I find it deeply depressing that anyone feels like they need to rebut this infantile racist nonsense. And I can't help but think that if we talked about economics & class & power as much as we talked about race & identity then it would be even more obvious than it is that the racial make-up of the society means nothing. Race is a myth. Racism is an easy way to manipulate frustrated people. But it's power & money that create the frustration and do the manipulating.
68
So, we white people are supposed to cheer up because inequality associated with "race" is indelibly rooted in American society and will be perpetuated. Whoop-de-doo.
6
I just noticed that this article "The White-Extinction Conspiracy Theory is Bonkers" appears on the online NYT right under another article, "I Wasn't Crazy, the World Really Was Getting Darker". Okay...
9
Actually, how would Farhad Manjoo describe what happened in Detroit after the riots in 1967? Wasn't that a kind of "existential decline." White people definitely 'lost' neighborhoods, schools, and businesses, not to mention city government, the police, etc. The city lost 1.2 million people, for crying out loud, and nobody wants to talk about it.
If you once called Detroit your 'home' then had to leave it because it was too unsafe, unattractive, or because the schools stank, you wouldn't want to hear sanctimonious analyzer Farhad Manjoo preaching to you about how you were buying into some prejudicial myth of "existential decline." You would just want to live your life, go to work, and send your kids to a halfway decent school. It's not that complicated.
What happened in Detroit was a tragedy and very sad, with plenty of blame to go around. But to the extent Detroit reflects racial politics and demographic change, it actually was, in fact, a sort of "existential decline." So don't tell some guy who once owned a halfway decent house in Detroit that he's believing some prejudicial myth of "existential decline." He's the one who had to up and move, not Farhad Manjoo.
28
Isn't it ironic that these white supremacists are so delusionally hysterical about being "replaced." After all, they understand the results of their genocidal invasions over the last several centuries, don't they.
2
Before whites go on a lament about being inundated with non-whites, they examine their own bonafides by examining their superracist definition of "white." If "blacks" come in all colors, so should whites. Why isn't Obama white every other day? White man has to stop cheating. It is hard when that leads to loss of privilege, isn't it?
USA was a nonwhite country when the white man with his faster bullet arrived here, no?
5
If being a minority in America is so terrible, then why should white people be enthusiastic about joining that club?
13
In order to survive any species must evolve. So note how white supremacism has evolved over the years.
The KKK simply declared they were superior people, and so it was OK to take “uppity” people of other races out to the edge of town and lynch them. That doesn’t work anymore, so the new appeal is that whites are now victims themselves. Part of this results from the supremacists' need to reposition themselves to sell a new pitch to their fellow whites. The arguments are now things like, “Hey, don’t you feel like you’re being discriminated against just because you’re white? Isn’t this so unfair?” Mr. Manjoo does a good job of calling out this pathetic self-victimization and describing it as “bonkers.”
It’s especially ironic that many of these whites are the descendants of immigrants who arrived here in the 1800s from places like Germany, Ireland, Poland, and Italy. The white Mayflower descendant-types feared them back then because they spoke languages other than English and because they had other religions such as Catholicism. Yet their arrival was hardly the ruin of American society; they became part of our nation and helped build our modern America.
Yet the descendants of those hard-working immigrants now want to sit back and be entitled. Hopefully the rest of us (I should disclose that I’m a white guy myself) can ignore them and get our country going again. But an obstacle for us is that our president is an entitled white guy himself who appeals to their worst instincts.
5
The Great Replacement might also be known as The Great White Wail.
2
To David in Flushing: Why did the white people leave the Bronx neighborhood or Flushing?
2
You could also spin the conspiracy like this: White people have realized that the world is overpopulated and are doing their part to mitigate world population and climate change..... other races are not limiting their birthrate because they care more about their racial demographic and not about environmental destruction or world population growth. But both of the conspiracies are just that, a myth. BTW whites are 11.7% of the world population... who's the minority now?
9
So whites moving into a historically black neighborhood (gentrification) is bad. But historically white neighborhoods changing to Indian, Asian or Hispanic must be celebrated - got it.
21
What if white people look at how badly minorities get treated everywhere in the world and decide that they don't want the same? There are two obvious strategies: 1) Try to create a society where minorities do get treated well, and 2) try to prevent you and your grandchildren from becoming part of a minority.
Does #2 qualify you as a racist, or is it simply prudent?
8
Stop worrying about "white extinction" and worry about "homo sapiens extinction".
60
I'm a white, Jewish baby boomer who lives in Queens, NY. I did not grow up with all these ethnic groups or people of color. It has been a gradual change here in Queens. Now I know many of these people and many are immigrants. And you know what? I'm okay with it. People are people. As long as you're a nice person I'm fine. Maybe those who live in very white areas of the country fear these people but there is no need. Good article.
5
No doubt my comment will draw the ire of white supremacists and perhaps others. Would it be so terrible if white people became a smaller proportion of the world's population?
My white son is married to a woman who was born in India. They have three gorgeous, bright mixed race sons. Perhaps as we have more people of mixed races we will learn to have greater tolerance for those who differ from us. I hope so.
6
Or could it be one of countless incendiary motives that are given meaning, and nudged into a homicidal grudge, to ignite a Mad Max celebration of carnage, through some twisted attachment to an assault rifle? People have a fetish over assault rifle ownership that makes no sense. Is it Armageddon this and that, or is it choking off of some perceived white entitlement? It seems like assault rifle owners are constantly searching for a reason to fire 1,000 rounds.
2
You can call it bonkers, but I prefer to call it out by its formal name: MAGA.
4
The concept of whiteness- the absence of color- as a human trait is an odd one. Of course if we perceive the world population as "white" and " not white" and exclude pale skinned non-Europeans from the "white" catagory then white people are already a minority. But so is every other catagory of people, depending on how we choose to classify and label them. The only non-pigmented people are people with albinism and even they can have some coloring. Everyone else is a "person of color." Let's accept that and move on. There are many more important concerns than what people look like now or in the future.
3
The question of whether the future white minority would still control most of the wealth and power is certainly up for debate. But there is no doubt that that the male Anglo fertility rate has been dropping like a rock, according to 50 year longitudinal studies. No one is quite sure why, but it’s very real.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/572794/
The writer missed an obvious point here in his basic premise.
5
Thank goodness here where my family tree is rooted. One grandson (the one with a Jewish father) married a Korean woman, and they have two children so far. So we now have at least Asian in our otherwise all-Euro-white blood line going back to at least the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and undoubtedly further.
Everyone was white where my father and most of his siblings were born on a homestead in Alberta, and all 10 of those siblings grew up much as I did-—never encountering Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, Arabians or whatever. And none of my own three siblings ever married. Our town was pretty all-white when my hormones carried me into marriage. I was already married when I had my first-ever Black classmate, in college, and I was on the doorsill of the altar when I acquired my first Hispanic friends in he Army.
I've always envisioned a future where no one would be Black or White or Red or Yellow or Tan . . . everyone would just BE. Humanity could gain a lot by redirecting the energy now wasted on racism. I'm old, by the way—90.
2
Well, it is good to see everybody talking on the subject. We disagree with others but we also think and try to find an appropriate balance because closing of borders and erection of stringent legal or real walls is not the answer.
How do you appropriately mix populations? While water and oil are not adaptable to mixing, the human race is, provided that the mixing is done over time.
I like the idea of the US trying to help a country, say Guatemala, IN SITU, so that people are less likely to want to move. That is definitely a solution!
The other possibility is through international education!
We are talking about "Manhattan Projects " in both cases with new ideas (paradigm shifts). Add climate change and our work is cut out for us!
To let head of states speak for us will take too long. It would be better to have human expertise exchanged between cities of the world so, using the mayors may be a more granular approach. Serious research people in prestigious universities throughout the world will help as well.
Life as we know it is going to change faster than we think!
I thought this was going to be an interesting article based on research and without the current bias so common among all ethnicities and races. Way too snarky. Too bad, the essence of the article is worthwhile, the writer forgot he was first and foremost a Sapien and all that implies.
Take another shot at it. I am sure you can write an very interesting article about this topic.
5
Whenever the race question is asked on any form I'm filling out, I check "other", and write in "human". Whatever "color" or "race" has to do with it is beyond me.
23
I am white (blue eyed Italian, great hair, rugged good looks); my spouse is Latina (strangers think she's white, though). My four children are a precise blend of us. Of my 10 grandchildren, two are definitely white. Two are definitely bi-racial and would be called African American by all strangers. Three are half us and half Indian; strangers see rather dark, incredibly gorgeous children. The final three are bi-racial, but strangers swear they are super white. Go figure.
This is my group. I think my group is already the majority, although I'm told East Asians might quibble.
In any event, I'll relax in my easy chair and watch the rest of you fight it out. Be sure you let me know who wins.
1
By the end of this century, all of the world's economies are expected to be fully developed.
That will mean that all human beings will travel as much as Americans today.
So of course, by then color of skin will have become so mixed that we'll all more or less look alike.
That's not what is bonkers here.
What is, is the idea that somehow the cultural values we cherish would be a product of ... not culture, but nature, and even something as insignificant as color of skin...
For me, this controversy presents an conundrum that boils down to “Are Jews White?” As an Ashkenazi Jew born in Chicago, I look white. Had I been born to a Sephardic Jewish family, passing for white might be more difficult. AncestryDNA says I’m 100% European Jewish, but my tax returns don’t include “Jewish” in their list of races.
Fortunately, I have Trump’s Nazi-inspired goons chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us” to clarify the situation. They’ve taught me that I’m Jewish no matter how I choose to present myself, and that Trump’s violent followers don’t know how easily they can be replaced.
Now, IRS, let’s update your racial selection list.
2
Communist governments have to depend on population growth to stimulate economic growth, so they have to deny overpopulation as the problem.
@Richard C
What does this have to do with white supremacy myths?
The double standards that apply to issues of white heritage juxtaposed with the exuberant celebration of other cultures is one of the major factors that contributes to the white population’s perception of disenfranchisement
The chorus of ‘white privilege’ that will try to explain away why this doesn’t matter is off the mark and itself deeply bigoted. Especially given the unequal distribution of wealth in the country. ‘Privilege’ sounds cruel and ironic to the large number of whites who struggle to make ends meet.
As in many other psychological realms, demanding that such feeling of ethnic pride be suppressed...in time only make these feelings grow stronger
Alienation of the majority, the bearers of the cultural traditions that gave rise to this nation in the first place, is a sure fire recipe for a backlash that is as predictable as it is potentially catastrophic
If you’re going to demonize ethnic expression of a group, this is only morally justifiable if you also ban that expression by other groups as well. This should be obvious to anyone that cares about principles of fairness and equality
Otherwise the feelings of disenfranchisement, and of being the target of double standards will only grow stronger with time...and that is true whatever ‘obvious’ arguments you may have about whether or not those feelings are objectively true or not.
8
I went to a Wisconsin high school of mostly Norwegian-Americans with a number of classmates who had one swarthy, black-haired, dark-eyed parent with a French surname. These kids were swarthy and dark like one of their parents, only a bit less so. All of us blue-eyed blonds accepted these youngsters of part Native American ancestry as just as white as we were, even while we showed prejudice against the few full-blooded Native Americans in our class. The author is correct. The "white race" will not be shrinking.
2
The current population of Native Americans (Indians, aboriginal peoples) in North America is estimated to be only 5-10 percent of what it was when Europeans arrived, although no one really knows for sure. Talk about "invasion" and "replacement!" Is it possible white people fear replacement because once upon a time they displaced and replaced others"
3
Light-skinned people calling themselves white have successfully replaced the browner-skinned natives in North America, South America, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and quite a few Pacific islands. Bonkers is a reasonable description of "white-extinction"theory.
This theory wouldn't exist if these guys would spend the time they waste online, being instead nice to the girls of their choosing.
4
Look up VHEMT. That will solve everyone’s problems.
Historically the white race travelled the world, invading and conquering lands inhabited by indigenous races, and claiming them and "colonizing" them as their own. The white race has never seemed content within their own boundaries.
Now we're in an age where within a matter of hours one can travel to any point on the globe. The white race now seems bothered by the fact that "minority" races can, in a matter of speaking, appropriate lands that were once historically "white".
2
@Zobar
Wow, talk about ethnocentrism! As if there haven't been empires, conquests, and exploitation by non-whites in other parts of the world!
Ask the Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese quests about their historical relations. Learn about the Arab conquests of Spain, North Africa and their attempts to conquer Europe from the East. Ask the Greeks about their time under Turkish domination. The reason the Spaniards conquered Latin America so easily was because of all the tribes they allied with against their Aztec and Inca overlords. Africans have their own complicated histories of tribal conflicts and dominant tribes. Etc.
How sad americans have such a blinkered vision of world history.
6
White Power is hardly about white extinction.
To the contrary... the lighter the skin, the better the income. Hence...
White males are sought.
Women empower men... as often as not.
Color is vital. In what’s coming, the Caucasian will need an umbrella.
White Power masks insecurity. Everywhere.
This has nothing to do with immigration or "White Replacement". This is about hate; hate of the "other" passed down from father to son, from one white generation to another. This hate is based on their true belief; White people are superior to all others period.
2
Why are so many white males afflicted with these delusions of paranoia, fear and hatred toward anyone or anything perceived as a 'threat'? Maybe the APA should categorize this phenomenon as a type of contagious-mental health affliction?
2
The author conveniently ignores and omits proven demographic points in the name of political correctness.
Western democratic countries have been getting less white and more brown for decades. The immigrants and native born with more melanin in their skin make more babies, while the whites are seeing plummeting reproduction numbers. In Europe, the relatively recent new arrivals tend to be from Africa and the Middle East, so they're also becoming less Christian. Not so much in the Western hemisphere as the Latinos tend to be overwhelmingly Catholic.
Whether the trends are a good thing or not, that depends on one's individual outlook. No group looks favorably on being supplanted by outsiders, whether because of religion or genetics. The great untold not so PC secret? The Africans, Asians, and Arabs are as racist as anyone else. Look at the tribal wars in Africa, the way the Japanese look at the Chinese, the way the Koreans view the Vietnamese. Don't even get started on how the lighter skinned Muslims view Africans and their imported laborers from Southeast Asia.
The author can write paragraphs on whether the trends are a good thing, or not. What he can't do is make up his own facts. And if birthrates in the 3rd world don't decline impressively and quickly, there isn't enough room in the West to accommodate them all.
Overpopulation and climate change will be the death of us all. As calamities accelerate, tribal proclivities will likely increase rather than decrease.
7
As with all of this victimization theories, it comes from a place of fear and a lack of exposure to the "other."
I think it is also at least partially based in misframing. "If we allow opportunity to those who have previously been deprived of equal opportunity, than that means less opportunity for me." Of course that is wrong. This isn't a zero sum game. We are growing the pie not shrinking it or holding it constant.
Now, it is true that white people who heretofore acquired stature, wealth, power, etc without merit, will and should face tougher sledding. Those who are afraid of having to actually work to get rewarded, well, I guess I just don't really care about the Donald Trump Jr.'s of the world.
I am a white male. I am not the least bit concerned. Why? I am focused on making my own life and the lives of my family members better. The rest of the white race can take care of itself.
2
Ask yourself how you would feel if you demographic was in decline. If this was the black population that was shrinking the same folks tossing this away as a non-problem would be championing the cause of the black populace. Now that we can recognize that this is problematic can we recon with the FACT that world wide the white population is 11.7% (a clear an unequivocal minority in the world).
4
You mean the theory that motivated a deranged mass murderer is ‘bonkers’?
Who could have guessed.
3
The core problem is the so-called one-drop rule. Get rid of this thinking and instantly over 90% of the US is white or part-white.
3
Time would be better spent trying to eradicate the concept of race in all human societies. Considering the upcoming challenges about to confront the world’s population will impact its very survival, isn’t it time to put the fallacy of racial differences within the human species to the trash-heap of failed theories! Send these self proclaimed white supremacists back to school! Since that is not possible, please have our law enforcement agencies take their threat as seriously as all other terrorists’ organizations!
@Doris Hawxhurst
School won't do it. Government financial incentives for mixed race children would if the incentives are big enough.
Not to worry. There is always room for improvement. After all, the dinosaurs might seem extinct but they really evolved into birds. Most important is legacy. Are white people going to be credited for some great art, music, literature, science, and philosophy or for wars, waste, destroying the planet, selfishness and greed? What we treasure in past civilizations are their wonderful achievements. Every person has the gift of time to do some good.
2
The author's argument that most billionaires being white means that whites are doing well is completely flawed.
The billionaire class is not a representative sampling of white society. Blue collar whites and lower middle class whites have been devastated by the policies of the last decades.
The truth is that whites are being displaced socioeconomically first. And then later the consequences of that will be a slow and steady physical replacement. The demographic data clearly shows that trend.
The inescapable result will be that whites will become politically race conscious, in the same manner that blacks and other minorities are race conscious. Trump is merely the beginning.
And the NY Times censorship will solve nothing.
7
To elaborate an something mentioned here, what is white anyway? Who defines it? When my grandparents came here from Sicily a hundred years ago they weren’t white. When my father was born in 1941 the census bureau considered him white (I’ve seen the papers. It didn’t say “white” on my grandparents papers in 1920) but society as a whole wasn’t quite there. By the 60’s, guess what, he’s white. The Irish weren’t considered what passed for white in the mid 19th century when they started arriving. Now what’s more white? Germans too...and Scandinavians...and... For a couple centuries what passes for white (aka proper, upstanding Americans worthy of power and privilege) has been expanding from the WASPy patricians of old. And didn’t it first become truly important as a way to divide poor whites from newly freed slaves as a way to control and keep down both? Only white people regularly use the term “white trash”. But at least “white trash” is better than not white at all.
1
@Matthew
There was even some debate in the 1780's as to whether the descendants of Scottish migrants to the 13 colonies should be granted full citizenship in the independent republic.
Imagine how native Americans felt. And it's not like there is genocide and land confiscation going on now either, like when the white immigrants arrived.
People move and things change. The great human migration has been going on since we left Africa and colonized the rest of the world like cockroaches. And attempts to hold to the home court advantage, and the privilege that goes with it, have all been eventually proven futile. We should've learned by now that adapting and co-existing is preferable over trying to hold on to the delusional "racial self-interest". As for me, I'll be happy to speak Spanish and munch on Mexican food when Mexicans retake CA. Come to think of it, I already do.
3
White Extinction Theory is racist bigoted hokum. Concern about the effect of multiculturalism and unplanned immigration on social capital and national values is not only legitimate, but absolutely crucial.
8
I am of white European descent and proud of it.
No, I would normally not feel threatened but for the fact that I see a growing demonization of people like me.
And the saddest thing of all is that so many whites are throwing themselves on their knees asking for forgiveness and being willing to be punished for what their ancestors did, as if it was them who did these things.
I respect all cultures and people's desire to maintain their cultural cohesion, such as the Japanese, for instance. I see nothing wrong with it.Put another way, if there was a great influx of whites in one of the African nations, to the point where in a few decades they would achieve greater numbers than the locals, would anyone have a problem with it? I bet you all the liberals would be screaming about colonization once again, and they would be right.
7
We (white people) may or may not be going extinct but it is beyond doubt that we are being blamed for all the world’s troubles.
6
I don't think it is Bonkers. As a white person I am starting to feel the heat with constant negative remarks about white people.
49
@Chris Anderson
That doesn't mean that white people are disappearing from the earth or that somehow having a white face would cause us to have "superior" moral values ... whereas THAT is what white supremacy is all about.
That today we white people finally get to have to confront some racism too, is unfortunate. But that's not what the White-Extinction theory is all about, let alone an excuse to start justifying white supremacist violence against non-whites (which of course will only increase racist behavior against whites).
14
@Chris Anderson Seems like you are mixing up "negative remarks" and "honest discussion". Others have been the object of so-called negative remarks for generations. With DNA 100% UK/Northwest Europe I am pretty darned white. But I was adopted, so my lineage is supposed to be sullied. Everyone has something about them with which some others take issue. So, now, you get to "feel the heat". Join the club. It is wonderful to belong to a club where you can identify with your fellows. Enjoy being who you are and, finally, being a full member of the human race.
13
@Chris Anderson
That begs the question, why do you feel like the negative remarks have anything to do with you, specifically?
Not trying to attack you -- I'm asking this quite seriously. I happen to be white, but if I hear a negative news story or remark involving a White person (such as the NZ terrorist) I don't "feel the heat." I don't expect minorities to "represent" everyone else in their group and I don't expect that of myself either.
The only time I do "feel the heat' is if there's something in the news item or remark that makes me rethink my own perspective or behavior. When I feel uncomfortable I know that's a sign that I need to examine something within myself.
Criticism is an important part of life -- we should welcome it.
22
Let’s say it - the replacement fear is not demographic it is about power structure – and that for those who feel it, this is real fear not propaganda. That power was drawn from a racist exploitation of people of color – African Americans in America, and the inhabitants of former colonies in Europe. That those people might now gain a real foothold is what troubles White Supremacists. This article is very clever in its algorithmic counter gaming, this is how I want our supposedly agnostic technology to be used.
