Hispanics Favor Census Citizenship Question, Deny Trump “Too Tough” on Immigration

For the left, anybody who wants to control the border must be a racist. And Donald Trump’s desire to ask about citizenship status on the 2020 Census is also racist.

Of course, white leftists pride themselves on being very sensitive to racism. But what do Hispanics, the “racial group” (actually not a racial group, but let’s play the game) think?

The Center for American Political Studies at Harvard asked them, in an online poll that included 2,182 respondents, including 282 Hispanics.

Not Very Politically Correct

Asked “Should the census be able to ask whether people living here are us citizens?” Sixty-seven percent of the entire sample said “yes,” and only 33% said “No.”

But even a majority of Hispanics said “yes:” 55% did, as opposed to 45% who said “No.”

Even More Politically Incorrect

The survey also asked “Do you think President Trump is too tough, too lenient or just right in dealing with illegal immigrants caught trying to cross the border?”

Among the entire sample, 42% said “too tough,” 24% said “too lenient,” and 34% said “just right.”

But among Hispanics, the results were very similar: 46% said “too tough,” 30% said “too lenient,” and 24% said “just right.”

Thus Hispanic opinion was a bit more polarized, with 4% more saying “too tough” but also 6% more saying “too lenient.”

Bottom Line

Taken at face value, both Hispanics and the entire sample show a majority favoring Trump’s policies, or policies even more strict.

But it is a well-known artifact in polling that, when given three alternatives, people tend to choose the middle option (“just right” in this case). It seems “safer.” But this only applies when people don’t have a strong, clear opinion.

If the nation’s Hispanics were convinced that Trump’s policies are too harsh, or that asking about citizenship is a racist attack on their group, nothing would prevent them from expressing that.

We have yet another case where the white Social Justice Warriors and their pet ethnic activists don’t represent the group they claim to.

Yet More Examples of Academic Intolerance / Harvard this Time

Perhaps the most significant statement of the student is that much of the politically correct intimidation comes from students. While the media have paid a lot of attention to intolerance in colleges, a lot of students come to college thoroughly indoctrinated as social justice warriors, keen to shut up ideas they dislike.

Such students don’t have to be a majority of entering freshmen. A minority that is aggressive and intolerant can poison the entire atmosphere.

Academic Affirmative Action for Conservatives?

A former student or ours, a conservative, got the following e-mail:

You are invited to the

Harvard Kennedy School

GOP Recruiting Reception

Hosted by

Judy Kugel, Acting Dean of Students

The University Club

1135 Sixteenth Street, NW

Washington, DC

October 7, 2009

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Acting Dean of Students Judy Kugel will discuss Harvard Kennedy School’s degree programs, admissions procedures & updates from campus.

Please RSVP to dana_garfunkel@harvard.edu by September 30.

Mid-Career Master in Public Administration

The one-year Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) is an intensive eight credit program, preceded by a one-month summer program exclusively for Mid-Career professionals. The MC/MPA is designed to increase the knowledge and skills of well established, high-performing professionals, who seek to enhance their public service careers or to move from the private sector to a leadership position in either the public or non-profit sectors.

These experienced professionals, in consultation with their advisers, plan individual academic programs designed to develop new skills or to pursue emerging professional and intellectual interests. In doing so, MC/MPA students are constrained only by the requirement to take at least one course in each of the Harvard Kennedy School foundational methodological areas of analytics, management and leadership. Not surprisingly, the MC/MPA program includes some of the school’s most accomplished students. They represent many professional backgrounds and come from across the United States and around the world. They typically range in age from thirty to the early sixties, but HKS has also graduated a septuagenarian. Mid-Career students make valuable contributions to the school’s intellectual community during their year at Harvard.

People who really believe in diversity, as opposed to those politically correct people who are always talking about “diversity,” will see some logic here. Academia is often stiflingly left/liberal and politically correct, and if there really is benefit in having different viewpoints represented, it’s conservatives who are in short supply.

Politically correct academic “diversity” hustlers, in contrast, want more blacks, Hispanics, and women in traditionally male fields, but they want them to think pretty the way they do, with the proviso that articulating racial grievances or gender grievances can be useful in intimidating people who might be inclined to argue with white male leftist professors.

Of course, affirmative action for conservatives has some of the same dangers as affirmative action for (say) blacks. Will people come to assume that conservatives in academic settings are not as well-qualified as liberals and leftists, just as they now assume that blacks in academic settings are not as qualified as whites? That’s a real danger, but of course it’s a danger that liberals and leftists blow off then applied to their favorite beneficiaries.

Perhaps this is simply a rather benign form of affirmative action, an attempt to let quite well-qualified conservatives know that they are welcome to apply. There are indeed plenty of well-qualified conservative policy wonks -- on congressional staffs, in conservative think tanks and interest groups, and even a few in academia (especially in economics departments). If they are welcome at the JFK school, that’s good. There is a clear tendency (which we have seen in our own students) for conservatives to self-select out of academia, which they view (rightly) as hostile territory. If the JFK school wants to appear less hostile, good for them.