By Christy Barritt

Low Public Support for Affirmative Action 

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked 1,000 adults, “Is affirmative action still needed, or should it be ended?” Forty-five percent answered that it should be ended. That number is an all-time high since the poll began asking the question in 1991.

Affirmative action was brought into the spotlight this year after a lawsuit was filed against the University of Texas at Austin concerning race-based admissions.

Republicans were the least supportive of affirmative action at 12 percent. Democrats came in at 28 percent and Independents at 21 percent. Among liberals, only 32 percent supported it.

Twenty percent of whites and 19 percent of blacks supported the ideology, while Hispanics were most supportive at 29 percent.

Factors such as sex and age showed no differences in breakdown. Respondents with some college but no degree were the least supportive at 15 percent.

NSA Surveillance OK by Majority

A new poll by Pew Research showed that the majority of U.S. citizens think it’s OK for the National Security Agency to track telephone records of millions of Americans, but only when done to prevent possible terrorism.

Fifty-six percent think that having the government track its citizens’ phone calls is acceptable while 41 percent said the action is unacceptable and a violation of the Constitution.

The numbers are largely unchanged since the same survey was done in 2002, shortly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Currently, 62 percent of Americans say it is important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy. Just 34 percent say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Home School Enrollment Increasing Nationwide

The number of children being homeschooled in the United States has increased by 75 percent since 1999. That’s according to a new report in Education News.

According to the report, homeschooled students have significantly higher test scores and higher grade point averages as college students than their public school counterparts.

There are more than two million home schooled children in the United States, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. That number represents approximately four percent of the nation’s school-age children.

“The number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year,” the report noted.

That number continues to grow. Experts are expecting a bigger surge in homeschooling throughout the coming years as more people become dissatisfied with public schools.

White Majority Gone in U.S. by 2043

America’s racial and ethnic minorities now make up nearly half of the under-five age group according to the United States Census Bureau.

Last year, the Census Bureau reported that whites had fallen to a minority among babies. This is due, in part, to immigration and high rates of birth, particularly among Hispanics.

The report indicated that racial and ethnic minorities are now growing more rapidly in numbers than whites, signaling what’s expected to be a long-term shift in demographics throughout the country.

Over the next three decades, non-Hispanic white Americans are expected to become a minority group in the United States.

Christy Barritt is an award-winning author, freelance writer, and speaker living in Chesapeake, Virginia. She and her husband Scott have two sons.
www.christybarritt.com