While you’re at it, though, don’t just coddle them with facts, say it as it is. Say they will have to share power, don’t say they don’t have to worry because the status quo isn’t changing anytime soon. It’s not just an algorithmic issue, it’s an ethical one.
2
While the "white race" may not be headed for physical extinction, the liberal Democrats have made it very clear that we will be made extinct in the political debate. Both Obama and Hillary wrote off the white voter in return for the rainbow coalition of every minority group possible.
Indeed, the Democrat political strategy is to diminish the white voter to nothing more than a punching bag for the grievance of the day, blaming the white European for their failures. Identity politics is all they have to offer. How sad.
8
Actually, in the U.S. white people are in existential decline. Census Bureau predictions show that in a few decades white Americans will be a minority. This is due to the influx of illegal immigrants, who number in the millions, and the higher birth rates of non-whites.
7
I just don't know why we care about the color of our skin. Human values are so much deeper than that. The issue is probably that white privilege led us to depress minorities and we worry that some form of payback might be in order. Well, whose fault is that. I like to walk down the street and smile and say hello to everyone!
2
"White people are not going extinct. As a group, they are only maybe, possibly, becoming a smaller share of the population in the United States and Europe but how much smaller is a wide-open question among demographers, because the future is unknowable and demography is an imprecise science."
If it's a wide open question among demographers, then they haven't ruled out the conspiracy theory that we whites could become extinct.
In this paragraph he agrees that the white extinction idea is a real possibility, thus completely rejecting his own argument. If you say you don't know how much smaller the white population is getting, you are admitting it could become extinct. Where do you get these geniuses? Also the writer was born in South Africa with Indian roots, his people are reproducing like bunny rabbits. This is so dishonest.
5
Moot point. Climate change will get us all first.
3
"Even if, several decades from now, whites do become a racial minority...:
IF? Please. Academics, political pundits and social justice activists have been telling us for almost two decades now that whites will be minorities in both the US and Europe by 2040 or 2050. And to claim that some of these truth-tellers weren't gloating when they said it is utterly disingenuous.
7
Why are we all concerned that only 7 of almost 500 students that got into Stuyvesant were black? Whether you think the system should be changed or not, I think we can all agree that that is not a good sign for the black community. However, why are we allowed to think that, but white supremacists (whatever they call themselves these days) are not allowed to think that about themselves?
The author takes forever to bring up his facts - Facts that clearly show (here in America, anyway) that the white population is shrinking as a percentage of the whole. So, maybe those white nationalists/supremacists aren’t so crazy for wanting to stop that trend and preserve their heritage. You wouldn’t fault any other race for doing so. We worry about native Hawaiians dying out.
6
Rich white people have more children than middle class white people. If these "identitarians" want more white people, they should do something about income inequality. Of course they prefer to blame feminism, because they are misogynists first and foremost, and they want to be part of a right-wing movement. So it can't be income inequality, because that makes capitalism look like the perpetrator. It has to be white women and brown people. These people have put themselves into an intellectually absurd position. They have observed a problem caused by the economic system they revere, and instead of changing their economic views they look for scapegoats. Before they became "racists" they were right-wingers and misogynists. They became racist because they could not tolerate the reality that their right-wing economic and social views were dead wrong.
It is no lie; Census Bureau and other projections show that in the U.S. non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in a few decades, the result of a demonstrable trend in U.S. demographics based on arrival of illegal immigrants and higher birth rates in the non-white population.
By the way, the Israelis are pushing for a two-state solution (reduced numbers of Palestinians in Israel) because the Palestinian birth rate is so much higher than that of the Israelis that Palestinians will be a majority in Israel in the foreseeable future.
5
It is no lie; Census Bureau and other projections show that in the U.S. non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in a few decades, the result of a demonstrable trend in U.S. demographics based on arrival of illegal immigrants and higher birth rates in the non-white population.
By the way, the Israelis are pushing for a two-state solution (reduced numbers of Palestinians in Israel) because the Palestinian birth rate is so much higher than that of the Israelis that Palestinians will be a majority in Israel in the foreseeable future.
The article has helped me understand why I'm developing a new neurosis of white people. I'm a mixed mutt white person. I don't know my whole genealogy and I don't think I care. I just know I'm so pale you can clearly make out the color of my veins. But since the trump days and the rise of people calling the cops on people of color for gardening, cooking, watching their kids ball game and now the mass shooting, is too much. I realize I'm sounding a bit tongue in cheek, but I'm quite serious. I'm afraid of white people! You can smell the desperation from this notion that they might become a minority. And why does that terrify some white people so much? Because they're uniquely aware of how lowly they consider, and how poorly they treat people who are minorities. I think I'm right to be scared. I'm afraid we haven't seen the last of this kind of behavior.
2
@Diane Gross, even so “white” Jews are afraid too. Here in Ma just yesterday there was desecration at a Jewish cemetery. Not all whites are created equal, apparently.
This theory has nothing to do with facts and figures:
The racial anxieties manifested by these theories are increasing due to the leveling of society by technology and media, which makes it more difficult for certain insecure whites who define their self worth by their skin color.
It its difficult for some people to give up the belief that the amount of pigment in your skin somehow gives you magical powers.
"Great Replacements" have happend throughout European history. Guess what: It was white tribes replacing other white tribes, especially in that part of Europe whose American descendants are whinging about being replaced. The Irish replaced the Picts in Scotland. The Anglo-Saxons replaced the Britons in England. The Danes replaced the Anglo-Saxons in East Anglia. The Norwegians replaced the Anglo-Saxons and Scots in Northern England and the Lowlands. The decline of the Roman Empire is a history of Replacement: mostly Germanic tribes invaded Italy and other Roman Provinces. The modern map of Europe records those replacements.
What's more, the replacers were absorbed by and merged their cultures with the tribes they replaced.
Replacement is the history of humankind. Replacement is our destiny.
3
The "Great Replacement" is definitely happening. Yes, terms like "extinction" and "genocide" are inappropriate. And it's certainly no excuse to go shooting people!!! But if current fertility trends and immigration policies don't change, then white people -- as white people are currently understood -- are definitely on track to become dwindling minorities not merely in the United States but in Europe as well, if not in 50 years then certainly in the next 100.
You can argue that this is not a problem and that nobody should worry about it, and that's fine. That's an argument you can make. But if you deny that it's happening at all you undermine your own credibility and hand ammunition to those who argue that the mainstream media is determined to obscure the facts. And frankly, this whole column comes across as an exercise in obscurantism, an exercise in "the future is unknowable" and "it could also be" and "nobody really knows" so move along, nothing to see here, you don't want people to think you are an "incel edgelord" do you?
Ethnic conflict has been one of the main drivers of human history. And the immigration policies supported by Western elites are causing rapid ethnic change in the countries they control. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with honestly and directly, not with denialism. Otherwise you are conceding the issue to the extremists.
9
White people have always made up a small portion of the world's population. Outside of Europe, the original peoples of the rest of the world are not white nor Christian, which is why I never got the "white Christian dominance " thing.
People of color are just reclaiming their rightful share of the world.
White Americans have to remember there were people living in North America when they arrived, and those people were not white, but whites have, with a good deal of success, attempted wipe them out.
It's not a replacement. It's an addition.
How does immigration endanger "the culture of constitution and the freedom it gives"?
Whatever broader conspiracies may be wrapped up in this fiasco, the fact remains: the US *will* be a minority white country in the next few decades. That's not conspiracy theory - it's hard data based on birth rates and immigration. The only question at this point is exactly when. Brookings institute has pegged it at 2045.
The heart of the matter is: does it even matter?
When you outright dismiss these ideas, or avoid talking about them, you embolden the nutbars. When people find out that there is solid data backing up these claims, all the "good guys" like Farhad Manjoo here come off as less credible.
I say acknowledged the facts and address them head on. If we truly have nothing to fear, let's say that, and explain why.
4
It's the old, white geezers that fear this so-called White Replacement. It's absolute nonsense, but uneducated, ill-informed knuckleheads need something foolish to believe in. I'm a geezer who grew up in an era of races keeping to themselves (friends, associates, etc). I'm pleasantly surprised to see young people of all persuasions mixing as though race were invisible. Just look at commercials on TV. Mixed couples! As a youngster I could never have imagined such progress. Keep up the good work young folks.
The people who really need to read this will most likely never see this.
1
A line from the ground breaking 1967 movie, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, has occurred to me many times over the past 52 years.
“…you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”
John Prentice
John Prentice, a young (African-American) doctor who is engaged to a young (white) woman, says these words to his father during the uproar caused in John’s and his fiancee’s families when the young couple announce their engagement.
For fifty-two years I have worked in my small way toward a world where no one is forced, against their will, to identify themself by their race or ethnicity.
The fact that now, in 2019, there are vehement, active forces at work which wish to compell me to abandon my identity — “I am a man. Like other men. Just a man.” — and to embrace their narrow-minded self-image, “I am a white man.”
These misguided souls are on the wrong side of history. Nuts to them. They have not made me afraid nor have they convinced me of a single thing.
2
based on based on the weather news I have seen to say today, I think it is fair to say that we are all facing extinction and sooner rather than later as it seems the climate appears to be color blind
white extinction isn't the existential threat of the 21st century, the replacement of human workers by AI[machine learning] and quantum computing is.
lawyers, people who drive a vehicle, doctors and anyone else who does repetitive cognitive work will be replaced.
@teoc2
Just because they could be replaced (usually with great upfront investment) does not mean that they have to be replaced. Are we slaves to technology?
This article "talks" alot about data and science and sounds science-based, but it's basically fluff. How can he seriously compare the empirical support for a non-flat earth with that for the demographic decline of a human racial group, possibly leading to its extinction? And we're supposed to laugh with him at this collection of fools who believe either or both of these nutty viewpoints (feeling quite good about ourselves, in the process). This is more like high school clique behavior than scientifically/journalstically-responsible writing.
The author makes basically the same argument that climate change deniers make. Because science can not specify the extent of a predicted outcome, quantitatively and with a high level of certainty, then the likelihood of the overall trend should not be believed. Like climate change deniers, I suspect Mr. Manjoo would, himself, bet AGAINST that what he expects us to believe if his own money were at stake. The odds clearly are that the caucasian racial group will decline relative to others and this 'may' eventually lead to its (near) extinction. (True extinction is very unlikely as long as we can freeze gametes and there are similar AI recipients.)
Looks like I'll need aome more,words....
4
"They don't" in Mr Manjoo's subtitle is incorrect. White couples are having fewer than two babies throughout the western world. If this trend continues the absolute number of white people will decline. Some may rejoice at this potential outcome but consider that it was the white Christian countries that became the first world countries and improved the standard of living of the rest of humanity. [and yes I know you can attribute a lot of atrocities to them]
3
I don't really care. Humans. We are humans. The real ranger we face is losing our humanity because we're so afraid of racial mixing.
1
The author doesn't understand conservatism. White conservatives would much rather live in a nation with African-American, Latino, and Asian conservatives, than among white leftists. The issue is not race, but ideology. Yes, there are fringe crazies who embrace white identity, just as there are fringe crazies who embrace Marxism. But the crazies do not prove anything.
3
@Observer of the Zeitgeist
Sounds correct, as long as you know enough to distinguish democratic socialism from pure socialism, as idealized by Marx.
This is not a helpful article. It purports to be addressed to "white" persons who fear significantly that people like them will become a minority in their areas/countries/world. Yet, it begins by labeling their fear a "racist and misogynistic conspiracy theory" and by equating persons who have that fear with "incel edgelords" -- a term I had to look up, to find that it meant sexually frustrated ugly guys who were trying to appear 'edgy'. Were I -- an old white university prof, not freaked out about his economic future -- someone who actually feared losing my white privilege, I would have stopped reading right there.
7
Funny how little press Christian church bombings in Pakistan and Egypt receive. A day or two at most and the subject changes. Virtually the entire Christian population in the Middle East has been ethno-religiously cleansed from the region over the last 20 years. Mustn’t talk about it though.
And isn’t it odd how Pakistani and Egyptian authorities never get around to passing more bomb-control laws?
And in a further peculiarity, a vanishingly small number of the refugees from Afghanistan and Syria had any interest in seeking asylum in Pakistan or Egypt.
Perhaps at some point Mr. Manjoo could enlighten us on these mysteries.
6
You'd think that with real existential threats like climate change, nuclear weapon, and Donald Trump that the ending of a subset of that of total annihilation would be the last thing we should be worrying about.
Im white, im old, i did not reproduce. I could not care less if i am “replaced” - statistically, i mean - by a person with different skin tone. I AM concerned, however, that my values do not get replaced. There are values for all that i care about: equality, universal justice and opportunity, compassion for humans and all sentient beings. Dont want my values “replaced” by cruelty, totalitarianism, misogyny, corruption, greed, and the cultural horrors so dismally spread across all ethnic groups. In a world of 8,9, or 10 billion humans, this seems a risk, even if every one of them has the same skin tone.
1
@Karen Green
With so many people you're going to get crazy extremes that will likely get over-reported. If their percentages in the population rise, that's worthy of concern, IMO.
Well, 59 percent isn't much.
Clearly, judging from the comments, not only do many on the Left not believe it is bunk, they are looking forward to it as karma for past misdeeds...
2
“'The Great Replacement' is a ... conspiracy theory that holds that white people face existential decline, even extinction, because of rising immigration in the West and falling birthrates among white women ...."
There seems to be some confusion here. I understand some white-supremacist use theory of Diffusion and Diffusion Process to explain population movements from regions of higher concentration to lower ones. Assuming that this is not pseudo-science (which I believe it is) and theory of Diffusion - which is developed to explain movement of molecules or atoms - is actually applicable to human migration, then "replacements" cannot be Muslims. Muslims emigration is prominently from Middle East, which is not among highly populated regions of the world. The most concentration of non-whites are actually in India and East Asia. So Middle East Muslims hardly fit the bill.
The fact is, for a host of reasons, Muslims have become targets of western hatred. Just to point out one, after the collapse of Soviet Union Western countries had a hard time justifying spending billions of dollars annually on their military. So, they had to come up with a new enemy. With the help of Washington "Think Tanks" and others, that enemy was chosen to be "terrorism." Then the popular media did the rest by connecting "terrorism" to Middle East countries and then to Muslims.
1
Yes it is a "bonkers" conspiracy theory and one fed with hyper-irrational hysteria to procure votes from the paranoid delusional crowd. I always thought that the more the world blended the less racism we'd have. Perhaps it will take another decade or two though I do think racists will still find something else to be racist about. It seems it's in their DNA to whine and claim victimhood no matter how good they've got it. Born to hate? Maybe there is a gene for that that can be fixed one day.
Which is healthier a pure bref dog or a mongrel? A mongrel is generally much healthier because of the mix of genes. it is ludicrous to believe in humans this genetic rule doesn't apply.
The entire crux of this piece is absolutely true. It would also be nice to hear what Mr. Manjoo suspects is behind the increasing and disasterous revictimization of people color, often from within, and usually by liberal whites. The programmatic institutionalization of victimhood the liberal left have practiced since JFK is seldom mentioned, never researched and very uncomfortably the main coexistent relationship between people of color and liberal whites, especially in America.
This is very good Farhad but I've quite different things to say to allay such anxieties.
Human beings are tribal in nature and sight is our dominant sense by far. Racists obviously erroneously imagine that all people that look like them are the same as them. This belief does not withstand the most cursory examination yet it persists - so it's clearly an inherent cognitive bias. Within so-called "races" there is patently a diversity of intelligence, talents and traits. Racism is the "tribalist" need of those less favoured to know that at least some others have got their back to compensate. And who, having had this pointed out to them, will admit to being less favoured and remain racist? Didn't see me coming did they?
If some mad genius was able to become the uncontested ruler of the world and decreed that all must only procreate with someone of another "race", but left it to all to choose who of another "race" they actually procreated with, there's good reason to suggest such would improve the human species not weaken it: hybrid vigour. There are some pretty good examples of very talented "mixed-race" individuals in our world. Consider Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Ben Simmons.... Please explain.
The less intelligent and educated of us are wildly inclined to believe that differences in appearance are causal when they are not. In contrast someone blind from birth would find racism very hard to understand. Are we not all about the same size and shape? Do we not all speak? Sigh.
White people ARE going extinct. So are Black people, Asians, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and every member of every race, religion, nationality, ideology, gender, sexual preference, etc, etc, etc. Humans will be lucky to make it out of this century. Climate change won't wipe us out, but, it may well be the catalyst. Finite, dwindling, resources incompetent, corrupt leadership exploding population = exploding nuclear weapons; not to mention all of the clever, NEW IMPROVED ways that we're devising to defend ourselves against “them”.
We could prevent it. We also could have prevented most of the misery, and death wrought by countless disasters. We didn't, because there's immense power, and profit in our ever increasing, invented divisions.
Why haven't I ever heard a candidate talk about this “issue”?
1
He's exactly right. This is just another of what I call FEM's or Flat Earth Mythologies. By that I mean an idea or conclusion based on the thinnest logic and that is objectively false by virtue of simple common sense. They could be described as the cognitive illusions of an ape derived brain. Obviously the earth looks flat but the most cursory investigation of the reasoning behind a spherical earth will immediately render the idea of a flat earth as ludicrous. Me see earth. It flat. Me tired. Not think more.
The idea of replacement is similarly pathetic, literally. Anyone who can take the slightest bit of solace for their impoverished lives from the expectation that an identifiable white majority will dominate the world when they are dead is truly sad. Everyone alive today will die but those who come after us are not really replacements. And why should anyone care. This is the part that really confounds me. I have no allegiance to the continuation of a white majority. How does that change my life or even the lives of my children. My allies, my people, are intelligent, capable, logical, decent people who love their children, do their jobs, pay their bills and believe in democracy and equal representation for all people.
1
The sooner we can get the pot melted the better. No race is significantly more intelligent than another. Einstein wished he could be smarter. We are animals with hats on.
All the religious traditions could all be so much fun, if only nobody took any of them too seriously. God is greater than any religion - especially and old flat earth religion.
Differences could be celebrated if only everyone realized we are all bozos on this bus. People take themselves way to seriously - but that happens when you have to struggle just to survive.
The entire crux of this piece is absolutely true. It would also be nice to hear what Mr. Manjoo suspects is behind the increasing and disasterous revictimization of people of color, often from within, and usually by liberal whites. The programmatic institutionalization of victimhood the liberal left have practiced since JFK is seldom mentioned, never researched and very uncomfortably the main coexistent relationship between people of color and liberal whites, especially in America.
Whatever the facts may or may not be, this is only an issue if your whiteness is a fundamental marker of your identity. It presumes the existences of “races” when we know from science there is no such thing. We are all on a spectrum of hair, eye and skin colors which have nothing to do with who we are.
It is indeed ironic that those who seek to spare the Earth further destruction by limiting their birthrates are automatically cancelled out by those who continue to breed indiscriminately.
These older tribal or peasant reproduction patterns may have worked in the past when infant and child mortality was high, but today they just mean more mouths to feed just as modern technology has eliminated the need for humans to do as much of the farm and factory work from before.
We need to stop rewarding people for having large families with tax breaks and other forms of support. It's not just white people who are threatened by ecological collapse , but all of us.
1
All this talk seems to ignore the (the very unpopular) actual truth that there is only one race; the human race. As many of the commenters mention, they have children of mixed "race." What they really should say is that their children are of mixed breeds, just like dogs. And I truly mean that as a grand and positive attribute.
If we start to look at the variations in humanity as "breeds" (accurate) rather than "races" (utterly without genetic or more
general biological evidence), we might just realize that the "racists" with their complaints, fears, and demented nonsense are as silly as dog lovers arguing whether Pomeranians are superior to Collies.
There is only one human race. Those who not only claim other wise but then also claim that their "breed" is better but threatened because of jealous inferiority and under attack by less "human" cabals bear as much resemblance to the truth as Donald Trump resembles a competent and intelligent human being.
45
@Eric Berendt
Yes, everyone's a human. Nobody sane is arguing against that. Then there is race the social construct with all its history and present-day effects. I'm sorry to inform you that ignoring that social construct ("there is only one race; the human race") is racist in itself. In the U.S., we are living with the legacy of hundreds of years of racist policies. Reversing that legacy will require an understanding of race and, yes, race-based amelioration like affirmative action—not empty proclamations that we're all of the same species.
12
@Eric Berendt
Arguing whether Pomeranians are better than Collies is silly, arguing that there should be no breeds, just let dogs go back to all being the same pale brown generic mutts to prevent people from arguing about which breed they prefer, as many are doing here, is another matter...
3
On this topic, I always return to the question: Who cares? So if "whites" become a lower percentage of the population...what? My grandparents were 100% Italian, even from the same region, I am not. Am I "less" because of it? I don't think so. If my grandchildren live in a more global world and have children with someone they love from another ethnicity or culture, what of it? What's the great consequence?
