American Politics Today - Essentials (3rd Ed)

SOURCES OF CONFLICT IN AMERICAN POLITICS | 17

Also, personal ideologies are not always consistent. Someone could be both a

fi scal conservative (favoring balanced budgets) and a social liberal (favoring the

pro-choice position on abortion and marital rights for gay men and lesbians), or

a liberal on foreign policy issues (supporting humanitarian aid and opposing the

war in Afghanistan) and a conservative on moral issues (being pro-life on abor-

tion a nd opposing stem cell resea rch). In Chapter 5, Public Opinion a nd the Media,

we explore whether America is becoming more ideological and polarized, deepen-

ing our confl icts and making compromise more diffi cult.

You may be surprised to fi nd that the American public has fairly centrist

views and that there are relatively few systematic diff erences between residents

of blue states and red states on a broad range of policies. For example, red-state

and blue-state residents have very similar views on immigration, English as

the offi cial language, environmental policy, school vouchers, affi rmative action,

equal rights for women, and tolerance of others’ views.^12 Figure 1.2 illustrates

this fi nding with data from the 2012 presidential election. The map shows the

These census data show the racial diversity of the United States. Only

about 75 percent of Americans describe themselves as white. Moreover,

the proportion of Hispanics and Latinos in the population is 16.3 percent

and rising, although this category contains many distinct subgroups.

RACE NUMBER PERCENT

Total U.S. population 309,349,689 100.0

White 229,397,472 74.2

Hispanic or Latino (any race) 50,477,594 16.3

Mexican 31,798,258 10.3

Puerto Rican 4,623,716 1.5

Cuban 1,785,547 0.6

Dominican 1,414,703 0.5

Other, Hispanic or Latino 9,163,850 2.5

Black or African American 38,874,625 12.6

Asian 14,728,302 4.7

American Indian and Alaska Native 2,553,566 0.8

Native Hawaiian and other Pacifi c Islander 507,916 0.1

Some other race 14,889,440 4.8

Two or more races 8,398,368 2.7

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 American Community Survey.

THE RACIAL COMPOSITION OF THE UNITED STATES

TABLETABLE » »^ 1.15.1