Inductivist

I was watching "Being the Ricardos" last night, and one of the film's themes was Desi Arnaz' infidelities. It made me wonder if there is any truth to the stereotype of the Latin lover. 

The General Social Survey asked married men if they had ever cheated on their spouse. Here are the percentages (N = 4,243):

Percent of married men who have cheated

Non-Hispanic black  25.2
Black Hispanic  20.0
White Hispanic  16.9
Non-Hispanic white 16.3
Hispanic--other race  15.0
Non-Hispanic--other race  13.9

I calculated percentages for each race because I know it is relevant for infidelity. There is evidence here that black men cheat more than other groups, but rates are not high for Hispanics.

Ross Douthat wrote in the NYT recently that the declining appeal of the GOP is the fault of Rush Limbaugh. He claims that Republicans were a 55% proposition during the Reagan Era because the message of conservatism was preached by well-bred men like William F. Buckley. Rush came along and turned conservatism into something angry and strident and that only appeals to 45% of voters. 

If Ross is correct, we should see greater support for Reagan among racial minorities--the groups we have a hard time winning over. After all, Buckley was a leading advocate for conservatism during that time and Rush was unknown.

Using the General Social Survey, we can compare minority deficits over time. I calculate this as the percent of a racial minority voting for the GOP presidential candidate minus the percent of all voters who cast a vote for the Republican candidate.

Minority deficit

1980
Blacks  -39.2
Mexicans  -18.2

1984
Blacks  -48.3
Mexicans  -19.5

Damn, impressive: under Buckley and Reagan sophistication, Blacks and Mex-Ams supported the GOP by only 18 to 48 points less than the general population! The power of positivity!

And since then? Bush Sr. wasn't strident. Perhaps he did better.

1988
Blacks  -41.9
Mexicans  -26.2

1992
Blacks  -34.6
Mexicans  -18.1

1996
Blacks  -26.2
Mexicans  -12.1

The numbers are slightly less bad with grumpy Dole. 

2000
Blacks  -42.5
Mexicans  -6.5

It looks like angry Rush didn't chase away Mex-Ams in 2000.

2004
Blacks  -37.6
Mexicans  -11.7

2008
Blacks  -34.7
Mexicans  -15.3

2012
Blacks  -33.3
Mexicans  -17.8

2016
Blacks  -38.2
Mexicans  -19.7

The Republicans did no better among minorities before strident Rush became influential in the early 1990s. 

Douthat ignores the obvious: the GOP is struggling because there were fewer than 20 million Hispanics during the Reagan Era. In 2021, there are more than 60 million--and this perennially poor group likes generous social programs and is susceptible to anti-white propaganda like all non-white groups. And probably will be for a very long time. 

Using MIDUS data, I regressed waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) onto race/ethnicity and body mass index (BMI). (I figured fatter people have higher WHRs.) Here are the results for 1,974 women:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients

Hispanic .06*
Black -.02
Asian .01
BMI .32*

*statistically significant relationship with WHR

Fatter women do indeed have fatter waists compared to hips. The three minority groups are all being compared with non-Hispanic whites. Latino women have higher WHRs than their white counterparts. The other two racial groups do not differ from whites.

Consistent with my casual observations, Hispanic women are less curvy. Waist size is more similar to hip size. The curvaceous woman is more of a white thing.

In his American Conservative article "His-Panic" (the same title used in Geraldo Rivera's recent book), Ron Unz suggests that criminal justice officials have invented the Hispanic gang problem in order to secure federal anti-gang dollars.

As was shown in the last post, the best approach to such questions is to seek out the best data. I found two studies in which researchers surveyed adolescents about membership in a gang. Descriptions of each are found here. In the Esbensen and Winfree study (1998) of a large sample of eighth graders in 41 schools in 11 cities, the percent in gangs was as follows:

Percent in a gang

Blacks 12.3
Hispanics 12.3
Whites 6.4


Results are similar in the main study (2001) of 15,292 teens (from 313 secondary schools across the country).  The following lists the percentages who admitted they were in a gang:


Percent in a gang

Males 
Blacks 13.4
Hispanics, 10.4 
Whites 5.7
Asians 4.7 

Females
Blacks 6.8
Hispanics 7.2
Whites 2.2 
Asians 1.2

Gang membership prevalence among Hispanic males approaches that of blacks, and is roughly double that of whites. Compared to white females, Latino girls are more than three times as likely to belong to a gang.

Affiliation with a gang ranges all the way from a wannabe to a hardcore thug, and these surveys certainly include plenty of the former. But they are consistent with media and criminal justice depictions of violent gangs--both on the streets and in the prisons--being dominated by blacks and Hispanics. It is not imaginary.