Really, why should anyone care if an amalgam of 15 ancient European ethnicities becomes...just more of an amalgam?
2
If one were to count the percentage of pale faces in the world, they are surely decreasing. Whether this is a tragedy or a blessing seems to be in the mind of the particular racist.
The important thing in human society is the culture which prevails. This surely includes language, goals, attitudes, etc. Many immigrants to Britain are more British than the original settlers, for example, and that is both laughable and plauditable. In the US it is probably a good thing that some of the earlier whitish settlers are being replaced by more civilized humans. We do, however, miss the native American culture which has been almost eliminated.
Obviously, white supremacy is scientifically false. No, color of skin cannot be causally linked to a specific kind of behavior, let alone a specific culture or civilization, period.
White supremacists nevertheless believe that the cultural values that they hold dear, are a direct effect of their color of skin.
The "Great replacement" fear is merely a consequence of that false belief. Of course, if being white comes with certain values such as freedom of thinking, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise etc. then people who value these things logically would want to make sure that there are as many white people on earth as possible.
Where I disagree with this op-ed, however, is when it tries to fight against these ideologies by trying to show that there will still be a lot of whites in the US during the next century.
First of all, knowing this doesn't refute white supremacists' main fear, because it doesn't address it in the first place. Secondly, remembering that there will still be white people tomorrow isn't enough to refute a fear that that won't be anymore the next day.
More importantly, globalization means that within a couple of centuries, ALL humans will have light-brown skin. So yes, there WILL be a "great replacement" one day.
The reason why that will not necessarily entail that certain values that we hold dear will also disappear, is because those values are the direct result of active education and cultivation, and THAT is proven to be color-blind.
The root cause of this schism fro reality is pernicious systematic ignorance.
This ignorance is communicated in the form of both privilege & entitlement. This will not be changing anytime soon.
1
There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation wherein the Enterprise encounters a species all of whose faces are black on one side and white on the other. In spite of this apparently uniform coloration, there is a war between two factions. The Enterprise crew is unable to figure what the cause is, until one of the combatants points out that some are black on the left side and white on the right, and others are the reverse. (:rolleyes:) Moral: Hate will always find a way.
1
@Pajama Sam It was actually the original Star Trek, in 1969.
1
Seeing that you've cited Alt-Right YouTubers like Lauren Southern, YouTuber Natalie Wynn is doing some fantastic stuff on her channel ContraPoints to lay bare the lies and techniques that the Alt-Right and neo-fascists employ to co-opt politically naive liberals, centrists, independents and conservatives. Many, maybe most, of the people who've fallen under the spell of MAGA don't realize their strings are being pulled by full-blown fascists; Ms. Wynn helps viewers understand this, and how to recognize and counteract it. Her video "Decrypting the Alt Right: How to Recognize a Fascist" is highly recommended.
1
Many cities already have white minorities, including New York City and San Francisco. Five states already have white minorities. Yawn. The question is, why does it bother certain people so much as to literally kill other people? Is it similar to what drives certain people to jihadism and ISIS? How do you rescue such people from their damage (or prevent it in the first place)? Or is it that more people than we might have imagined are susceptible to propaganda and brainwashing?
I'm afraid if we don't deal with this issue and find some answers, the world will continue to be a more combative and violent place. Our Age-of-Aquarius/Kumbaya moment and its potential seems to have passed.
And it cannot be ignored that the POTUS chooses (or by dint of damaged personality himself, finds himself forced) to consistently divide rather than unite. Among many other despicable things, he's teaching our children that petty insults are the mark of high leadership. And transgression is normal.
I'm scared. Not for myself, personally, and definitely not for white people, but for all of us in this world.
Trouble is, the U.S. population is a lot more conservative and bigoted than most of us would want to admit. We can debunk the white extinction theory in these pages, but it has a growing number of American believers, certainly enough to probably re-elect Trump in 2020. Democrats need to quit talking to themselves and figure out how to communicate with Trump supporters. Admittedly, a near impossible task. Kind of depressing.
Forget race and color.
We know all people are attracted to immigrate to Western liberal countries.
But do liberal Western democratic societies have any right to determine their own immigration policies in a democratic way?
@David
In the US, apparently not.
In 2013, Obama (thanks to his strong interest in, keen focus on, and outstanding political agreement building skills) managed to get a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill through the Senate, and with a super-majority of 68 votes (S.744).
It accomplishes what most Americans wanted the government to do, including, on most issues, what a clear majority of GOP voters want.
What happened next?
Since then, the GOP in the House refused to even allow a vote on it.
How is this possible? Because in order for "liberal Western democratic societies" to de facto exercise their "right to determine their own immigration policies in a democratic way", ordinary citizens have to engage.
They have to go voting, and they have to pay attention and fact-check their own beliefs and opinions and those spread by the media who share their political affiliation.
In the US, a whopping 50% of those eligible to vote, refuse to do so. And with Fox News massively spreading fake news 24/7, and GOP politicians copy-pasting those lines in tweets during half of the day, 7/7, all while demonizing all the media that don't share their political stance, REAL citizen engagement is obviously very low.
In that case, "we the people" literally hand over our constitutional power to self-determinate our immigration policies to corrupt minorities in DC.
In a democracy, "we the people" only have the government we deserve. There is no "other" to blame...
Loved your reference to the “basement-dwelling intel edgelord”. I learned who incels were after the mosque massacre in Quebec City when the loser young Canadian perpetrator self identifed as one but did have to look up edgelord. There have always been people on the edge of society who don’t quite fit in but it seems like the internet has now given them an identity and sense of shared purpose with other lost souls around the world. The internet has been positive in many ways but dark in many other unanticipated ways. It has the capacity to be a tool to radicalize not only ICIS but also white disenfranchised, disconnected and conspiratorial leaning folks. I am feeling a bit pessimistic about how to prevent these wayward souls from actualizing their hate.
Melanin is the primary determinant of skin color.
"Color is spread through the skin by pigment that comes in drops so small that they fall beneath our ability to weigh them. Yet you put them together, the skin and the weightless pigment, and they can move the earth more than an earthquake," wrote Jimmy Breslin in his book "The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez."
Those who do not understand the role of melanin, the role sun plays in skin color and so on worry much about race and create problems.
The extinction human beings face is not based on race, but climate change. No race will be spared.
2
@RK, earthquakes cyclones do not differentiate color gender race or national borders. When the astronauts view earth from up above in space they see a beautiful green planet, continents without boundaries. Yet here on earth we insist on national fences walls barriers visas.
Numbers don't lie.
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Demographers have been measuring the change in population for many decades. The percent of the current U.S. population that is non-Hispanic white is now 61%, down from over 90% in 1900.
.
Based on birth and death rates, demogaphers say that by 2060, the non-Hispanic white population will be about 36%. Their previous predictions have been verified by subsequent data. The birth rates will probably decrease going forward. Death rates could also fall, but an aged non-Hispanic population will not participate in the economic/political/social life the way younger people do. If current conditions in the world hold up. the migration of people from Latin America/Caribbean/Africa/Asia will only increase.
.
Yes, we can say that the non-Hispanic white population is being replaced. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's happened before. There is always an ebb and flow of population due to varying birth/death rates and migration. The North American population changed drastically between 1500 and 1900, with the near extermination of the Native Americans and the migration of Europeans.
.
Non-Hispanic whites are not being exterminated, but perhaps due to their middle class lifestyle and career comittments, they tend to have fewer children.
.
We can appreciate that Americans who were brought up in white majority areas, are becoming jaded by their loss of majority status. It really doesn't matter; sooner or later they will pass on and be replaced.
How is 60% "maybe, possibly" less than 90%? The math is pretty clear on that one. And why doesn't the article even mention fertility rates and demographic trends? When white women have the least children of all races then how can you argue that "maybe, possibly" there will be less white people? If you want to debunk something you better have actual numbers to back up your opinions. Also, lumping mestizos, arabs and such "under the most inclusive definitions of whiteness" is disingenuous, just ask Pedro and Ahmed if they consider themselves white.
4
Ironically America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are lands violently stolen from brown native populations by white people, who subsequently subjected the natives to "assimilation" and genocidal policies. How dare the ancestors of those people attempt to cause hysteria and hatred based on their imagined concerns about maintaining their white identity and power. The NZ white-power terrorist referred to NZ as a "European" country. The Tangata Whenua, (People of the land) have plenty to say about that.
It's not that whites (and Japanese for that matter) are becoming extinct - it's that all other groups/categories are failing miserably at birth control and sustainable family planning. Overpopulation is thoroughly owned by developing countries.
2
If trends continue whites will be replaced. It's as simple to see as connecting the points and extending the line.
But it is not only whites - it is all people from developed countries. In the West, people choose to have fewer children so they can afford to raise them with advantages, or enjoy hedonistic pleasure themselves. This would be great for the environment if somewhat diysgenic ( watch the movie Idiocracy ) because fewer people impact the environment less.
Fewer people would be more valuable and be generally treated better. Those without training would be worth training if - if it weren't cheaper to import this labor-product from abroad. Raising babies doesn't make sense from this economic perspective, so employers want the replacement of westerners of any race to lower their wages.
Immigration must end IMI due to this alone, and anyone with loyalty to the people that comprise the West should agree. And the west is the people NOT an idea. The ideals the west has are an attribute of the people, but those ideals ore not the people - they are a sort of wealth that we are selling to bring in cheap labor to replace us.
Of course if you are not loyal to 'the people that comprise the West' but to some other national or ethnic group, then you don't see 'us' being replaced. You see 'them' being replaced. You become a traitor.
I think whites look around and notice that their view of 'us' was the West, while others' 'us' was racial. Whites are following suit.
2
@Bob Roy: why is "loyalty to the people" of any particular color or culture a valid aspiration? Why not be loyal to universal human graces - forgiveness, tolerance, curiosity, making sacrifices for the good of all, in the expectation that all will make similar sacrifices too?
Why is noone mentioning the real elephant in the room? The deaths of 60 million Europeans in WW2 and the effects upon traumatised survivors/witnesses (not to mention the inability to compete economically with the perpetrators) . The MASSIVE loss of cultural confidence among non- Germanic/Anglo populations as the attempts to ‘Aryanise’ continued (re church abuse , kidnappings etc). The loss of confidence in unwilling perpetrators. The overwhelming sense that we are ruled by criminals?
This article does a good job, but it misses the fundamental point (almost certainly lost on its intended audience if it is meant to inform those anxious about white replacement) that racial categories are utterly arbitrary. A hundred years ago "Italian," "Hungarian," "Jewish" and so on were all separate races in the US census, and these ethnicities were treated differently in broader society. There were restrictive housing covenants against these ethnic minorities to keep them out of Anglo-Saxon neighborhoods. It was only after World War II and the decline of ethnic neighborhoods into broader suburbia that they were all considered "white." Even Anglo-Saxon is a mythical category--look at the early history of England: constant invasions from various Norse ethnicities, the northern French, the Romans, and on and on, all of which interbred. And here in America a "black" person, coming from any range of ethnicities within Africa, can have a baby with a "white" person and the baby is considered "black" not for any scientific reason, but because of slavery. There is no risk of "replacement" when the underlying racial categories are fundamentally contrived.
4
They’re not in the least arbitrary if you’re interested in making sure that white men run everything, own everything, and have the rights to use everybody else for cheapish labor.
Farhad, I can't get past the first sentence of your second paragraph. Implicating feminism isn't what the white nationalists are doing. Their argument (if there is one) isn't predicated on a shop worn cultural marxist under grid. It's morphed into something way more complex and unless we're prepared to blow open the conversation by listening, we're not contributing to any meaningful analysis or solution.
8
@RA LA
They explicitly state that it's men who should work and rule the world, whereas women should stay home and have kids.
What's so "complex" about this idea, and what does "Marxism" has to do with unequivocally rejecting it?
Finally, if you want to "contribute to any meaningful analysis or solution" about white nationalism, and believe that there IS a complex argument that they're making and that we should listen to, could you please tell us what that argument is, more precisely?
The entire claim from white nationalists is that they are being out-bred as well as besieged. So unless you’re aware of some way in which they’re able to breed feom sex between gun-totin’ white men, why yes, keeping women in their “proper,” place is central to their crackpot theories.
And that is, in fact, exzctly what they say.
See George Gilder’s “Sexual Suicide,” as nasty a bit of misogyny and racism as was ever penned.
1
"“The Great Replacement” is a racist and misogynistic conspiracy theory that holds that white people face existential decline, even extinction, because of rising immigration in the West and falling birthrates..."
On its face, “The Great Replacement” is utter nonsense, as the article easily demonstrates. That obvious fact should make us more curious about the underlying psychological reality. What is the hidden gnawing fear at work here?
My candidate would be climate change denial. It is a leftish myth that climate change deniers are both oblivious to the absurdity of their stance and derive peace of mind from espousing it. Denial may succeed at keeping fear slightly at bay, but its hot breath can still be felt. Safety has not been attained.
The main components of climate change denial are likely a combination of terror of death, aversion to lifestyle changes portending greater austerity, and attachment to or actual economic dependence on the artifacts of the carbon culture. The threat of climate change challenges the complacent premises underlying a lazy materialistic consumerism based on deriving the greatest amount of physical pleasure out of the least amount of effort.
Those most emotionally attached appear to be either poor whites or ones who have only lately ascended above the bottom rung. They are angry that the party will be over before they have eaten their fill. It is safer to blame the swarthy hordes a rung below them than the powerful elites who arrived first.
@woofer
"The main components of climate change denial are likely a combination of terror of death, aversion to lifestyle changes portending greater austerity, and attachment to or actual economic dependence on the artifacts of the carbon culture. "
I would contend that their denial is most due to conservatives' collective fear of change, any change, and a lack of imagination. There is no reason to believe that reducing our carbon footprint has to result in a more austere, less pleasant lifestyle. It just requires imagination that we will adapt. For instance, cars today get much better gas mileage and emit far few pollutants than those built 40 or 50 years ago. But, I doubt that many people, except those deeply into nostalgia, would choose the forgo the comfort and safety of today's cars for a 1970 model on a regular basis.
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It's not whether this is true or false. If enough people believe it, take it into their hears, minds, and guts, it may as well be true. For that reason, I implore the media to place all white nationalist and hate coverage in the context of (1) what politicians, political parties, and political operatives are promulgating and/or complicit with this "movement"? (2) who and what individuals are funding the spread of this ideology? In the U.S., the modern Conservative movement, and with it the GOP since Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, have pandered to white racial fears, knowing the conservative agenda cannot win elections without this component. Around the world, in the U.K. of Brexit, in Italy, Hungary, and now Brazil, you can see the active hand of no one other than Steve Bannon, and the funding of his multi-billionaire patrons, Robert and Rebecca Mercer, and the technical support of their internet operation -- Cambridge Analytica. The purpose: subversion of constitutional governance and its replacement with illiberal democracy, aka oligarchic fascism.
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Not that it matters since species extinction is not determined by any subspecies'
expectations of life, but one might think, especially in this time of DJT that they could have found a "so-called white" person to sign the "opinion" piece.
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As a white person raised in the West I have to say I don’t really care if whites become a minority or if the culture changes. I have no allegiance to my culture or race. So people look different and celebrate cinco de mayo or don’t worship at a church? Who cares? Why people care is really beyond me.
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@Anna
And then we're not even talking yet about the fact yet that many white people (myself included) tend to find brown people much more beautiful, physically, than white people ... ;-)
That being said, there do are cultural norms that exist outside of the West and that I do not want to see imposed on Western societies, such as child marriage, the circumcision of girls, etc.
There are other values that are highly present in Western cultures, but much more in certain others still, such as misogyny, so those too I don't want to see imposed even more on us.
And then there are values that are almost absent in Western cultures and that I really would like to see us develop as fast as possible, such as respect for the elderly, respect for nature and the human food chain, and respect for human beings in all our dimensions (including our spiritual needs of real intimacy with ourselves and others, self-compassion and compassion training, and putting well-being before limitless financial profit).
We should all have the right to make the many cultures in which we daily live evolve into the direction of the values we cherish.
And THAT is when replacement theories become more understandable, as it fears that people with other values might (militarily or otherwise) take us over and end the right to choose our own culture.
The answer, however, is obviously neither to imagine that culture and color of skin are linked, nor to commit terror attacks. Those won't help us move forward...
It’s nonsense to claim that respect for the elderly and so in are almost absent in Western cultures, and Orientalist to claim that they are everywhere in rich abundance elsewhere.
What’s happened—see also Foucault, “The Order of Things”—is that modernity, chiefly fueled by capitalism, is rewriting such traditional virtues, which were themselves the products of specific cultural and material formations.
This means that people fearing that values they want to keep (including misogyny, when it comes to white nationalists...) will disappear, have to be listened to. We can't just say that we "don't care".
The key question here is: in a globalized world, how can we make sure that we live in communities that share our values (I do NOT want my girls to grow up in a misogyn society, for instance)?
For centuries now, the response of the West has been: by building a thriving democracy, where values are a constant subject of debate, and as a consequence the "best" ones remain, new and better ones have the conditions needed to arise, and less interesting ones can STILL be cultivated by those minorities who want to keep them, but they cannot be impose by law on the majority.
White nationalists fear that a majority of non-white immigrants will "use" democracy to impose values they see as worse. By doing so, they forget how crucial public debate is in a democracy.
How come they forget this? Because conservative media and politicians are doing everything possible, for two decades already, to destroy real, respectful public debates, by on the one hand massively investing in the spreading of fake news (including fake personal attacks), and on the other hand demonizing non conservatives and their media, so that their voters don't hear any other opinions anymore ... all while destroying education (= where you learn how to debate in the first place).
So THAT is what has to urgently change.
Perhaps if whites handled ourselves a bit differently, sought greater fairness in the political realm, shared the vast resources of the country and planet, understood that we adapt as a human race or die, in other words, if we sought to redress the basic injustices we have wrought on the world we’d have less to fear in terms of retribution or revenge (not that either is really likely on a grand scale). At its core, non-whites don’t want to be whites, they -rightfully- want equality of opportunity, of food security, of education and safety. Pluralistic societies such as Hawaii, Singapore and Mauritius have their problems but they solve them more harmoniously than societies where one race or group dominates and imposes its views (e.g., the US, India, China) on its minorities. As to the opioid and suicide crises the author speaks of, well, to a degree that is self-imposed, certainly no non-white is coming into peoples’ homes and demanding whites addict themselves to opioids. If we whites are so superior, then why can’t we find solutions to our problems versus scapegoats to blame? Perhaps we just aren’t all that superior after all.
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“White" is primarilly an in-group designation within a racist power structure. We should no longer consider it a race. Other than a vague connection to skin tone - a characteristic from which none of our true character is derived - "White" tells us nothing important about who we are. It has no nation, no culture, no positive value whatsoever. Why do we keep this racist relic around? By identifying ourselves this way, we are actually perpetuating the racist system. This isn't to say people of color don't face serious issues we must address, but "POC" is more than able to accomodate this purpose. Be rid of "White."
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white people are not under existential threat.
the Birch Society wing of of the GOP is under existential threat along with those who ascribe to fear mongering as their sole political strategy.
Well... I'm not worried about the decline of white people.
Why? for the reason that we (the intellect of white people) will be replaced by AI.
Humans of all colors have a bright (a rainbow) future under AI.
My grandsons and granddaughter are facing a fascinating future.
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Sacramento, California’s state capital, is the most racially diversified city in the US that reinforces this article’s closing statement that “The Great Replacement is a lie. The country is becoming more diverse, but white people are not losing their grip on America, nor on the world, not by a long shot.” Following is the racial breakdown in Sacramento according to the 2010 census. It has possibly grown more diversified since then.
White: 45.0% (non-Hispanic: 34.5%); Black or African American: 14.6%;Hispanic or Latino of any race: 26.9% (22.6% Mexican, 0.7% Puerto Rican, 0.5% Salvadoran, 0.2% Guatemalan, 0.2% Nicaraguan); • Asian: 18.3% (4.2% Chinese, 3.3% Hmong, 2.8% Filipino, 1.6% Indian, 1.4% Vietnamese, 1.2% Laotian, 1.2% Japanese); Pacific Islander: 1.4% ; Native American: 1.1% ; Other races: 12.3% ; Two or more races: 7.1%.
As Mr. Manjoo said, white people still hold the power, but they are not abusing it, and are sensitive to the needs and concerns of the minorities, as it was demonstrated when police killed a black young man who shot him thinking that his cell phone was a gun. The city is sensitized to inadvertent biases and is made aware that they do not interfere when delivering services or justice (there are occasional transgressions). Apparently communities adjust when the demographic changes, and when the communities depend on each other for economic development and communal welfare an equilibrium sets in to balance everyone's interest, welfare and power.
Maybe it's because my ancestors (Jewish, Greek, Italian) would have been considered "not white" in an earlier wave of immigration, and maybe it's because I am "mixed" in my "white" way, but I don't find mixed peoples to be threatening. People are people. And thank you for saying Obama is half-white; no one ever does and it's TRUE. Whatever. We're all just trying to stay alive.
