sprawl, a Times analysis of 2000 census data shows.

Every state in the country except two — Maine and Vermont — prohibits at least some felons from voting. In January, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the state of Washington is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising felons. Now the full 9th Circuit has decided to hear the case, Farrakhan vs. Gregoire. The case has implications for all nine states within the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction, including California. Every other federal court of appeals so far has ruled against using the Voting Rights Act to give felons the right to vote.

The obvious problem with assumptions--stereotypes--based on race is that all people with the same superficial physical characteristics are not the same. They cannot be contained in neat groups the way, say, all balls of the same color can be. Racial groups are like mercury. They disintegrate into ever tinier pieces with a touch. On close inspection, each piece reveals itself to be a separate culture. Lines are drawn around mutually hostile groups because they appear identical to the outsider.

Asians are now white. Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61%." Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley, Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.

Infant mortality among some minorities is far higher than U.S. health records indicate because of errors and inconsistencies in the way race is reported, government researchers said last week. "There were indications these discrepancies existed, but the magnitude is startling," said epidemiologist Robert A. Hahn of the federal Centers for Disease Control.

The Senate Judiciary Committee amended the sweeping immigration bill Tuesday to tighten student visa rules in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. The committee, which is trying to get through the 844-page bill by the end of the week, also fended off changes that threatened to derail the delicate compromise reached by a bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the legislation. The lengthy meeting of the committee unfolded as a core group of House Republicans turned up the volume against the immigration overhaul.

Americans are increasingly saying “I do” to living together before marriage, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, cohabitation is now more common among younger women than living with a spouse or living alone. The report, released Thursday, is based on data from the CDC's National Survey of Family Growth . More than 12,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 took part in the survey between 2006 and 2010. (So did more than 10,000 men, but the new study focuses on the women.)

It's technically called an egg "donation. " But if you're a young Asian woman, donating your eggs to an infertile couple can fetch enough cash to buy a used car or perhaps a semester at college. The same market forces that drive the price of cotton, copper and other commodities - supply and demand - have allowed Asian women to command about $10,000 to $20,000 for their eggs, also known as gametes or ova. Women of other ethnic groups typically get about $6,000 when they can sell their eggs, but they often can't for lack of demand, according to donation agencies and fertility clinics.

California Latinos have been nearly twice as likely as whites to die of H1N1 flu since the pandemic began last spring, according to statewide figures released Thursday by the California Department of Public Health. Over the same months, blacks in the state have been 50% more likely to die of H1N1 flu than whites, the report said. "Not everybody has been impacted equally" by H1N1, said state epidemiologist Dr. Gilberto Chavez, who added that statistics have shown "very important racial disparities" in H1N1 mortality and hospitalization rates.

The number of reported hate crimes across the country changed little in 2003, according to FBI figures released Monday. The largest number of the 7,489 hate crimes in 2003 involved incidents against blacks, the FBI said. The total was up slightly from the 7,462 in 2002. More than half the reported hate crimes last year targeted specific racial groups.

From the moment segregation in America had a name, it has referred to the separateness of blacks and whites. But during the last decade, while blacks were making some progress in residential integration, Latinos and Asians became more isolated from other racial groups in the vast majority of the nation's large metropolitan areas, from Chicago's red-bricked grid to Phoenix's beige sprawl, a Times analysis of 2000 census data shows.

Almost two dozen stable, ethnically balanced cities emerged in Southern California over the last decade, upending the notion that swift racial turnover inevitably follows when whites start to leave a region. The proportion of Southland cities where two or more ethnic or racial groups live in substantial numbers almost doubled between 1980 and 2000. In 1980 about a fifth of Southland cities (33 of 149) fit in that category.

Asians are now white. Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61%." Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley, Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.

Mayoral challenger Tom Hayden is a state senator and longtime political activist. Question: How would you define Los Angeles? Answer: The story of Los Angeles has been a continuing morality play about rediscovering Eden and then losing it. It's about what humans do to their surrounding environment. The original people lived a very rich spiritual life and a productive life where the river met the sea. Their Eden was the place of an original blessing.

Eric Garcetti's lead in the Los Angeles mayor's race has narrowed to seven percentage points, but his strength among conservatives has blocked rival Wendy Greuel from securing a San Fernando Valley base that is vital to her chances, according to a new USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll. As the candidates and their partisans swarmed across the city in advance of Tuesday's runoff election, Garcetti, a city councilman from Silver Lake, held a 48% to 41% lead, the survey found. Voters in the Valley and every other key region of Los Angeles favored him over Greuel, the city controller.

Marilyn Vann can trace her Cherokee roots back more than 200 years through generations of Native Americans and the descendants of black slaves who lived among them. She has mountains of paper -- birth certificates, tribal enrollment cards, land deeds, affidavits, yellowing photographs -- documenting her family's life within the tribe.

Critics of the federal government's war on illegal narcotics trafficking have seized on a new angle: reckless allegations of racism. Focusing on Congress' stiff penalties for selling crack cocaine and on statistics indicating that most federal crack defendants are African American, these critics conclude that African Americans are being prosecuted in federal court solely because of their race.

The obvious problem with assumptions--stereotypes--based on race is that all people with the same superficial physical characteristics are not the same. They cannot be contained in neat groups the way, say, all balls of the same color can be. Racial groups are like mercury. They disintegrate into ever tinier pieces with a touch. On close inspection, each piece reveals itself to be a separate culture. Lines are drawn around mutually hostile groups because they appear identical to the outsider.