Immigrants, yes, but for what it's worth I don't hear that about the poor in general in relation to that particular problem. I do hear a lot of almost crazy stuff about how much welfare is costing us, when it's really a tiny piece of the pie. But what I hear more often is people blaming the bankers, big corporations, the rich in general, and all the forces involved in the movement of jobs to other countries. In general I guess it's a specific manifestation of the general sense (justified) that the people in charge don't care what happens to rank-and-file Americans.

Now that you mention it, I think you may have.

I am just putting this here because it is the most recent post on your blog, Mac. A friend of mine posted in on Facebook and I thought this group would like it. He is a retired Baptist preacher, and one of my religious mentors.

These are my own rules for conversation in social media--if one must engage in conversation in social media. I remember Paul's instructions to Timothy, a younger pastor whom he mentored.
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.”
2 Timothy 2:23-24 NIV
Paul did not mean that Timothy should avoid controversial topics. A cursory reading of Paul or of his life, or even of his letters to Timothy, would dispel that notion.
But there are ways to discuss items and issues which may lead to further understanding. And there are ways that lead to further divisiveness. Let us sometimes disagree, but never be disagreeable.
Here are my thoughts. Maybe you have additional suggestions. Do any of these need clarification?
1. I could be wrong. It has happened before.
2. Sometimes people change their minds.
3. Name calling is not productive.
4. Opinions are not equally valid. Some are reasoned and others are not.
5. Having convictions is not necessarily tantamount to hatred, close-mindedness, or bigotry.
6. If an issue remains controversial among people of good will, it is probably because there are valid arguments on all sides.
7. We can lose the war by being uncivil in winning a point.
8. Compromise is not a dirty word.

That's a good list, Stu.

I've had a similar thought--that race-mixing might outpace the measurements involved in tracking "minority" status. If it doesn't affect the actual numbers all that much, it really ought to have some effect in getting people to take the whole question less seriously. It's certainly a growing phenomenon. Unfortunately there's a whole racial establishment based on insisting upon the differences. Sadly ironic that it's a phenomenon of the left.

My wife recalls shocking everybody as a teenager in the late '60s by suggesting that the solution to the race problem was intermarriage.

Here in a certain small area along the Gulf Coast there is an old culture in which the One Drop rule doesn't exactly apply: Creole. It's associated mainly with Louisiana, of course, but it exists in coastal Alabama and Mississippi, too. I don't know how it worked in the old days but they seem to see themselves as something different from both white and black, or at least used to. I don't know, for instance, if Vivian Figures (Mobile politician) considers herself, or is considered, Creole, but she certainly looks it.

I suppose, though, that as distinctly Creole localities have dispersed, as I think is the case, the One Drop rule tends to come into play.

The logic is pretty sound.