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Yes it's bonkers but so are many of the people who believe it. And the really evil ones are those who know it's a lie but use it for political advantage.
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I appreciate Farhad’s perspective here, but his point seems to be that white people don’t need to worry because they will not lose power anytime soon even if there relative numbers are declining. Is that meant to be comforting?
To me this country was built on a set of ideas. And even if those ideas were based in part on some of the foundations of European culture, they are universal. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness applies to everyone and has been universally adopted.
I am a white person and I believe in AMERICAN culture. Immigrants come here and they adapt to our culture. And within a generation predominately speak English (remember Italians 100 years ago?). The fear seems to be that white people will be put in concentration camps of exterminated?!?
And BTW one could argue Black culture is very predominate in our music (everything from Jazz, rock and roll and hip hop) and language (English is dynamic and Black idioms predominate) and none of that seems to have diminished our global power!
Our culture will predominate as it does in the world today but our race ID will probably not. Mixed race marriages are growing. Race will be hard to distinguish in 100 years.
I am in my 60s and I remember quite seriously when a “mixed marriage” was considered an Italian/Irish marriage or even more radically a Christian and a Jew.
People have historically defined our culture by race and that just will not determine our destiny in the future. I wish fear wouldn’t either.
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@Quizical
Invariably, the grandchildren of a Christian - Jewish marriage are Christian or secular.
This is not new. Europeans were civilized and "the other" were barbarians. The Ann Coulters of the world make it palatable to the Trump supporters, and the mass murders are there to remind us of what this really is.
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In recent years, a half million white working class people have killed themselves via suicide, OD and liver damage, so many that the US life expediency is declining. It's happening mostly in the areas where there has been massive job loss and where Trump won. Republicans have talked about this for years, but Andrew Yang is the first Democrat that has mentioned it. Is it surprising that if 100's of thousands are so miserable they would kill themselves that some would irrationally place the blame on others?
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The point that Mr. Manjoo makes is invalid. What should have been made is that when populations become more affluent, population numbers begin to drop. For example, immigrant workers in the US from families from large families have smaller families, so white populations which are affluent wiill continue to fall in numbers while at the same time more and more people will claim to be "white" (see Hispanics on US censuses).
My suspicion is that my Lebanese-American neighbors third-generation children now consider themselves as "white" (whatever that means - when i lived in Taiwan, I, a "white" was "yellower" than the Chinese sitting next to me on the Ling Nan bus in Taipei).
The absorption rate now is greater than in the 1910's.
But the real issue is, "So what?' It's time things get shaken up a bit.
Get used to it. With climate change, immigration rates wlll change and more people will move around.
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@Philip Sedlak
"The point that Mr. Manjoo makes is invalid. What should have been made is that when populations become more affluent, population numbers begin to drop."
I think Mr. Manjoo points are completely valid because he's trying to explain the mindset of the conspiracy theorists. The fact that birthrates drop for a very logical (and well-known) reason is not relevant to these people who seem to care only about raw numbers. They know that many women would prefer to have a real career instead of being a baby-maker, which is why the most extreme among them can seriously propose banning women from the workforce.
The 1965 immigration reform act was sold as something that would not alter the existing demography of America.
Pew studies show that demographics other than white and jewish Americans have notably lower support for traditional American values like freedom of speech.
Most Americans white or not have little political power, the capital class holds the reigns of power and benefits most from immigrant workers and globalization.
Any criticism of near open border immigration polciy is decried as immoral or racist while other developed countries in the world maintain effectivly ethnostates (Japan, Korea, Isreal, ...).
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I disagree with the author in the meaning of “The Great Replacement” to many of the racist white nationalists on the far right.
First, “The Great Replacement” theory does not mean an actual extinction of "Christian whites" (race being a social construct far more than genetic identity and religion being a social identity that is mutable). Rather, they argue that "white Christians" will become a minority: the majority of the nation will be made of (1) non-white Christians (especially African-Americans and Latinos) and (2) Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others of different faiths, most of which will be of Arab, African or Asian, but some will be "white" as those "whites" perceive that the future is non-Christian.
Second, the theory holds that some whites will continue to hold "vast economic and political power". However, those whites will not be nationalists, but globalists, interested only in corporate profits by destroying jobs in America and Europe. Living in high-security enclaves, they will ride out the the violent clashes between Christian white nationalists and all of the "invaders".
Third, Christian white Americans who do not have a high school education or only have a high school degree are facing a social and economic dead end. The jobs for that group that remain in America will not be in high-paying manufacturing jobs but low-pay jobs in the service/gig economy.
"The Great Replacement" is a possibility in in 20 to 40 years.
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@Brad
"Third, Christian white Americans who do not have a high school education or only have a high school degree are facing a social and economic dead end."
That's true of ANY social group. Christian white Americans don't have a monopoly on that.
The atrocity happened in New Zealand. It was committed by an Australian. Yet the article only mentioned the US. The author doesnt even touch upon these basic facts in passing. I don't understand the disconnect.
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@Craig The "white extinction theory" is not new. Mr. Manjoo could have written the article without any reference to New Zealand at all and it would have been entirely on point. Remember the people chanting "we will not be replaced" in Charlottesville?
I think you get it wrong. Remember the guy travelled to Europe and it changed him in the wrong way? My american friends have problem to understand the real, (perceived as) negative impacts of some type of immigration. Today I read a new anti-immigration party in Netherland have likely got the highest number of votes in Netherlands. Over the last many years its equivalent in France has had strong results, and if not for their anti-Europe moto, I know many people would have sided with them.
Does it mean French are racists? If you link it that way, please let me remind you that after Obama was elected, people in France and Europe were incredibly jealous of America to have such a man in charge. In France if I remember correctly, it was 80 or even 88% who said they would like to have him as president. How does it fit together to have people majoritarily worried about immigration and at the same time in love with a black president?
Because this fear is not about white extinction or because of racist bias, even if actions like the one in NZ and others before are made by purely racist people.
No, the fear of the majority has nothing to do with race and all to do with culture as a basis for social behavior.
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There is a lot of merit to writing down these truths for all to see, but if you believe that facts have anything to do with the beliefs that these people hold, unfortunately you are wrong.
As if “race” actually mattered.
Watch Hasan Minhaj and Gabriel Iglesias. Both are on Netflix.
Can you honestly watch those guys and conclude they are not fully American? Really? Look at their worldview(s). Look at their success. Look at the way they were raised, and are raising their families. Look at how much they love their country, in all its defective hilarity. Look at the way they walk, talk, and think.
Yes, being a POC while doing anything in America can be dangerous. But on a demographic timeline, skin tone only matters so much. US history proves cultural assimilation matters more, and we know that continues as always.
The article gives no original insights.
We could adopt the view of the ancient Romans who were not color racists - they were prejudiced on the basis of culture and could not understand why others didn't want to be like them so they assimilated them by rarely by force. We are losing our chanced to make everybody into decent Americans and fulfilling the promise of America which is an ideal of a nation that rises about the physical for sets of values by holding on to racism.
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While it is absolutely correct, this is a very narrow reading of the New Zealand Manifesto.
We need to understand and diagnose the thinking of the White Power Movement in order to combat it - and the NZ massacre was part of an organized White Power Movement - instead, this Op-ed actually makes the situation worse.
There was a LOT more going on in the NZ Manifesto than just demography. This analysis narrows the scope and is a parody.
The best single treatment of the intellectual, social and political dimensions of the White Power Movement is the book "Bring the War Home", see:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078
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Let's be honest, the melting pot theory really only applies to white Americans. The idea of being "American" is a European conception and thus only whites will truly be considered this. All other eccentricities will be seen as hyphenated Americans first. And no, Native Americans are not the "true" Americans because they did not create the United States. There was no concept of being "American" before Europeans settled the continent.
True assimilation into a white majority society is about as possible as a white person born and raised in China being considered Chinese. It's likely just not possible.
As nation after nation gets to a decent standard of living, as they get to a basic level of healthcare where parents reasonably expect their children will outlive them, the birth rates drop.
As immigrants move to developed nations, their birth rates drop. People too focused on their threatened lily-whiteness don't read newspapers, or don't read for comprehension.
"Why Birthrates Among Hispanic Americans Have Plummeted"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/us-birthrate-hispanics-latinos.html
But another NYTimes article points to the fact that here in the US, birthrates are falling, but the population still increases because we're an attractive place to move to, settle in, and have smaller families.
Shrinking the overall human population is something we should be doing, anyway, if we want a livable planet. We just have to figure out how to make a closed-loop, non-growth economy work for everyone.
But as Mr. Manjoo mentions, and the other Times article details, the reason some of these "men" are upset is probably more about the following:
"Women are postponing marriage, becoming more educated and are more likely to be the primary breadwinners for their households."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/fertility-rate-decline-united-states.html
Mr. Manjoo, thank you also for leaving out the name of the nobody who murdered all those innocent people in New Zealand.
I’m a white male married to a non-white woman. We have two kids. All of this angst about disappearing whiteness as based on racism and bias. Race is a completely made up concept. Yes, people of African heritage may be more likely to inherit sickle cell anemia and some folks are more prone to heart disease, but there is only one race and that’s the human race.
If you want to assure that your “culture”, whatever that means, survives then you need to instill those values on the next generation, whatever color they are. What I see is that white people don’t want to have babies (which is probably the correct path given the strain on resources), but they also don’t want to share their acquired wealth with the rest of society. The wealth gap has only increased over the years thanks to huge tax cuts, and rich folks, who are largely white, are using that wealth to buy politicians who give even more tax cuts.
On top of this, whites do not want to give up political power either. The US has had 44 white presidents and one half white one, but they’ve all been men. This Congress may be diverse compared to past ones, but it’s still not as diverse as our country is.
To put things another way, racist policies from hundreds of years ago largely govern who owns what resources today. African slaves built much of the south, yet they have little to show for it. Native Americans have been squeezed onto reservations. We need to take care of all our people, whatever their color.
White replacement is nothing more than an effort by racists to justify sentiments that they recognize to be immoral and wrong. Racism is the dominant political factor in America. Trump's attacks on Blacks, Latinos, Muslims and the LGBTQ community resulted in his election and enabled him to win election and have massive support. No fact based challenge to the Replacement argument will change the thinking of Trump supporters. That is why it does not merit discussion.
What is more insidious than the misuse of statistics inherent in the 'Great Replacement' "theory" is its generally conspiracist tone.
It is one thing to argue that a certain way of life or series of "white" sub-cultures are 'dying out' (they're not, but let's not quibble)...but it is quite another to articulate (badly) the view that this is a deliberate effort on the part of Western governments.
I find the former absurd, but the latter quite frightening, because a group however unorganised that comes to believe that the state 'has it in for them' ends up feeling it has nothing to lose...
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I suggest those who subscribe to the white-extinction ideology study elementary genetics.Mixing genetic variants generally leads to a much healthier offspring. My wife and I are of Scandinavian heritage.One hundred and fifty years ago my ancestors were called "big dumb swedes" and were effectively segregated into their own communities by German immigrants.One of our daughters married a person of Indian descent 10 years ago.The wedding ceremony was a mix of cultures which was refreshing.Our grandchildren are beautiful,very smart and ....I hope.....the future.
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Some good points but I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that these people have no social life and no friends. Lonely and angry.
They literally can't get a date. They ought to spend more time wondering why women like Ivanka, their racial ideal, want nothing to do with them.
@Lou Good They don't spend any time wondering about things like that because they don't like the answers.
When I was still on facebook last year, I received a post about the decline of the white race in the U.S. It was cleverly done but was based on a misconception, that white couples would merely be replacing themselves, if that, in reproductive terms while non-whites would be having at least 8 children each. So in 50 years, U.S. would become a non-white country. But in fact, none-whites in the U.S. restrict the number of children significantly which would upend the prediction?
@Ellen NicKenzie Lawson
You caught the flaw in the argument. But, we don't seem to be teaching (or people aren't learning) how to approach an essay, manifesto or political agenda with a critical eye.
In short I would instead argue to anyone that cares about the possibility of "The Great Replacement" actually happening in the future, that they are either "relatively unintelligent" or "relatively ignorant" and point out to them that while the former is a life sentence, the latter is curable - and let them decide what applies in their case.
Racism is not just wrong, it is pathetic and absurd. The mass murderer in Christchurch was far from the greatest Australian.
The preservation of a nation's truly meritorious beliefs and values is much more important than the preservation of the dominant complexion, nose shape or hair texture of its citizens.
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For decades, Democrats have advanced the notion that demographics favor them, because the non white population is growing. They cite as proof that the largest and fastest growing minority group is Hispanics. They started out counting "Spanish surnamed" and then expanded the group to individuals who had migrated From Spain and Portugal, and included those who stopped off in South and Central America, the Caribbean, and any other location that had been part of the colonial empires of Spain or Portugal.
The 17% of the population that identifies as "Hispanic" identifies 80% as white. The 17% reported by the census bureau is not a rational demographic or a cultural group that has anything in common, other than that they have ancestors who spoke either Spanish or Portuguese.
If you examined the historical ancestry of American Caucasians, more than 17% is German-American.
It is pure silliness. The fact that the 50,000 or so white supremacists in America and some world wide have adopted the Democrat notion that Caucasians from Spain, Portugal, Italy, India and Southern Europe [or anyone with a tan] are not White is not surprising.
The wackos have been convinced by Democrats, who have a vested interest in sowing dissent based on identity politics.
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Thanks for the opinion piece and the excellent video. Anything sensible that can calm the groundless extinction fears of some white folks is welcome.
And don't forget - racial fear and hatred are promoted to uninformed people to keep them from figuring out that the wealthy 1% are the real source of their problems.
This column is another example of decades of Americans being taught to identify with their ethnic or race background, their religion, their gender or their sexual preference. In reality, in America, the great divide is class. "You either own the mother or you work for it" . . . Since the 1970s, the US working class of all races has become impoverished--with the destruction of the once powerful labor movement, and their abandonment by the Democrats for pro-corporate policies of austerity . . .Ms. Collins does not challenge workers identifying with their race, but merely counsels them that "their" white race will be able to hold on to their unfair privileges a little longer. . . . This is exactly the racist attitudes that the ruling elite has used since day one to divide and defeat the working class. Ms. Collins does not understand that young workers no longer accept this line. They understand that to destroy racism, it is necessary to destroy capitalism. And that is what they will do.
This piece made me sad.
But then I thought of a poignant observation that my 75 year old dad recently made.
By way of background, I was born and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in the 70's and 80's when it was predominantly Italian and Jewish-American. (Think John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever.")
40 some odd years later, 86th Street (where Tony Manero did his pizza-folding strut) is the hub of one of New York's booming new Chinatowns.
My dad recently reflected on the neighborhood's changes and the fact that a lot of people look around and say "The salumerias and kosher delis are all gone. They've been replaced by Chinese stores. It's a shame what happened to the old neighborhood."
My wise and compassionate father's response:
"You all need to open your eyes. The delis? The meat stores? They haven't gone anywhere. They are right on 86th Street. Only thing is, instead of pastrami or capicola, there are now ducks hanging in the windows. It ain't a shame at all. It's what makes New York the best city in the world."
I fervently hope that someone can convince those who subscribe to this pernicious "replacement" theory to open their eyes as well.
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@Larry P.
I could be wrong, but I think your anecdote actually supports those who believe that the "replacement theory" is true.
From what you describe, one culture (Chinese/Asian) has replaced another culture (Italian/Jewish) right down to the kind of food that is sold in that Brooklyn neighborhood. Duck has replaced pastrami and capicola.
So why do you call the replacement theory pernicious?
I've never met anybody who was actually white. Or black for that matter. Everyone I have met was essentially some shade of red-brown, with the fairer ones (such as those who share my Scots-Irish ancestry) better described as pink than anything else, and others gradually darkening from there into very dark browns.
In short, we're all human and we need to understand that the obsession which some seem to have over insignificant issues of complexion is exactly that -- an obsession and totally devoid from anything rational. From which follows the logical conclusion that all those who frequent websites or social groups which dwell on such things are (by definition) good candidates for some sort of mandatory mental health intervention.
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There probably are far fewer “pure” whites than anyone realizes. Most people would be surprised by results of a DNA test.
And I am not sure why it matters, anyway. We are already one species with different “varieties” and cultures created by geography, migrations, war, and artificial boundaries - all subject to change.
Neither culture nor demographics remain static. Everything changes; that really is the only certainty.
It is too bad it was necessary to have to write this important piece. But, in an age were TV stations are part of the Entertainment Division of each network, it is understandable. My network TV news viewing is down to a couple hours a week since most of it is a re-hash of articles appearing here and in the Washington Post. Something else the author could have mentioned- Trump has put two conservative (looking backward for the golden age thinkers) WHITE guys on the Supreme Court and mostly WHITE men in the federal judiciary.
1
I must have failed basic arithmetic. If one group increases faster than another, the first will certainly come to dominate proportionally as the other declines.
6
@JBR Exactly, people are ignoring the elephant in the room.
1
It's not so much losing a preponderance of skin colour that people fear, it's losing European culture, values and ideals. That's what built the countries that immigrants flock to.
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@Mark
In the same breath, the American version of these types of boneheads excoriated French people and their culture when it was fashionable during the Bush II administration. Reminder: France is part of Europe and part of "European culture, values and ideas."
1
@Mark
That's just a fig leaf. It is a fear of losing unmerited white (male) entitlements. Buying into Mr. Trump's lies, racism and fear. Blaming all of your problems on others. Orthodox white supremacy, conventional misogyny.
1
This is a fine counter argument to the Great Replacement Theory. But I must ask myself, Why is it even necessary for us in 2019 of the 21st Century to express angst and fear over who will be part of the future dominant race? Is it not beneath our dignity to even address the amorality of bigots and racists? Our responsibility in life is to evolve not to regress in ideology and personal philosophy. Evolution of the mind means becoming metaphorically color blind. Let us reflect on but a few of those non-Whites who were discriminated against, yet became leaders and contributors to a progressive and thriving democracy. The first group that comes to mind is our Asian Americans dating back to the late 19th Century Chinese immigrants to the Japanese to the South East Asians and East Indians. Yes, Barack Obama was half-White, but he was half-African American, too. And there may come a day when CA's Latino population may be the majority race and ethnicity. We are to encourage not fight diversity. Beneath our skin colors, we are equal, with no exceptions.
2
The phrase "The Great Replacement" strikes me aa cumbersome and uninteresting.
2
The trouble is, it's not just about skin colour.
7
So, as usual, once it occurs to a certain group of white people that they might face treatment or an existence similar to those of POC and other marginalized groups (who have suffered at the hands of white people), they have a meltdown. And, also as usual, the irony is COMPLETELY lost on them.
1
"The net worth of the median black American family is only around fifteen percent of that of the median white American family."
I believe we know what you mean and I hate to be a bore but there is no median black or white American family. Very interesting statistic nonetheless.
A convincingly articulate essay whose only perceivable flaw is that while it easily rationally confirms there is no Great Replacement for readers who don't believe in it anyway, and those unlikely to, it can't make a dent in the irrationally of those like Steve King, and other Right Wing Extremists, who coincidentally believe Donald Trump won the popular vote, tells the truth, treats everyone as fairly as they should be treated, and is being betrayed by a "Deep State" conspiracy.
1
All organisms die. All species become extinct (or are transformed into new species through organic evolutionary processes.
Recent research in human genetics suggests that light skin and blond hair are short term genetic modifications that increased the viability of our human ancestors who first migrated into northern Europe from Africa.
The white race was invented by white people. It is not biologically real.
The people who propagate the myth of white extinction are white supremacists and white racists.
3
Unfortunately Mr. Manjoo is ‘preaching to the choir’ when his audience is primarily N.Y.T. subscribers.
1
Ridiculous. Race is a social construction. This isn't about the extinction of a species, or even the destruction of a culture. If white folk become a minority, it will be because we are having children with darker skinned folk. The only thing that may cause is the elimination of racist ideology and white privilege. I'm sure there will be plenty of differences between religion for us all to continue hating and killing each other.
@Stephen Collingsworth A basic biology course really should be required of humanities majors. The human races are classic examples of biological subspecies: anatomically distinguishable populations of the same species, separated by geography and able to interbreed freely where they meet, yielding offspring with intermediate characteristics.
Recognizing this makes absolutely no value judgement, but denying it displays ignorance and demonstrates that the denier is driven by politics rather than physical reality.
1
I'd like to see a debate between the Farhad Manjoo who tells us today that white people shouldn't worry about becoming a minority in America because, you know, anything could happen and the Farhad Manjoo who told us on January 16, 2019 that
"There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders
"Why a brave Democrat should make the case for vastly expanding immigration."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opinion/open-borders-immigration.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Ffarhad-manjoo&action=click&contentCollection=undefined®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection
4
People think this white supremacist rhetoric is nothing, it’s just a flash in the pan... it is not. Just go back to 1929, and watch Hitler’s rapid rise using the anger against some real, but mostly unreal indignities suffered by the Germanic populace at hand of Jews and all those others. His propaganda machine then, in comparison, can still I think beat even today’s media. By 1939, war was at everywhere’s doorsteps, just few short years, within a two generation window.
And before WW-II, such dedicated genocide was a distant echo in South Africa Or Namibia (not recognized at that time though).
He set a precedent, a detailed map of “how to do genocide in real time and with real results!”
@Yankelnevich (Denver), has written well. It is true, that is what’s happening in rural America. Low birth rate among Caucasians: it is a fact.
But, also are the facts that having lots of babies is the way of most African societies, it is also very much a part of Muslim culture. Joint family system helps majority survive to adulthood! These are just facts.
On a recent trip to Himba tribes, I had to wrap my head around the fact, that children are “future currency” to them, the real reason to live, gather large cattle herds. The tribesmen bluntly asked me, if not for all the children, why would you want to do all this?
One who goes up, must come down as well. Is this hullabaloo the last hurrah of the mighty white race?
When did we stop stop being humans first and everything else later.
2
The falling birthrates among white women and women in general are due to the advent of reliable birth control 60 years ago, and yes, feminism which suggests women should work rather than raise the children. This is also why we have so many poorly adjusted children. But my question is, do you have another theory as to why white women aren't having kids? Every white woman I speak to in NYC is a feminist and pretty hates the idea of having children. Who put this idea in their heads? FEMINISTS!
If you call me a white supremacist for pointing out this obvious fact that feminism is causing women to pursue careers and not children, then that would be a very unfair conclusion. No not just unfair, it's actually evil to call someone racist and misogynist just for observing facts. What's your theory as to why white women are no longer having babies??? If you think something other than what I think, then you're a racist! Such dumb logic but two can play.
1
@PJ ABC Real estate prices. White women mostly grew up with a certain amount of space per person (as did white men). They won't have kids if they can't provide that. Or they will have only as many kids as they can provide that for.
People from developing countries were raised in a much less abundant environment, so they aren't as picky about how many people share a bedroom.
It is incorrect to say that whites are the most successful financially per capita. Nigerian, Hindu, and eastern Asians all have higher per capita income then native born whites. You don't see these specifics because a lot of tie Indians and middl eastern people are classified as "white". The same can be said for Ashkenazi Jews.
2
This is kind of obvious, no?
White people are 90% of Europe and Russia, 70% of the US and Canada, somewhere around 50% of Latin America, and, depending on your definition of Aryan, substantial in India and Iran as well. Not to mention much of Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, etc.
No, this paranoid and evil psychopath in New Zealand is a paranoid and evil psychopath. We didn’t need an article to tell us that.
2
No one knows the future and demographics is an imprecise science. But liberals know exactly what the temperature will be in 50 years if we allow cows to emit methane and drive to work tomorrow. Anyway, Mr. Manjoo keeps trying to slap a European philosophy stoked by the influx of Muslim immigrants into Europe on the U.S. The New Zealand shooter was an Australian who embraced these European ideas. Most importantly, Mr. Manjoo shouldn't destroy the Democrat dream of a white minority meant to be taxed with impunity. Democrats embrace the replacement theory, because they see their path to power through it.
5
Rum, Romanism and Rebellion; Chinese Exclusion Act; Irish need not apply; Jim Crow laws; S.S. St. Louis, 1939, not allowed to land in USA, Cuba or Canada, Cherokee March of Tears. Truth, Justice and the American way. Choose the Good Angel or.....
I feel a little gaslit over all this white supremacy stuff. As a white guy, I’ve never met anyone who subscribes to this Nazi stuff; not even a wink wink nod nod kind of way.
People can say I’m lucky or insulated, but I don’t think that’s it. I think that white surprises are such a small cadre of basement dwelling losers that they could not possibly represent the hopes and fears of white people, who I might add are NOT inherently racist as a group.
Anyway, you can write about it as if it’s true, but my experience tells me it’s a lie, despite the occasional bubble of insanity like the shooting in New Zealand.
3
if those white men are so worried about being replaced, they should get a job, help with domestic chores and be nicer to their working wives( who are working at their demand to do so even though they will not admit it). They may find procreating alittle easier. You cannot expect a woman to work and raise 4 children if you do not help out.
2
Interesting that whiteness is such a fragile thing. Mix ten percent brown into it and a 90 percent white person becomes brown. That brownness sure is powerful stuff. Whites most certainly will become extinct if we disavow our own children.
1
To state the obvious America,New Zealand, Australia etc were never white to begin with, early Europeans killed off and replaced these original populations, and In the twisted and paranoid minds of these white supremacist they are afraid that somehow it's payback.
2
Thanks for the Race splaining. What a waste of time and effort reading this thing was.
4
What is bonkers is for any ethnic of racial group to reproduce at current levels. We all face existential extinction from climate change.
6
With food, art, music, attire, hobbies, science, etc., people the world over enjoy different cultural aspects of other societies that have different skin hues, eye folds, hair colors and types, lips, height, on and on. Where would American music be without African Americans? The Jews virtually invented Hollywood and much of Broadway, 25% of Nobel prizes have gone to Jews. Gays are amazing in dance, fashion, drama, theater, all art.
Everyone likes Asian food, Mexican food, soul food. Rap and hip hop is now international, just like blues and R &B and jazz before it. What is this hatred because of skin color?
Mass delusion is an ancient phenomenon. Why do so many people believe in colossal fictions?
If a delusion leads to good results for mankind, no one is hurt, but malign delusions cause most of the man made suffering on earth. Those filled with self pity, always the victim, who believe that their own superiority, based on the color of skin justifies killing, slavery, oppression, entitlement, rigged societies, and endless barbarism should be the ones thrown away, sent somewhere else and leave the rest of us alone.
Starting with throwing out massively unfit politicians. It's sad that a single voter is so gullible that they put these horrible people in office.
1
I can't really see an issue with everyone interbreeding with everyone else until there's no such thing as a race. I tease my daughter that if she gives me grandkids, I want one with afropuffs and one little china doll. Seeing that she's obsessed with eastern culture and the one boy she seems sweet on in middle school is black... I might get my wish some day :) Of course, she might fall in love with a boy that is as white and looks like her brother. Racial pride is as stupid as patriotism. It measures people based on a bodily fluid cocktail of mommy and daddy instead of based on people themselves. Life is too short for this nonsense.
@Darren Starr
" Racial pride is as stupid as patriotism."
.
If what you say is true, then how do you explain "Black Pride"?
It’s exhausting to keep up with what white people are thinking. I just know they hate me and people like me. Beyond that I don’t need details.
2
Trump has tapped into this International White Supremacy Garbage. Fear and hate; very powerful.Trump was mentioned by the murderer in his Manifesto. Internet has given these haters instant World Wide connection and fame. Look at Trumps Tweets; hate filled to 59 Million Followers; instantly echoed by his Cult and FOX. Vote them out. Worldwide. Ray Sipe
1
...If we’re willing to call most Hispanics “white”...
There’s really no issues for these crazies alt rightists!
Great article!
Thanks Manjoo. Good to know.
1
Please ask Native Americans what they think about being over-run by whites.
1
Race is fake human construct anyhow. We are all the same species of humans, Homo Sapiens. The sooner we become multiracial as a species, the better as far as I am concerned!!
1
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Farhad Manjoo. I was so worried I was about to be replaced. But on second thought, you don’t look white, Mr. Manjoo. You trying to lure me into a false sense of security?
1
None of these guys have girlfriends.
Yeah, obviously. And by covering it you only prop it up as a possible truth. Why does the Times always do this? Don't cover climate denial. Don't opine on the validity of white supremacy. Just assume these are bad ideas and go from there.
1
who cares people are people
Dylan Roof, the Pittsburg shooter, and the NZ shooter are not going to get their perfect white genes to the next round of life. For the hetero among them, they won’t ever have sex with a female again.
How stupid can one get? Why not work on becoming a well adjusted person, earn a good living, and have 10 kids? Would that not be a better strategy?
2
"Extinction" is by definition extreme -- but serves as a useful straw man for the author's lecture. Of course, Farhad Manjoo also instructs us (Jan 17th article) "There's Nothing Wrong with Open Borders".
So, no possible bias or misrepresentation or agenda in his claims.
At least his article is on the opinion page (for now).
And how often does the NYT trumpet "changing demographics" (primarily immigration driven) in America? So, while extinction is certainly not happening...what is the argument against some form of replacement? (Whether or not it is a goal or merely a convenient byproduct).
Isn't it easier to import favorably disposed voters rather than try to change the mind's of people? Or does that cut too close to an awkward truth?
3
The author is a passable technology writer and he is correct that this “theory” is a bunch of hogwash. His writing however is not up to the spirited thrashing this conspiracy rubbish deserves. The NYT should have a stronger columnist on this.
1
It’s difficult to believe in the year 2019 people believe so strongly in this type of stupidity.
Why don’t we just believe in witchcraft ?how simple minded have we become, but in a country that is founded on white superiority white people have to pretend all the time that there hatred for others is misunderstood.
White peoples will always be in charge because they always find a way to slaughter people of color, cheat there way into elite schools etc make up stories on Fox News, force children into cages, force whites women to have children who can’t afford them because of the white myth that children are important to white society, white serial killers of minorities called stop and frisk etc. corporations only hire people who like them because white peoples need to be comfortable ,affirmative action is for white peoples.
It’s exhausting to keep hearing about the plight of whites people since they are all victims nothing is never enough for them it just never ends,
As soon as the spotlight goes somewhere else whites once again slaughter the innocent public or the president gives a moronic speech praising white nationalists
Let us just give everything to white people since they have it and stop hitting them with law suites and get it is over with, hate is hate and white folks have the market on hate.
1
White apologists are almost as bad (certainly more pathetic) than white nationalists, and identity politics is, in turn, almost as ruinous as white nationalism. Both are tearing this country, and the world, apart at the seams.
1
It is no reflection on Mr. Manjoo but this piece should never have had to be written. The idiots most likely to subscribe to this replacement nonsense live in very white places where, for some reason, fear of diversity is greater than in more diverse areas. In any case, and as a a seventy-seven year old white guy, I have to wonder what puts white people in an elevated position. The so-called white supremacists and their enablers are not strong selling points.
This certainly explains why the right wing white supremacists are so anti-abortion. Aside from the issue of women controlling their own bodies, underneath it all, they fear that too few white babies will be born. Since life as we know it came from Africa, no one is pure white.
Of course it's a lie. But, like so many things these days, the damage is done if enough really stupid people believe it.
2
Guess which President is still waiting for a Thank you ----From a Dead Man----He claims to have given a great sendoff..........That is White Privilege..............................
The bigots (i) can’t agree on what “white” is and (ii) want white women out of the work force so that real idiot opioid couch potato men can get jobs. Saddle the women with enough children and they can’t complain-at least that’s their reactionary misogynist theory. What’s in it for white women? Pregnancy and slavery apparently...
3
When I was growing up in the 1960s the white supremacist theory was that black men having babies with white women would eventually cause the USA population to become black. They opined that black genes were dominant and would overpower white genes. Obviously they were wrong. They are wrong about everything and should just crawl back under their rocks.
1
One should keep in mind that this op-ed was written by the same person responsible for "There's Nothing Wrong With Open Borders" back in January.
3
@Swaz Fincklestein
One should also keep in mind that Farhad Manjoo is probably smarter than a lot of people and accomplishes more in one day than a lot of people will in a lifetime. Mr. Manjoo's op-ed piece is fabulous and much-needed.
This fear of replacement by minorities is a flat out admission of how terribly the white race has treated non-whites.
Otherwise why would white people be so terrified of having the tables turned on them?
2
To combat a racist theory it is not necessary to avoid hard truths. I would have preferred you address it head on and not do "what aboutism" ("well you've got power and wealth and the Senate and your health is only half-bad").
Let's tell them the likely truth. We do not know the future. An asteroid or a nuclear exchange could change everything. White families could--if unlikely-- get larger. Immigration could slow, as it has in parts of Europe. But even if nothing changes and you become a minority, so what? Are the minority white people fleeing from Hawaii or suffering loss of all civil rights?
Are the levers of corporate and media power suddenly flipping to non-whites ? No. Are there still thousands of small towns and rural counties which are overwhelmingly white and likely to stay that way even in the future? Sure. There will be changes though for change is the human condition. Empires rise and fall. Civilizations flourish and then are empty ruins. It is not a conspiracy. It is the way of the world. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Has this writer ever heard of "steelmanning"? It's the opposite of creating a straw man. To steelman someone's argument is to address the very strongest version of it you can come up with. Because he fails to deal with the best arguments in favor of the Great Replacement theory, Manjoo is unlikely to convince anyone.
Those arguments include: The replacement of native white populations in great cities of Europe like London and Paris, accompanied by rising terrorism, welfare dependency, and crime (like the mass sexual assaults in Germany, grenade attacks in Sweden, and child-rape grooming gangs in Britain).
Manjoo mentions rising deaths of despair, but fails to point out that life expectancy of whites (only whites AFAIK) is actually falling in America, most reminiscent of the increase in deaths following the fall of the Soviet Union. The vast demographic shift occurring in the U.S., which had a white population of close to 90% for most of its history, now down to ~65% and still falling--the sort of change that usually happens only when a country loses a war.
If Manjoo has the better case, why is he scared to take on facts like these?
3
The same people who condemn white replacement theorists glorify Native American replacement theorists like Prince Philip, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, or Cochise.
1
Pretty Pretty Funny. A Minority of White People Settled Texas as Mexico Property and Guess What?--few years go by and TaDa! It becomes U.S. Reading History should assuage those jittery WS Nerves.........
It is interesting that there is one other group who often cites the inevitable decline of the white majority: liberal journalists. I have read many an article and heard many a radio program where people gleefully point to the fact that whites will one day be the minority. To pin this all on white suprematists is something out of an obvious, tedious made Hollywood script. This article is just trite.
1
There's a nuance about white replacement that seems to be often missed. Its really about the fears of white CHRISTIAN replacement. This is why so many Jews no longer consider ourselves "white" : white Christians have never considered Jews part of the white tribe. At the same time, people of color -and Middle Eastern Muslims -consider Jews white. Its a conundrum for us Jews. For me, three years ago, I stopped checking "white" on demographic questions. White Christians don't consider me white, so why would I want to identify with such racists?
1
It’s sad living in a country full of no go urban areas because you'll be preyed on there because of your race.
1
This theory sure is bonkers. I was born in 1946, been white all that time, and never have heard any white relatives or friends bring up extinction, genocide, or replacement. I am a New Yorker, so therefore I am part Jewish culturally, and as a Bronxite, I am part Hispanic culturally. So I am an Irish-Catholic who is apparently part Jewish and part Hispanic. That's fine. This "replacement" theory is of interest to some academics and a few white kooks. The Kook Klux Klan if you will. Apropos of nothing, I was in Saigon a few years ago having lunch one afternoon when a Jewish fellow came up and asked if I was Jewiish. I said no, Irish Catholic. He nodded and began to walk away. I said, "but I know some Jews", He turned and I said "I'm a New Yorker, of course I know some Jews." He smiled and we began a friendly conversation. He was American born. He was working to link up Jews in Asia who might need a support group. I told him it sounded like a good idea. It's a big world, most people are not afraid of their shadow.
1
A nice debunk, hope it's published in the free zone of the NYT site so everyone starting to be suckered in by the white supremacists can read it.
But you missed more than half the lie. When white supremacists and society in general pretend that a child of a black person from Africa and a white Swedish person (to get the two extremes) is black - they're inventing a replacement that isn't real. Multi-racial people are part of BOTH races their parents were. Not just one.
Why does the media continue to give credence to the racist "one-drop" theory? Children who are 3/4 white and 1/4 black are being called and claimed black - even if we pretend there's some type of competition here, one side obviously wishes to pretend they are losing by saying that child is black.
2
How interesting that a perfectly civil comment noting the existence and possible influence of the reverse attitude is getting censored here...
An Australian born man
who had spent (by all accounts) 45-days of the last 10-years in his home country
is angry about immigration in France (as per his manifesto)
and kills 50 muslims
in NZ.
Why is this piece so US centric?
you have to ask yourself well my god, how must other species be taking this great replacement thingy
I am white. I am 100% comfortable with the idea (false or not) that white people will become a minority in this country.
“...but white people are not losing their grip on America, nor on the world, not by a long shot.”
But their power IS being challenged as never before, at least in recent memory, and THAT is the motivation for these creeps.
All true; but the blame whites for anything and everything theory is alive and well in certain quarters of the Left.
1
The facts are interesting, but I don’t think the roots of white supremacist thinking are logical enough to be debunked.
These are the guys who say that if one woman tweets about her experiences in the workplace, it is a vicious misandrist effort to silence and exterminate men.
These are the guys who equate, “hey, that joke was pretty racist,” with a campaign of persecution that will not end until all white people are in Stalinist re-education gulags.
These are the people who think that a gay character on tv proves the existence of a pogrom against already powerless and marginalized Christians.
So of course they see a Mexican family at the Kroger’s and flee, terrified for home, where they huddle under their afghans with 4chan on their phone, Fox on the TV, and Rush on the radio, all hysterically affirming that yes, that means they are facing genocide.
MAGA America is a fact-free zone, an echo chamber, a cult. Its denizens are paranoid conspiracy nuts in love with the idea that they are victims whose failures can all be pinned on somebody else. They were not handed a six figure job, universal adulation, a plantation, and a subservient blonde wife, and it’s not because they are lazy and mediocre. Nope. Someone stole it from them.
You can’t break up that level of willful crazy with facts.
3
Once again, please refer to Black Flag's 1980 classic,
"White Minority".
Strip out the sarcasm (intended) and the lyrics are quite prescient.
1
We're not going to explain away white supremacy.
Miscegenation is always possible when races and ethnicities live side by side in the same society.
That's the real horror of this authoritarian cult.
Racism is always about racial purity. Without being pure, you're not considered white by white supremacists. There the real fear, replaced by mongrels, a fascist's nightmare. And never mind how nice they are, miscegenation takes away the false pride of superiority a lot faster than racial tolerance, because it shows that there really isn't anything in nature that separates us — it's all culture.
Nevermind that you're dealing with people who probably are not 100% white (I'm looking at you Jeanine Pirro) the purity myth is powerful and people buy into it because it flatters their vanity by presenting themselves as better than others in the world.
Ultimately though the myths behind a cult don't need any anchor in reality at all. They just need to bring the herd together in common fear of the other, and there bind them in through their hostility.
As with race so with religion. Intolerant people don't want mosques down the street or their niece marrying a muslim. They want these possibilities removed. No rational fear need exist for the hate to be real, even white hot enough .for worshipping.
These people are nasty and dangerous because of their belief system. No less so if you prove them wrong through reason.
1
The “Great Replacement” lacks in any factual basis. Hmm, let’s see…
- Did you check the current birth rates of all western countries, especially Europe?
- Did you check the birth rates of the North-African and Middle-East countries?
- Did you check the birth rates of the African Sub-Saharan countries?
- Did you check the current level of Sub-Saharan and Middle-East immigration in Europe?
- Have you studied the statistics of first name cultural origin of the newly born in Europe?
- Have you consulted the statistics about drepanosytosis treatments for the newly born in Europe?
Aaah … that was also my impression.
The ignorance of Americans continues to be breathtaking. They literally cannot understand anything beyond what's directly in front of their eyes. The "white" people of America today would be seen as a miscegenated hybrid of eastern and central Europeans to the "pure" French and English of 500 years ago. But in the mirror right now, "That's a pure blooded white man!" Laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.
1
Caucasians are becoming a smaller share of the world’s population at a rapid pace. As a white guy, I’m totally fine with it.
Rather than denying that fact, we should be embracing it. You saying it’s not happening gives credence to whack-o’s like the NZ shooter who at least have the basic facts right.
1
There are many notions influencing events even though, upon even cursory examination, they are clearly "bunkers."
Examples:
Democracy brings instant well-being to a country.
All Muslims are dangerous.
All policemen in the US are out to kill non-whites.
Everything printed is true.
1
Don't call him an attacker.
He is a terrorist.
You can twist yourself in knots trying to intellectualize his ideology and motives.
The simple fact is he is a thoroughly deranged human being.
This whole "great replacement" thing is whack-doodle! (So, perhaps it is appropriate that there is a great big advert for Doodle puppies right smack-dab in the middle of the on-line version of this op-ed.)
1
Doesn't matter the color--rule of thumb, the more bourgeois a culture becomes the fewer the children and the later in life parents have them. "Whites"--Western Europeans--just got there first.
1
You can see white extinction in South Africa. You can also see it in various US cities and neighborhoods. Look at old videos of Cleveland, Detroit and then look at these cities today.
Also look at old videos of London or Paris. FYI: London is a minority white city now, and Paris is quickly heading in the same direction.
2
The birth of multi-ethnic babies has more than tripled in my lifetime. White, black, brown, yellow, red, and purple extinction will eventually come to pass because white people fall in love with brown people, and etc.. Eventually, the whole world will be a nice shade of mocha. This will make it harder to tell, at a glance, if you hate someone or not.
Nothing rivals the hostility towards immigrants of the states which border California and their Californication Extinction Theory.
You miss the point, Sir: To explicate idiocy is already to be hopelessly sidetracked. Your focus must be far more fundamental and to the point. (What am talking: Trump's an industry; people will write anything to nudge their way into papers' pages.)
For gawd's sake, an intelligent commentary! It's about time,
MORE of this!
@KI No decent hamberder restaurants anymore.
As a white male, I'm here to say that white people, and white men in particular, going extinct, would probably be the single best thing to happen to the human race since its inception.
Are you going to take on the Flat Earth Society next?
It's been a pretty tough slog for the white man these past few thousand years. Rodney Dangerfield said it best: "I tell ya, I can't get no respect"...
Am I the only crazy one reading some sarcasm in this opinion piece? That and some "let us light a match and see what happens" type of thinking, i.e. deliberately provocative?
1
If you moved 300,000 New Yorkers to Florida, it would change the character of Florida. The same thing happens with international migration and immigration. The white extinction conspiracy theory is horrible racist bunkum, but that doesn't mean that unfettered multiculturalism makes countries thrive.
2
Unfortunately for many American families, WW II solved our last assimilation crisis following the great immigrant wave in the early 1900s thru Ellis Island.
The acceptance of new immigrants as “real Americans” came only after their sons were sent back to Europe to fight and die in a war to save France and Britain from Hitler.
There is something about military service that finally makes a nation color blind. After an Italian-American or Polish-American or Irish-American family had a son serve in combat in WW II, who could seriously question that they were not “American” simply because they ate spaghetti or pierogies at home?
I’m hopeful that if we stay focused on service to country and “content of character,” MLK’s dream will one day come true in America. Nothing else can defeat prejudice faster.
1
I am a POC and I have to say this article seems to be talking around reality. Women's wombs as weapons..promoted by the Nazis as well as the Muslims...and the eugenicists. Look at the number of children being produced in Palestine or Saudi Arabia or Turkey. Listen to Erdogan or the Ayatollahs in Iran or the ANC. Worldwide whites are a vanishing proportion of the population and it makes no sense to deny it. Depending on how you define it 10 to 15 percent of the world population is phenotypically white and it is dropping rapidly. In Africa blacks call American blacks white because of their wealth. But that is a label based on the color green. Phenotypic whites are going to vanish sooner or later. If we want to decrease racial conflict in the US or the world we need to encourage this mixing. A substantial tax incentive/credit for 18 or 20 years for mixed race parents and their children might be one thing government could do in addition to encouraging diversity in higher education which correlates with color and income. It does not help diversity for wealthy whites to marry wealthy whites. People respond to financial incentives. I remember one of my employees once telling me she married her husband because he was Native American and she appreciated the educational benefits her children would receive. We do provide blacks something similar but not to the same degree and perhaps we should as reparations.
Well-said, Farhad Manjoo. But as an older white male who had advantages that people of color did not have, I couldn't care less if whites lose some of their undeserved privileges. Frankly, it's about time. And as for whites becoming extinct, it is more likely that they may be mostly absorbed through mixing with other races within a few hundred years. The world would be better off if we were all coffee-colored.
The people killed by the murder in NZ were Caucasian. The white supremacists don't know who is who.
Thanks Farhad, without this article that murderer would have had me convinced.
Is it a coincidence that the person telling us that White Replacement doesn't exist isn't white? Shocker.
Even the Dalai Lama is quoted with saying "Europe belongs to Europeans" i.e. white people. In this respect, there is nothing wrong with stopping immigration from non white countries. All countries around the world have safe guards to protect the majority population. It only suddenly becomes racist when white majority countries do it.
2
Hate needs no reason.
Only excuses.
For this reason....
it’s a mistake to think you can stop hate with facts.
The last I heard, Hispanics were being classified as non-white, and people with mixed ancestry were being classified as non-white. That's what's producing the "white decline" statistics that have the rednecks in a panic -- messed-up statistical definitions. I figured this out years ago.
1
It seems that an overwhelming number of white supremacists, white Evangelicals and white racists profess to be Christians. The supreme irony in this is that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Galilean Jew. In her 2018 book "What Did Jesus Look Like?" Joan Taylor, professor at King's College, London used archaeological remains, historical texts and ancient Egyptian art to conclude that, like most people in Judea and Egypt around the time, Jesus most likely had brown eyes, dark brown to black hair and olive-brown skin. He was most definitely not a blue-eyed and blond Aryan.
Were Jesus alive today, would he too be a victim of white supremacist racial hatred?
2
While I know that Mr. Manjoo was trying to offer an article to oppose the ones on the Google search lists, it still is sad that we even have to have a response to such a horrific joke. The complaint about white replacement is really a complaint about one's own struggles in life.
Folks often imagined that if the Nazis were to return, it would be like before: a massive army at the behest of the state. Turns out they returned, but in the most 21st century of manners: completely decentralized, globalized (ironically), and driven almost entirely by the internet. Courted by those at the highest levels of power, but not beholden to them. Validated by de facto state media.
At the risk of hyperbole, the threat is very real. We’re facing a trans-national violent white supremacist movement.
Hope EB will run my critique of article in which I made clear that, whereas I congratulated author for being published--my last op ed for the Times newspaper was 10 August 1976 when, thanks to Messieurs Goldberg and Drysdale, they ran " For White Rule in Rhodesia" and only criticism was it needed "chiaroscuro," but disagree with author's thesis and choice of language, First, words like racism and misogynistic, favorite terms of identity politics, insult me intellectually, above all since anthropologists cannot define race. Second, I referred to interview--see my videos--with Jean Claude Perez in 1960 in Maison Carre in Algiers, prior to his joining the OAS as information gatherer and head of operations--who spoke to me in apocalyptic terms about the disappearance of any ethnic group which does not procreate, and with legalized abortion, we in the West are under siege from other ethnic groups which r exploding demographically. Perez called legalized abortion philo suicide, adding that we in the West risked being submerged.Third, ABH also dissected view of Cong. King who wrote that 1 cannot defend 1's civilization with someone else's babies:obvious, like saying the sky is blue. Often when 1 speaks the truth, 1 is attacked as fascist.Being opinionated , yet objective and informative r not contradictory. Father, WWI veteran, loved chutney,and having read Jan Morris's trilogy, appreciated influence of the sub continent on English life.
A clearer, detailed explanation of why the great replacement idea is statistical hogwash can be found in the video embedded in the article. The video also does better job demonstrating the idea is rooted in anti-Semitic and racist fever dreams of people who don’t even try to pretend they aren’t rabid racists.
I think "incel" hits the nail on the head. Nobody wants THESE guys, so they extrapolate to assume nobody wants any white men.
Not true.. white men who know how to live in society without being jerks are quite popular. But white skin alone doesn't get you a mate if you're a jerk. And rightly so.
The author states, “ white extinction...offers both an explanation for self-pitying personal circumstance and a set of convenient antagonists” .... things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmm.
It’s almost as if we have seen this identify politics propagated among leftists for decades
2
Any type of 'far right' extremist group is racist no matter what their ethnicity is.
The New Zealand killer was a single mentally-ill white man. Why does this writer (and other members of the media) think that his philosophy is significant of anything at all?!
Some people seem to be using the killings as an excuse for raising alarms about white supremacy or for just denigrating white people in general. The killer was a nutcase, not typical of anything other than his own delusions.
2
Replace the word "white" in the comments with the words "black," "Jewish," or "Muslims," and people would be horrified by the racism. Let's take the top voted Reader Pick, for example.
"As opposed to asking whether "black extinction" is happening, maybe we should ask whether it even matters?
So, let the "pure" blacks go extinct. The replacement will be just as good (if not better)."
Why are we celebrating the "extinction" of any race?
4
It's depressing how common white racial paranoia is among people I know. I think it started with the election of Barrack Obama and the shock and disbelief, and later the weird insecurity it caused in some white people. They saw Obama as proof that white people were being displaced and, unforgivably, the GOP took full advantage of it. Now we have a GOP base warped by white nationalism, fueled by the dark corners of the internet, that can't get past race to see the truth about anything.
1
Why does "white replacement" need to be classified as "loopy?" As a "white guy" I'm all for a total melding of white people with our African and Asian brothers and sisters--the world will be so much better off without a "pure" white race out there! Let's just be one big HUMAN race and get on with the task of helping one another and saving our planet!
1
A pointless article about a largely imagined threat - both by white supremacists and those that fear them.
1
White people may not go extinct. But the people who claim superiority based purely on lack of pigment and feel that they can kill others based on that belief must be extinguished.
"identitarian" sounds like a dinosaur to me...
And a predator at that.
Here’s a thought. If these entitled, uneducated white males put as much energy into bettering themselves through education and learning 21st skills necessary for modern society, as they do scapegoating immigrants, women, and minorities, perhaps they’d be much better off?
Still my favorite moment from Tony Kushner’s astonishing play, Angels in America, is Nurse Belize’s exchange with a dying Roy Cohn, in which Belize is describing a heaven that for Cohn would be hellish:
Belize: ... and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
So white people are facing replacement?
As one of them I can only say that it is about time.
White Supremicists and other trolls (excuse me, I meant to say “edgelords”) are frightened. They are frightened that if people with browner skin color become the majority demographic the browner skinned will be free to treat white supremacists the same way that the white supremacists have treated the browner skinned people throughout history.
And that frightens them for some reason.
Of course it's bonkers and only a handful of lunatics like the NZ attacker subscribe to it. To pretend that this is some sort of mainstream movement affecting the entire white population and our POTUS (as some cable news channels would suggest) is bonkers as well.
I’m sorry but you lost me when you said Eastern and Southern Europeans are not considered white?
Italians, Greeks, Polish, Hungarians, Croats, Slovaks etc are all white and identify as white.
Such factual inaccuracies undermine other statements in your piece. Now that I know you’ve stated something incorrect I’m inclined to disbelieve the points you make about subjects I have no knowledge of.
You should be more careful with your opinion pieces and this should have been picked up by the editorial team.
I understand your desire to try to debunk this nonsense, Mr. Manjoo, because it's total lunacy.
But public discussion of these ideas is exactly what the white supremacists want - it validates their cockamamie theories and gives them oxygen so they can spread even faster.
I'm sorry Google isn't tweaking their algorhythms so searches of those two words (which I will not repeat) do not bring up extremist links.
The "Great Replacement" and "White Genocide" are just ignorant phrases that have no basis in scientific fact . Mr. Manjoo forgot to mention that the black gene is a recessive gene and if we all forgot our racial prejudices and fear of losing our whiteness and married gleefully with the black and brown races, within a few generations we would all be beautifully white and could even embarrass the Nordic races with our lovely, white complexions!
The great replacement conspiracy theory is a marker for white supremacism. Any reference to it at all is altogether unacceptable. The House should expel Mr. King for his tweet about the theory. The theory itself is based on the fear that Trump Republicans have that that they will lose their unearned and unmerited white (male) prerogatives and entitlements.
1
@Robert Free Speech rules - you are not the self appointed censor
1
@Ivory Tower
Thanks for your reply. This has nothing whatsoever to do with free speech. Mr. King and the white supremacists in the Trump Republican base are free to say whatever they want. We don't, however, have to pay any attention to their nonsense. And the Congress is under no obligation to permit King to remain and thereby endorse his deplorable white supremacist beliefs.
1
As a very white person, I fail to see what the great fuss is about, especially with the current rate of climate change. I can't walk in the warm sun for more than 10 minutes without worrying about sunburn. Over time our skin degrades much faster than those with more pigment. Furthermore, our culture owes far more to temperate latitudes and ancient visitors than it does genetic material. But just in case, its a good reason to leave the Endangered Species Act in place.
Interesting points about the unknowns of demographics, and they don't change my opinion at all. I simply don't care if we are headed to a white extinction or not. Worried about inequity, climate change, and the rise of a would be autocrat to the highest office in the land. Worried that Ivanka winning the presidency in the next 20 years is not an utterly implausible idea. I spend an uncomfortable amount of time concerned about the safety of my two college age nieces, hoping that their dating experiences are less emotionally damaging than mine were at that age. I fret at times that policy recommendations my team makes in pertaining to behavioral health are used to line bird cages. On the upside, I'm gratified that I do have a great job, a wonderful husband, close relationships with my sisters and cousins, and have rediscovered long abandoned past-times now that I have the time and income to enjoy them. Maybe I just have too many actual concerns and activities to occupy my time than to spend a millisecond worrying the extinction of the white "race". If I had to be honest, based on the results of the 2016 election, I am glad I didn't have children to perpetuate it.
1
So, you're saying that worry about massive immigration from third world countries in places like Germany and Finland, where some towns are more than half foreign born, is unfounded?
7
The fact is that "white" people are themselves the result of the interbreeding, genetic admixtures and natural evolutions of all kinds of people. We are all, "whites" and others, mixtures of mixtures. Heck, whether you believe in the strict "out of Africa" theory or the more complex multiregional theory of the evolution of humans, we were all, at some point, not only brown/black but also very hairy and weakly upright. Cultural and slight physical differences, which is what these white supremacists really talk about, are but the thinnest of veneer on an otherwise identical core.
1
We are all out of Africa. So we should hyphenate our skin color with African. The hyphenated African irregardless of skin color can never be replaced. Race is a social construct. We are all biologically the same.
2
@Peter That is factually incorrect. White and East Asian people have genes from the Neanderthals, and black Africans don't.
1
@Peter Not exactly. During evolution of the species ,continental separations were common leading to different stages of evolution to happen in different regions with different branches of homo sapiens. It's clearly illustrated that Northern europeans are the only racial types to have biological and genetic diversity of hair and eye colors and very light complexions.Their cranium is of larger capacity allowing for more brain function and that of intellect. This is proven by the more advanced civilizations of Europe and north america.Anthropologists have discovered very different genetic structures in the African and Asian Genome ,in the blood and cranium size and structure.
1
For too many “white” people, equality = oppression.
I echo the sentiment of the NZ Muslim widow who said, paraphrasing: “Those with hate will never be successful.”
An interesting, if not very compelling, opinion piece by Farhad Manjoo that gives a cursory assessment of what might be better categorized as 'white anxiety'.
I think what Mahjoo isn't focusing on is that for many people, generally the disenfranchised youths and the financially strained elderly, feel isolated by changing work structures and economic upheaval. More than whites are feeling the pain of such displacement.
It is natural for such people to attribute, their plight to 'forces' other than themselves - the off-shoring of jobs, changes in technology, immigrants, the elite, the 'man', the international cabal of banker (often code for Jews), etc. Note that I'm giving a mix of 'forces'. Some are real, like off-shoring of jobs, which the rational may understand yet still find hard to accept. Such changes should have cause for redress, but often don't. Other 'forces' are totally prejudicial. For the unthinking and angry, such 'forces' become an excuse to lash out, often supporting demagogues and cranks that will 'fix' their problems.
All that being stated, it is then irksome that Manjoo off-handedly trashes constitutionally grounded forms of our Republic - the Senate and the Electoral College. As with many liberals, he sees greater centralization as the answer to life's problems. What we really need is devolution from an imperial President and the overreach of Congress and the Judiciary. The administrative state must be curtailed. Local empowerment is the solution.
4
Of course the white "race" (which isn't a race) will go extinct, along with the black race, yellow race, brown race, red race and any other color you can think of. The only race we should be worried about is the human race.
It makes me happy to think that eventually we will all be a pretty standard variation on a shade of indeterminate gray and this will be a happier though perhaps somewhat less interesting planet.
Dan Kravitz
1
The 'White Extinction' nonsense is one of the tools that the white super rich uses to pit lower classes against each other.
The white super rich instinctively know that racial fear will divert attention away from the huge income inequality that now exists through out the world and especially in this country. Trump himself is a perfect example of this white exploitation which features racism in all its forms. It is an idea that has been floating around before and since the Civil War and is a myth that the whites poor use as an excuse to blame others if truth be told are really much like themselves, a victim of a rich class exploitation. Marx had this right what ever else you may think of his ideas.
World population: about 7.5 billion people of which
- about 26% are Asian (2b including China, Japan, Koreas, SE Asians)
- about 21% are Indian (1.5b)
- about 16% are African (1.2b excluding all of South Africa).
All of which are ethnically homogeneous groups with respect to the most common racial demarcations. Yet, Europe + North America only account for 19% of the world population (1.4b) and are the most diverse of all places listed above, so that whites realistically make up about 80% or less of that subtotal (likely a conservative estimate), which, oh surprise, makes white a world minority at just 15%!
I suppose it's time to label the acknowledgement of statistical trends as "racist and misogynistic" according to Farhad Manjoo.
4
@Josh Those groups aren't "ethnically homogenous." If you look just a teeny bit closer you can see wide ethnic differences, and the genocidal conflicts that have resulted from these differences.
1
Asked to explain his Theory of Relativity, Einstein is reported to have offered an answer paraphrased as follows, "Well, it's quite simple. Before my Theory of Relativity was accepted, the French called me a German, and the Germans called me a Jew. After my theory was accepted, the French called me a Jew, and the Germans called me a German." Would anyone sane person believe that a society of only Germans, or Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Italians, or Chinese, or Russians, or Indians, etc. will enjoy peace and prosperity forever? Could it be that in moments of unbearable stress, some of us fantasize about extinguishing the world's population and repopulate it with our clones to achieve a Paradise on earth?
This is such an excellent model for how to write about white supremacist terrorism in the wake of a mass murder: do not name the killer, give recent historical context of white anxiety, debunk the ideas. Fill that data void!
The routine privilege of poorly educated whites is certainly in decline, as it should be.
The remedy to this, however, is to up your intellectual game, and stop expecting your skin color to give you an edge.
Thinking will be fundamental to enduring success in the modern world. Skin color will not be.
3
Take my white male self, please! I'm tired, deeply tired in a Woody Allen sort of way, of being the top dog (ethnicity-wise). I invite, encourage, welcome with open arms any and all ethnicities, to assume the mantle, this heavy, uncomfortable mantle which we've worn out and no longer deserve. Please-women especially-but people across the spectrum of color and religion, step up to the plate and run things for a while. I will vote for you, I will praise you, I will do all the cleaning and dishes of this world, the menial work- and look after the kid. All will be done gladly and with gratitude, if you'll just take the reins for a bit. After all, you deserve it for after all these centuries of taking a back seat to your husband and his career, being passed over in favor of yet another frat boy, subjugating yourself to the male prerogative. You are now the wiser for it, certainly more compassionate, generally better human beings-and your time has come. You will do a better job of it, you will keep us out of silly wars and rescue us from climate disaster. You will show the utmost respect to the communities who are oppressed and murdered and address our societal wrongs with more than lip service. If you will do these things-and I'm sure you will-I will gladly go extinct.
This is not about race at all. It's about culture. Brexit, for example, is triggered by English who resent getting swamped by Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians ... all white folks, as far as i can tell.
Race has little to do with it.
6
"white people" can't go extinct because there is no "white people." there are only human beings, all of whom inherit physical characteristics from their biological characteristics. as the old 'races' interbreed, biological characteristics increasing defy 'racial' categorization.
categorizing all people into 'races' is thus a fool's errand, and hopeless. there's no benefit to it, and young people are simply rejecting race as a foolish and anachronistic social construct. Since 'race' does not provide any cognitive shortcut for young people, their brains simply will not work that way.
We are so privileged we get to make up our own fake problems to cry about.
I recommend everyone read Gore Vidal’s 1993 essay - Race Against Time. It predicts Brexit, the current dysfunction within the European Union, and makes other interesting points about possible ways forward for the white race, to stop the rot
The New York Times could do their readers a favor by republishing it.
The idea of white extinction is preposterous because white isn’t a species it s a color of skin. It seems to me that if humans survive long enough, the races will eventually mix and we will all end up a nice shade of brown. That sounds wonderful idea and I say bring it on.
1
Mr. Manjoo,
There is not a "white" culture - we all do not look alike, either.
Just as African-Americans do not want to be lectured on "Black" culture and women do not desire "mansplaining", people of European descent are more than a little tired of being lectured to by those who hold us responsible for every ill in the world. I am still looking for my privilege, it must have been misplaced somewhere.
The individuals who populate the supremacist world are mostly ignorant (as in lacking education or knowledge), fearful and poorly informed. They are easy prey for manipulators in houses of worship, political radio and websites, and scam artists of varying description.
I am sure there is a "fear of a Black planet" out there somewhere, but this shall pass. The bigger threat to humanity will be caused by climate change, overpopulation, depletion of resources and the downstream consequences of those things. No stupid Trump Wall is going to stop migration when millions need to move to away from the equator to live.
1
I don't believe any of this. I do believe it when I read that by 2050 Mexicans will account for 60% with whites, Asians, and blacks in the minorities. If anything this article seems written to incite those minorities now.
African American conservatives and white conservatives have much more in common than African American liberals and African American conservatives.
Even if it were true: so what? "White people" is something Americans made up to justify slavery and racism. The Irish didn't used to be white. Neither did the Italians. Neither did Jews, and something they still don't get to be white.
As a white person: I'm completely fine with the end of the concept of whiteness.
A majority of children under age 10 is nonwhite... and they start voting in 2026.
Don’t expect the conservative hysteria to wane anytime soon.
It is no lie; Census Bureau and other projections show that in the U.S. non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in a few decades, the result of a demonstrable trend in U.S. demographics based on arrival of illegal immigrants and higher birth rates in the non-white population.
1
It makes me terribly sad that a headline like this has become necessary.
It is no lie; Census Bureau and other projections show that in the U.S. non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in a few decades, the result of a demonstrable trend in U.S. demographics based on arrival of illegal immigrants and higher birth rates in the non-white population.
The fear of the others felt by white power acolytes is in direct result of the blatant and implied racism of white people. If racist whites reached over the divide they have created, they would find that the others are just people like themselves. People who have their own quirky cultural differences. When whites sense something "a little different" when interacting with a black person, it is the result of being treated as a lesser mortal all their lives. You are looking into the mirror of years of fear and oppression. It is your own fear. Let us rise above, the USA and the world will be a better place for it.
Whiteness exists only in the sky and in some people's imaginations. Let's abolish it.
This is an attempt to Americanize an act of local terror halfway around the world and use it as a lever in the white - nonwhite identity politics gambits by the left.
To start with Islam is not a race. The NZ shooter travelled to places like Serbia where he met people who still fight the Ottoman invaders. The replacement theory is European in its nature and cultural and historical appeal. It plays itself out in Hungary or Sweden or Denmark on basis that have more to do with European history, national identity and with religion as a culture than with race not to mention “whiteness”.
United States, regardless of the best efforts of the identity politics of the progressive left is a melting pot and assimilation machine. Foreigners who do not come to US to become Americans but to just live here never get this phenomenon and temp to be suspicious of it. It is not about giving something up or betraying one’s origins, it is a form of transcendence and renewal for immigrants. People do not come to USA to replace Americans they come here to become Americans.
The reason why the author did not find much on Great Replacement is because there is no there there. If he wants to research that subject he should go to Europe not America.
2
False claims of extintinction are the realm of fanatics, and white nationalists are not alone. A number of bees are endangered, but not honey bees. Extinction is not in the cards. Yet Greenpeace will gladly take your money to save the honeybees. Some environmentalists are pretty fanatic themselves.
When a person's ideology is "racist" AND "misogynistic," the proper term is not "white supremacist." It's "white male supremacist." When a person, male or female, believes in white supremacy AND male supremacy, their ideology is NOT "white supremacist." Their ideology is "white male supremacist." Just flip it. Imagine how irresponsible and insensitive to people of color it would be to call these misogynist views "male supremacist," completely ignoring the racist element of the ideology. That's exactly what is happening when people, ad nauseum, keep referring to these white male supremacists as "white supremacists." Not naming the misogynist hate is a form of internalized misogyny in itself. Just like not name the the racist hate would be a form of internalized racism.
The white European American Judeo-Christian majority is aging and shrinking with a below replacement level birthrate.
And the only whites having babies come from the bottom of the socioeconomic educational bottom. A majority of the unemployed uneducated welfare dependent baby Momma and baby Daddy in America are white like Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston. While the proportion of blacks in that cohort is higher there are 5x as many white people.
While the white European American Judeo-Christian majority life expectancy is decreasing due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide.
There is no danger of extinction from either demographic trend. And the notion that color or ethnicity or national origin or faith are indicators of different "races" is a result of a combination of enduring ignorance and stupidity around the biological science of genetics coupled with white supremacist nationalist prejudiced bigotry.
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000+ years ago. What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at different altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations.
What we call race aka color is a malign socioeconomic political historical white supremacist nationalist American myth meant to legally and morally justify black enslavement/ separate and unequal.
1
There has been only one US president who is not at least partly American "old stock", that is has no ancestor who lived in America before the Revolution. He is Donald Trump.
1
Seinfeld: How many people do you think are good looking enough to date, Elaine? Elaine: About half. Seinfeld astonished: Elaine, have you been to the DMV? If we are talking existentially, white people might have a reason to worry. Survival of the fittest in these modern times means beauty. Physical beauty says whether you will procreate, not bare strength, marksmenship, fertility or other physical attributes that helped your race prosper. Whites once had the field to themselves but in these Global times, the truly aesthetically beautiful are those of mixed heritage. Caramel or darker skin is much more preferred than the pale, sickly complexion of the "master race". Perfect features can now mean anything from exotic eyes to a "kitchen sink" combination of two different cultures producing a never before seen or imagined, and therefore, distinct form of beauty. The Gage's were a good looking Irish Catholic family but we couldn't compete with the children who have come forth since we have branched out and married outside those constrictions. Beauty begets beauty and white people should feel that their time of domination is coming to an end. You can now tweak that Seinfeld joke to where the punchline reads "Elaine, have you been to a Trump rally?"
1
If you are comforted by the notion that America will remain a mostly white nation then you definitely have racist tendencies. What could be better for American than a mostly multi-racial population than reflects the fact that the nation was built by the clashes of three civilizations: European, African, and Indian and a good smattering of Asians and good citizens from every corner of the globe?
I find race to be such a bizarre construct. What does it mean to be "White". I just have no idea. I find categorizations to be so ridiculous. I have known several hundred people in my life and I find that each one is unique and that when I try to pigeon hole them, if I know them long enough, they always break the box that I put them in.
And so what if we did?
Beautiful piece Farhad, thank you.
I would just like to add that, even if white people were losing their grip on the world — it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, because no one group owns the world.
The world belongs to every single species inhabiting it, all of these ideals humanity lives by are all made up, they are built on fiat constructs - therefore “it shall be”, because we agree that our ideals & beliefs have some sort of intrinsic value, even though from a cosmos point of view they don’t.
Granted, our ability to be right/wrong is one of the many things that makes us human, however — that very ability has resulted in our species operating in silos, we need to take a step back and reset certain parts of the human experience (especially the ones we created), because we seem to have lost our connection to the rest of universe.
Racism & bigotry are a byproduct of silos created by heightened ideas of self, which (like a disease) went viral and found vulnerable white boys/girls who were also operating in silos and infected them with 4chan & Reddit accounts... and that boys and girls is how the Neo-Nazi was born.
One Love.
Races exist because they evolved in isolation. They're all being replaced by the eventual product of the global human organism.
It is interesting to read this article, as it directly rebuts a series of articles by other liberal pundits in this same newspaper. I have read several articles in the past few years offering a somewhat triumphant view that white people will soon be a minority in these United States.
I have always discounted these articles as so much nonsense for the same reasons the author states. However, the liberals who posted those articles have, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not, fed the narrative of white people under assault.
I don't think the authors of those earlier articles are responsible for this recent tragedy, but they may have inadvertently validated some of the shooter's fears.
2
Facing extinction: GOP politicians with moral character.
1
Manjoo doesn't like the odious white supremacists, but to attack them, he ignores or distorts facts. There is simply no question that the white population is in relative decline worldwide, including in white majority countries. One only has to look at California 50 years ago and compare it to today. When he pretends this is not happening, and conflates it with other things like power, etc. he is actually strengthening the arguments of these people. A much better argument would be to say that cultures change as they assimilate new influences and that is how it has always been, and it is not something to fear.
2
Hmm. And you don't think this might have anything to do with the glee and gloating with which so many progressives look forward to this extinction as karma for historical misdeeds?
The shooter was a deluded fool and contradicted himself; and media plays a large part in stirring up all this mass migration hysteria by focusing on negativity and not positivity as has been shown in NZ focusing on the victims lives and their humanness, and what lovely people they were.
The Australian terrorist focused on a religious group and not a majority ethnic group that has immigrated to NZ. Lots of people, including new immigrants, don't like uncontrolled immigration and how our infrastructure can't cope with it but that doesn't mean they're racist.
I don't like uncontrolled immigration and would like to see NZ return to the days when we didn't have the social and drug problems our nation has today so when we had to choose what government to vote for; - one that brings in one thousand more refugees a year or one that had no intention of cutting back on immigration in the hundred thousands, annually, I chose to vote for the Labour Party.
The cowardly terrorist is an Australian nut job so I wouldn't try to make sense of the ramblings of a lunatic who deliberately chose NZ because he didn't want to be shot dead by the police. Focus on what a coward the nub job was to pick a nation that had never had a terrorist attack and whose government wasn't geared up to cope with terrorism and a nation that doesn't have the death penalty. He said in his manifesto that he wants to live. He's in Paremoremo Prison near Auckland with lots of security around him. Focus on prevention.
Until all men are brothers there will be no peace.
@Peter Eisner, haven’t you heard of sibling rivalry!
1
Five centuries ago when the populace was divided between supremacist and divisive caste ideology and fanaticism Sikh Gurus gave the message of love and universal equality and enshrined it in Sikh scriptures for the eternal guidance of the humankind that ONE formless God pervades in all humanity irrespective of caste , creed, race, religion or nationality. We may look different but no one is a stranger and no one is an enemy.
"First, God created the Light; then, by His Creative Power, He made all mortal beings.
From the One Light, the entire universe welled up So who is good, and who is bad?
O people, O Siblings of Destiny, do not wander aimlessly deluded by doubt
The Creation is in the Creator, and the Creator is in the Creation, totally pervading and permeating all places.
The clay is the same, but the Fashioner has fashioned it in various ways.
There is nothing wrong with the pot of clay – there is nothing wrong with the Potter.
The One True Lord abides in all; by His making, everything is made"
SGGS 1349
"The God-conscious being is always unstained, like the sun,
which gives its comfort and warmth to all.
The God-conscious being looks upon all alike,
like the wind, which blows equally upon the king and the poor beggar (SGGS p272)
@Freesoul, “jo bole so Nihaal. Sat Sri akal.”
1
Putting the racism aside for one moment, the British statistics upon which this replacement notion rests fail to support its premise. Straight out of the gate it ignores that the largest British immigrant influx in recent years is from .... Poland.
The author, perhaps to sooth his white readers, offers misleading qualification and nomenclature. First, there is no mystery, no “maybe,” that demographic projections show populations of predominately European ancestry - already a small slice of the world - becoming a yet smaller slice. We will. The only scientific questions are how to tally admixture, and the timing of all this in so-called “White” countries.
Admixture: Since races are a social, not biological construct, when does one become “white,” to be replaced by “non-white?” Are children of one European and one non-European parent white? What do we write in for Italian, Greek, or Spanish ancestry, with their substantial gene flow from Africa? Or Hungary with its Mongol? Per the racial quanta laws, is a person “colored” if they have 1/16 non-European ancestry? 1/4?
Timing: As infant mortality falls and economic status rises, parents often - but not always - tend to have fewer children. But there’s a lag, so net fertility can rise for decades after conditions improve faster than parents slow down. Right now, more immigrants from the non-European world are having more babies who survive. Period.
Cherry picking data to stoke racist fears is not new. Read “The Passing of the Great Race,” by the sociologist Madison Grant in the 1920’s. Or check out Scott’s beloved classic “Ivanhoe” from a hundred years before, which helped propel Manifest Destiny.
But mainly, deconstruct racist ideologies, don’t hide from data.
How can white people go extinct if they never actually existed?
Its an obsolete and illegitimate biological idea. It’s also a meaningless cultural concept — is there white history or white language or white literature? Not really, there is British history, Germanic culture, etc...
Whiteness is nothing but a political ideology meant to preserve ruling class power and privilege. Whiteness should be called "whitism."
Let’s agree to make it obsolete.
Here's the first part, again, because it didn't get posted for some reason....
This article "talks" alot about data and science and sounds science-based, but it's basically fluff. How can he seriously compare the empirical support for a non-flat earth with that for the demographic decline of a human racial group, possibly leading to its extinction? And we're supposed to laugh with him at this collection of fools who believe either or both of these nutty viewpoints (feeling quite good about ourselves, in the process). This is more like high school clique behavior than scientifically/journalstically-responsible writing.
The author makes basically the same argument that climate change deniers make. Because science can not specify the extent of a predicted outcome, quantitatively and with a high level of certainty, then the likelihood of the overall trend should not be believed. Like climate change deniers, I suspect Mr. Manjoo would, himself, bet AGAINST that what he expects us to believe if his own money were at stake. The odds clearly are that the caucasian racial group will decline relative to others and this 'may' eventually lead to its (near) extinction. (True extinction is very unlikely as long as we can freeze gametes and there are similar AI recipients.)
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Someone needs to mention the fact that the definition of “whiteness” changes with every generation. When Italians came to America they were not seen as white. Now? Many of my older relatives will slap you if you take away whiteness from their identity.
There was even a time when Latinos and middle easterners where considered white in America, but now? What happened? I imagine a time will come when they are accepted back into the racial category once more.
With the constant redefining of the term “white”, there is no real threat of extinction. White people will just change the definition once more to suit their need to be the most powerful racial category. I just roll my eyes every time I see a white person freaking out about this. If you’re interested in learning more , you can read THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE.
This isn't about skin color - it's about money, just like everything else.
Privilege: Exists for the wealthy whether they're white or not. Call this: Class Privilege, and understand that many colored people are in this uberclass.
Middle Class (me): Me and my white kids have a balanced white privilege existence (even though we're Hispanic and our first language is Spanish and people have hated us for that.)
On one hand, we don't get killed by police, and that's nice. But on the other hand, because of the bias against whites and bias for "diversity hires", I've been passed over for jobs and opportunities that were given to incompetent "diversity hires" which in every case were disastrous.
And, oh yes, we're expected to pay full ride (if we get in) to all colleges even though low achievers don't.
White Underclass: zero white privileged here. Being white works against them. They can't get bottom-line jobs because of hiring quotas. Any wonder why they're angry and armed?
“The Great Replacement is a lie. The country is becoming more diverse, but white people are not losing their grip on America, nor on the world, not by a long shot.”
On reality, however...well, perhaps that’s for another column.
The kid next door listens to hip-hop music. His favorite food is Mexican, he surfs, and he plays La Crosse on the high school team, as upper-middle-class-white a sport as there is, created by indigenous North Americans long before Europeans arrived.
Ethnically, he's Vietnamese.
"Civilization" has nothing to do with race. Civilization is about being civilized. The greatness of European Civilization is rooted in rational thinking, not in conspiracy theories. It's not what you look like, it's how you think.
That's the key point. 'White' is the identity the majority of immigrants aspire to, whether they know it or not. Watch commercial television. What is this thing with the cute Asian woman and her white husband in a suit? It's almost a meme. But that doesn't make it untrue. Ask the Asian community. And what does every upscale black male seem to go for? A blond wife. It's the route the Italians and Greeks took, that Latinos are taking and that each group that can (african-americans have a much harder time) aims for. White isn't a race, it's a class. The class with money.
I haven’t read the article yet, but I will tell you that the rhetoric of having a POC make this argument will not track with those who buy into this asinine conspiracy.
If these white people are really concerned about being replaced by faster breeding populations of other races they should do everything in their power to improve education and economic opportunities in the very same communities they fear. Allow these people a higher standard of living and they will slow their birth rates, and happily - problem solved.
Face it, a lot of the appeal of this moronic theory is the repression of women. In reality it should be called The Great Replacement of White MEN theory. White men who subscribe to this nonsense seem to believe that their power requires the submission of white women. If power was to be extended to white women while increasing the birthrate there would be calls for higher minimum wage rates and extensive affordable child care facilities that facilitate women's careers while extended their families. Gilead is not the way any woman should want to go.
Humans have been intermarrying with other ethnicities since the days of the caveman. Many of us have the DNA of the proto-human Neanderthals. So panic about 'white extinction' is silly. There is no such thing as 'racial purity.' What is interesting & more complex is what human physical & cultural traits will survive as mankind goes hurtling forward to who knows what end. Will blue-eyed redheads & blondes disappear as we adapt to a warming world & no longer need the protection against the cold that paleness provides?Culturally, what will we retain, what will we discard? Google's doodle honors J.S. Bach today. Will he be discarded? Replaced by someone not so 'pale, stale, & male?' Cardi-B, maybe, not J.S. B.? Some might say that's already happened.
The myth of whiteness is just that . Most white people are a mix. The problem of whiteness is the assumption that being White is somehow superior. And most of all from the looks of how the White Nationalists behave there is a case to be made for genetic decline.
Not at all clear what a 'white person' is. The collectivity of 'white people' is even harder to define. People who weren't white become white.
We must not forget that as "whites" we are the newcomers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. We are interlopers who have worked hard but otherwise have no rights and no entitlement.
No, but it looks real to many white people, who are not supremacists, but who are, according to the Us census, the majority. Look at nearly all media imagery, for example. You would think that we are a black-majority nation, or at least, 50/50, when, again, according to the census, less than 13% of US population are black.
Then you've got the risen Brahmin class of news commentators, political analysts, and opinion writers of color who are given free license (privilege?) to make anti-white (mostly male) statements, unchallenged. No one dares to call out this "reverse-racism." Same for the increasingly vocal "ageism" that is used against older politicians who are seen as blocking the progressive path.
What about the majority of white people who argue back when the media-wrought finger is pointed at them? Aren't they being painted with a broad brush and unfairly dismissed as "racist?" The combined effect is that, to a-live-and-et-live white person, the Progressive Future being formed is beginning to look like one of those alien invasion movies.
Hypocrisy rules! The same people who refuse to call ISIS, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, who kill many thousands in the name of Allah, "Radical Islamists" because (rightly) they don't want to offend and smear the majority of Muslims, now have no trouble labeling a tiny minority of terrorists who kill in the name of white identity as "White Supremacists." And then that slander is used to silence whoever doesn't get with the program.
Manjoo argues that white people will not be pushed out by some phantasmagoric dark tide. But even if we were, why does no one ask the obvious question "So what?" Are we still in the mesolithic, when "You look like me, so you're good; he doesn't look like us, so he's bad" at least had some plausibility as a survival mechanism?
“White extinction” took hold in isolated pockets of the Rockies (Idaho, Montana, Colorado, e.g.) and in the intelligence-challenged areas that are besotted with Donald Trump and his twin race apocalyptic pit-bulls, Stephen Miller and the now-departed Stephen Bannon. No sane, serious person believes that anything like Wagner’s Gotterdammerung is about to descend on white America—a twilight of the gods.
The article points out that their numbers are very likely to be diminished over time and—not in our lifetimes, perhaps—will they become anything like a marginal presence; certainly not in America. The slowing but still appreciable numbers of immigrants will never make enough of a dent to sufficiently erode whites in the demographics so as to render them powerless—financially or politically—so that their status will ever come to resemble the catastrophe of Reconstruction and Jim Crow that remains today as one of slavery’s hideous offspring.
But the president—and his “soul brothers and sisters” on The Hill—play up the fright to an enormously successful degree that the shadowy corners of the white nationalist movement find both fear and comfort in an acknowledgment of the ephemeral causes of their existential angst so that these denizens of the dark night of the soul find justification in the hoped-for race Armageddon that they eagerly await.
They fancy themselves as “the sons of Jesus Christ,” awaiting the final bugle call that will summon them to Ragnarok, The Last Battle.
I, a white male, could not care less about the skin tone or ethic origins of my fellow Americans. The only thing that matters is if a person is a productive, contributing member of this society. I know lots of non-whites that fit this description. I'm happy to have them as neighbors. Racial bigots please go somewhere else. The moon for example.
Also, how about all the cuckolding articles that this paper and the modern media and commercialism try to promote? It's the totality of all of those micro aggressions that lead whites to conclude a Great Replacement is being orchestrated by them.
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All speculation as the mentality of lunatics is lunatic from beginning to end. As for The Great Replacement? Sounds like what's about to happen with this reader's right knee.
1. "White" is not a real thing - it's made up, and was made up to promote ideas of racial superiority.
2. It's possible to celebrate your culture, whatever that is, without having to think it's better than everyone else's.
3. What is your culture? "White" culture is not a thing, unless you think that, for example, Parisian culture and eastern German culture are the same, or that the culture of Ames, Iowa is the same as New York City.
4. Who cares? Get a life, people.
Trump rules his base through fear. His political messaging was based upon that from the very beginning, "Build a wall," and "Ban all Muslims." Trump knew to turn out the white vote reliably to his side was to implicitly and explicitly say that they[whites] are being replaced by people of color. They are going to take your jobs, your women, and supplant them at the top of the pecking order. White people, I am here to let you know that you still control 99% percent of the world's wealth, power, and prestige. So you have nothing to fear but Trump itself.
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The alleged shooter was not a Kiwi, but an Aussie violently against non-white immigration (from Indonesia). Australia has a history of killing non-whites, non-white native people. I've seen several legit references to the alleged killer's associated groups and organizations in the UK and the US. HATE rages across the globe. Where is this 'God' we hear so much about???
I thought that many of the right-wing, primarily white Evangelicals, who often seem to be the most fervent believers in racial conspiracy theories like “The Great Replacement,” were counting on being “raptured” up to heaven sometime in the future. Judging from the number of Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, who have said that Donald Trump’s election was due to “divine intervention,” maybe said “rapture” is coming sooner rather than later, and they shouldn’t be so worried about all us multi-racial “leftovers.”
Some may want to call it racist to begin with.You see ,it's always been that just nobody cannot get into NZ. A few years ago they've had a big crack down on any immigration. Even Americans had to provide specific benefits ,such as financial and professional assets to the NZ government in order to reside there. Australians were considered outsiders who were taking jobs. Furthermore ,being an Island nation ,immigrants couldn't simply rush the border illegally ,or swim and float a boat as they have upon Euro shores. So then ,we return to the Liberal politicians ,who suddenly decide to begin importing the Asian and African refugees ,it is said,free of charge to the socialist welfare system.Like here ,in the states ,in NZ ,one just only shows up ,legally or not ,and immediately gets benefits which no other citizen or want to be citizens could ever obtain.The process ,however corrupt breeds discontentment and resentment ,understandably in a society ,whether in Europe ,the states or NZ.
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And who cares anyway? I'm mostly white (DNA) married to a man who is 75% African, 6% Native American, and the rest European. I like "American" culture - where I can go to a black gospel church, then eat tacos, followed by an outing to a baseball game where they have Korean BBQ and hot dogs. Is this a great country or what? Almost all of us immigrants of every kind.
None of this is an accident. The mega-rich have been stoking divisions and violence between the rest of us for ten thousand years, to distract from their mass theft send to keep the rest of us from taking back the wealth we created through our work, while they take credit for it.
Murdoch is a foreign billionaire who's Fox News and other "news" organizations around the world constantly drop racist hints and demand racist policies.
The Mercers are U.S. billionaires that backed Trump and finance Breitbart, a blatantly white supremacist website. Trump is a billionaire who made his way into politics by demanding the wrongful conviction is the Central Park Five and attacking Obama as a Kenyan.
Trump is constantly using racism and constantly inciting violence.
And even "liberal" (don't believe it) outlets like CNN and the NY Times mostly gloss over these efforts, rarely connecting the dots and always going with the least damning interpretation for blatant calls to racism and violence.
Mass murders of blacks or Jews or Muslims or the LGBTQ are not hate crimes. This violence is meant to send a political message to members of these identities. That is terrorism, by definition.
And it is not lone gunmen. These networks, financed by billionaires, where they celebrate attacks, discuss mass murder tactics and weaponry, and tie political violence and talk of civil war to mass murder events are an interlocking web of conspiracies to commit terrorism.
And the President is leading it.
White people aren't going extinct, but there is a real danger that the Enlightenment (a philosophy developed mostly by white men) is. "Believe Women" even though there is a lack of evidence. Ban on cartoons of Mohammed because of "blasphemy laws". Criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. Criticism of Obama is racism. The list goes on.
I always thought the central premise of the cult of white supremacy was a form or Darwinism - that there superior genes is the reason why they would continue to dominate. Guess they are the true snowflake - that they cannot survive and will in fact go extinct.
Very confusing.
Maybe if there weren't so many "Progressives" gloating at the prospect of whites becoming a powerless minority real soon as "karma" for their past misdeeds, this theory might not have so much traction?
So the idea that Whites will no longer be the majority race in America is ridiculous? Interesting, since one of the places I've seen that theory presented is...in The New York Times (including by many of today's commenters!) Oh well, be careful what you wish for.
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A Senegalese bus driver attempted to set a bus full of Italian children on fire because he was upset about Italy's immigration policy.
https://wgntv.com/2019/03/20/bus-driver-in-italy-abducts-51-children-sets-vehicle-on-fire/
That's not an act calculated to win friends and influence people. Too many people in the Third World seem to be under the delusion that they have a natural right to move to someone else's country. Either the immigration slows/stops or there will be war.
In the first half of the 20th century, a similar theory of the "passing" of the white race was common,which led from a theory of eugenics, to involuntary sterilization in the US, and extermination camps in Germany. I trust that we've learned something by now. Similar feelings now seem to be the province of very few. Hopefully, it'll stay that way.
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Again, I suggest reading The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray. This is a legitimate concern that has nothing to do with hatred or violence. It's far too easy to point to the ravings of this mad man who killed so many and to suggest that anything that remotely sounds simiar must be equally insane. The truth is that Western culture is deeply threatened right now for many reasons. Part of this has to do with mass migration from the third world with no plan whatsoever for any kind of integration. It was long ago that you wrote a column proclaiming the wisdom of 'Open Borders', hoping some brave Dem candidate would boldly take up this cause. That is what's truly bonkers... This killer's manifesto doesn't deserve to be read or even referred to, but by all means we still need reckon with the harsh realities facing our culture and civilization. It's not about 'whiteness' or 'race'. It's about the West ok?? It's under threat. Let's be honest about it and enact some serious immigration control so as to not give any more strength to idiots like Trump who abuse our willingness to continually deny a problem actually exists.... good lord, is all this really so hard to understand??
Hats off to author for getting published, but he is defending the indefensible, trying to convince us that what we know to be true, is not true, that Anglo Norman civilization is not on the decline when we know it is.In 1960, while Tulane grad student at the Sorbonne, traveled to Algeria where I interviewed future leaders of the OAS not yet "en cavale," entr'autres, Jean Claude Perez, "medecin de Bab el Oued," working class quartier in Algiers and and who would later be named head of information gathering/operations for the Secret Army, attempting to keep Algeria French in face of opposition from "La Metropole"and De Gaulle. Perez's words to me were when a species no longer procreates,it is like a surrender, a refusal of combat,and that the West , in order to survive, must procreate, which we r not doing because of legalized abortion.Who can gainsay that? Re Cong. King, bouc emissaire of self righteous folks in both parties, was he not speaking the truth when he said that 1 cannot replace a civilization with someone else's babies?Can Western values survive if folks have the mindset of the beseiged, as JC Perez put it,if we do not procreate? 0ther ethnic groups r experiencing a demographic explosion, all except us."Extinction" is too strong ! Preferable to say influence of we who r of Anglo Norman lineage is declining. Suggest also avoiding terms like racist, misogynistic!Even anthropologists can't agree on race !
Actually, if we do not get a handle on climate change pretty quickly, which seems unlikely that we will, all homo sapiens are headed for extinction.
This evil person was looking for attention. You are helping him stay in the news and helping him reach his goals. I hope you are pleased that you, as a reporter, will not be arrested for aiding and abetting a felony, times 50.
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And what if it were true? What does it matter the skin tone and hair texture of future humanity? Are these people OCD beauticians?
How many muslim attacks compared to how many "white" attacks?
How many mosques in christian countries compared to how many christian churches in muslim countries?
It doesn't happen?
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White power advocates ignorance of history seems so normal. If they read history, whites have killed non whites, to them not particularly important for centuries. BUT Europeans, who are all whites, have been killing each other for over 500 years. If one is cynical, one could say they were neither very good or efficient at it. After all so many of them are still around. The question white power advocates do not ask is why did it take 500 plus years and two World Wars for these superior white people to stop killing each other over first religious differences and later over political differences. And there are white Europeans today who are ready to kill again. We should all be glad that at least some, perhaps a majority of them have wised up. But I would not bet against those white minorities who hate. Historically they have proven hating in groups is stronger than love which only happens individually. Historian.00 at gmail.com.
If we don't get a handle on global warming most of us regardless of skin color will become extinct.
What's also bonkers is the idea that it would even matter if this nutso theory were correct. If you are a "white" person (I put the word in quotes because the whole construct of race is questionable) and you or other "whites" have either not reproduced, or bred with other so-called races, you'll still be dead when you're dead. Your descendants, if any, will still carry your genes. Why would it matter to you if they also carried the genes of blacks, Asians, or Latinos? They will still be them. Even if you and all your descendants only breed with "white" people, your great-great-etc. offspring will still carry only so many of your genes as they would anyway, whichever other genes they also carry. Why would you care if they carry the genes of other "races" ?
Too many people on either side of the political spectrum seem to confuse correlation with causation.
There has been a historical correlation between certain physical features, class, and culture, so many identify the physical features as the issue, when it is really culture, values, way of life, etc.
On one side that means valuing people with some physical features, on the other, reviling them, when the real issue is, which values and way of life does one want to see perpetuated, and which not?
One other problem with white replacement rhetoric is that it blends in with, and can look like other types of population control advocacy. The world desperately needs to control its population to mitigate the mass extinction that is happening as we speak.
The Western democracies have pretty much implemented Zero Population Growth (ZPG). So have others, notably Japan. Mexico is well on its way although I don't know if they're at ZPG or not. China has been making heroic efforts for decades.
But other countries and regions are not on board yet, and calling them out on it can look like a white replacement wolf in sheep's clothing.
We must keep working towards ZPG without letting our loathing for white replacement rhetoric to confuse the issue.
The act is driven by fear that cannot be articulated in a theory. Why so much fear?
Migration from Islamic countries to Europe and US has increased dramatically over last few decades. A lot of this is happening through UN and other agencies and not with a broader consent from the local population. So people are surprised and feel helpless about their changing surrounding. It does appear like invasion in pockets if not occupation.
There are 50 Islamic countries and the tolerance for non-Islamic religions and ethnic groups in these countries is well known. Violence is still common in many places and the US media does not report. This culture of intolerance and violence travels with migrates to their new homes even when they migrate as hapless refugees to start with. Be it inspired by ISIS or otherwise, crimes and terrorist acts committed by migrants or certain ethnic groups have grown in European countries. People using vehicles to kill or bomb subways.
A small minority coupled with Political Correctness and help of the mainstream media narrative can start to Islamize a nation - make it more tolerant to growing radicalization, not able to enforce the law with the fear of being call Islamaphobic, etc. The example is UK.
Well, look at the reaction in the USA to an anti-Semitic statement made by a congresswoman a few days ago. It was not called out what it really was. A clear sign of where we are headed.
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"White replacement theory" is almost beside the point in the overall immigration debate.
At the end of the day, you either believe that nations with borders are real things and that they can set the terms for immigration on whatever grounds they like or you don't.
That's really what's at the heart of this. For some people, it is inherently intolerable and racist for an affluent first world country to screen immigrants on the basis of skill, language, and income. Or to chose to reduce immigration levels generally. Or to deport illegal immigrants. Though for whatever reason, they usually especially have an issue with this when it's a white majority country that does it. Nobody much cares when Japan or South Korea or China do it.
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I'm 100% Caucasian, so I was happy to learn that we'll be ok for some time. However, my children qualify as Latino because their mothers were, although my first wife was half Dutch and my second wife had lighter skin than I have. My daughter has blond hair, my first son has brown hair with reddish tones, and my second son has blue eyes. All of them consider English their first language. They love their mothers and are proud of them, but they think of themselves as Americans. That's exactly what I think of them, too. One became a cyber security expert, another a physical anthropologist, another an attorney They all have graduate degrees. Maybe there was some spillover from white privilege, but they grew up with their mothers as their major influence. I think being human is more important than race.
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I'm a white male in his early 60s. I have Mexican-Polish grandkids through marriage, and I embrace their combined culture - after all, just head south a few hundred KM and most of the world speaks Spanish or Portuguese, as well as English.
What worries me more is the loss of people with the ability to think critically versus those who cannot. If +that+ trend continues, fallacies like the "Great Replacement" will be harder to counter.
I'm reminded of the movie Idiocracy on a constant basis. With DJT in the WH, I won't be surprised if wave runners show up in the Reflecting Pool by 2020, piloted by Bikers for Trump.
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And yet, so many, including in these very comments, see the great replacement coming with glee as karmic justice for historical misdeeds.
Don't you think that may have something to do with it?
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Skin color to me is so irrelevant I guess I'll never understand this whole brouhaha. Who cares? We are all human beings, with the same desires, pains, joys, hopes and dreams. All everyone wants is to be loved. What's so hard about that?
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I still haven't seen anyone rebut the larger problem of the theory. If Group A has a population that declines as time goes on due to low fertility levels, eventually Group A will cease to exist. This is an unavoidable fact.
Now let's assume that Group A lives in a democracy that allows large numbers of Group B to migrate there. Group B has a high fertility rate so its population increases over time. In this scenario, Group B winds up replacing Group A both politically and in actual terms. Again, this is an unavoidable fact.
Now let's add human nature into the mix. When human beings label themselves as members of Group A and B, they often fight wars against each other to establish dominance. If Groups A and B live together in a democracy, they will inevitably be at war with each other. To pretend otherwise is naive and delusional.
Here in the US, I believe we used to have a way to help address this problem with the idea of the melting pot. By having groups A and B meld together into group C you avoid this problem. (Yes, I know it was never universally applied re: race, etc.)
Now it seems many in the West believe that no melting should ever happen. We should have a free for all with groups A-Z battling each other for money and power until some sense of equality is achieved. Through some miracle, these battles are never to turn violent. I think what happened in NZ is an example of why that won't work.
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The fascists and their theories are obviously uneducated, but that said, people with pale white skin are likely to go extinct well before the rest of society. We now understand that what are referred to as white people are a recent phenomena related to switching to agricultural diets in far northern latitudes. Before that time, those living across the Northern Atlantic region retained their original high melatonin levels.
I am not an expert, but I understand that darker skin is inefficient for Vitamin D production and the loss of a meat-centric diet ended that alternative source of Vitamin D that previously allowed humans to live in those climates. Those who survived with healthy bone production had abnormally low melatonin levels that could produce vitamin D from the limited sun exposure at northern latitudes. Those with darker skin no longer become cripples in modern northern countries and marriage across races generally do not retain the weaker traits of blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, etc. Course, we can all bleach our hair nowadays (its a good bet that blondes are far less numerous already but we don't notice given the number of fake blondes out there) and I imagine it will not be too long before we can alter melatonin levels to our preference.
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And if the next generations of Americans were to be predominantly black and Hispanic, I know I would want them to be the best educated citizens possible for the benefit of all of us, whites and non-whites alike. Why we are not making the right investments in all of our children's futures is beyond me.
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To most white people, this is not even an issue. A small minority though seem to think that being borne to white parents is the paramount thing that makes them worthwhile. It's not even something that they have achieved themselves.
To condemn others on the basis of the imagined serendipity of their births will see their lives filled with unnecessary angst, anger, turmoil, hatred and pointless self-defeating behaviour at a cost to everyone else.
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I work for a law firm. Every time we'll have a firm-wide meeting, some partner will rattle off the number of new partners we've made, always specifying which ones are "diverse." "Diverse" does not mean, as you might think it would, "composed of multiple different elements," as in "Colombia has a diverse climate," or "The cuisine of Mexico is very diverse." No, "diverse" means "not a white male."
So if the firm promotes a person who was raised in a wealthy suburb by two doctors who immigrated to the United States from India, the partnership magically becomes more "diverse," because that person is the embodiment of the value of "diversity." Same if the firm promotes the daughter of another partner to the partnership--she is a woman, and therefore "diverse." But if the firm were to promote some white guy who was the first in his family to go to college...well, that is a net loss for "diversity." He is not "diverse."
So, yeah, theories about "white extinction" are about as overblown as theories about an all-pervasive "white supremacy," acting behind everything that occurs in society. But let's not pretend that there is not a hegemonic ideology in western society that has decided that white men need to occupy the scapegoat role.
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No, historically white men have occupied the catbird seat. And felt entitled to it. No scientific reason for it. If that changes, its not based on hatred or revenge. Its based on equality. Justice. You know, those things enshrined in our laws.
@Karen Green I so often find myself wishing that--just for once--defenders of our dominant ideology could actually engage with critiques of it, rather than spouting non sequitur slogans.
"White" people? There is no such thing, and using that label helps the racist/xenophobic cause.
Personally, I'm European-American by ancestry, and you may call me that. I've also been called "white," but please don't; I find that offensive. Using labels like "white" or "black" to describe people isn't just superficial nonsense, it presumes and supports the idea of "race," that people are different from each other by skin color more than other characteristics, e.g., the size of their shoes.
Using labels like "white" or "black" just divides people up unnecessarily, and inevitably divides them against each other.
Globally, is there a trend for the (mean) average of skin color towards getting darker? Maybe, and if so, it would be the result of greater human mobility, reflecting our increasing power to travel, relocate, and mix with each other. But, that's not a problem to anybody other than people who harbor racist attitudes or the unfortunate class of people I call "professional racists" who make money off racism (and, these people come in all colors).
We could just focus instead on the benefits to society of diversity, not by skin color specifically, but all kinds of diversity. We are all different, and that is a good thing, especially in the age of information.
Please, don't describe people as "white" or "black."
1
There may be variations amongst us; but, since all the so called "races" can interbreed are we not all one species? As global communications and interactions continue to improve, the amalgamation of our species will continue. Certain physical traits will become rarer. It has been reported that redheadedness is on the decline. What impact will global warming and climate change have on humanity? Survival of the fittest will still be a factor in our evolution and if past history is any guide; if losers want to aggregate themselves in ever more isolated pockets they will assure their own demise.
Even as little as 50 years ago, the world was a "larger" place. Young folks my age (I'm now 52) looked to the sky and thought "it's only a matter of time before I'm hiking on Mars." Believe it or not, this was not childish thinking. If you lived in the age of the space race, human expansion into the cosmos was very real, and just around the corner. Today most people understand, either consciously or unconsciously, that the Earth is all we've got. Couple that with how much the internet has made us all roommates, not just neighbors, and things feel very tight. Some folks want to put up a sign on their door, scrawled in crayon, saying "keep out." It's up to the adults to understand and grow into this new world: ONE world.
1
Honestly, I do not care. I don't care if white people mate with, fall in love with, or make babies with people who are not white, and by doing so, produce less-white people. Why is this a thing? Nature loves variety and diversity in the genes. I think a few commentators hit the nail on the head when they suggested this is more about white privilege. What is truly bonkers is having to write an article about it.
1
A well written piece. The only thing troubling to me is the fact that it needs to be written in the first place (it does).
2
The people who complain about white "replacement" are really more concerned about losing white privilege.
507
@Dave
Tell that to David from Flushing who posted this:
I have experienced "white extinction" twice in my lifetime. Granted this was in a limited area, but it happened. My first home was in a Bronx neighborhood that was one-third each of white, black and Hispanic. However, within a few years, it was two-thirds black and one-third Hispanic, with whites being too few to count. Building abandonment then chased me to Flushing, then a mostly white area. However, over the decades, that has changed and I am likely the only WASP in Flushing. Few churches offer services in English and Mandarin and Korean are what one hears on the street. I can no longer speak to many of my neighbors which is socially isolating and I see no place to go as a senior with modest income who relies on the subway. It seems all of Queens is rapidly losing white population except for the million dollar developments of Long Island City. I like diversity, but being the last man standing can be lonely.
----
This is a really hard topic.
28
@Dave Demography is our destiny, not "white privilege".
8
@Dave I can't get too angry at someone who wants Germany to remain German, France to remain French, China to remain Chinese, Korea to remain Korean, or Ethiopia to remain Ethiopian.
A little immigration is okay. But it must be something agreed to by the people of the host nation.
36
Comparing birth rates is a better indicator than social status for determining white decline. No doubt birth rate is a long term change for white decline. And we shouldn't be worried anyway.
Ever since the invention of the airplane and the air conditioner we have been headed toward an earthling race. As people move from the tropics to the temporal zones their skin color fades even without intermarriage. With improvements in nutrition plus people selecting the best mate they can get, future generations will be bigger, smarter and better looking.
I have experienced "white extinction" twice in my lifetime. Granted this was in a limited area, but it happened. My first home was in a Bronx neighborhood that was one-third each of white, black and Hispanic. However, within a few years, it was two-thirds black and one-third Hispanic, with whites being too few to count. Building abandonment then chased me to Flushing, then a mostly white area. However, over the decades, that has changed and I am likely the only WASP in Flushing. Few churches offer services in English and Mandarin and Korean are what one hears on the street. I can no longer speak to many of my neighbors which is socially isolating and I see no place to go as a senior with modest income who relies on the subway. It seems all of Queens is rapidly losing white population except for the million dollar developments of Long Island City. I like diversity, but being the last man standing can be lonely.
190
@David
I've spent my entire family life, first growing up and now married to a naturalized citizen, among family members speaking multiple languages I don't understand. At the corner Jack-In-The-Box, the kids behind and in front of the counter mostly speak Spanglish. A marvelous thing to hear. Whether one is lonely or not surrounded by "other" peoples pretty much depends on what kind and how many props one needs to stand.
26
Check out your local library, YWCA or YMCA
Found this guide, it’s a little old, but many of these institutions are still in existence call them for updated information.
https://www.nyc-arts.org/resources/NYC-ARTS_Queens_Seniors_Guide.pdf
Here’s a NYC Parks page
https://www.nycgovparks.org/events/seniors
There are resources to meet people just look for them and be open to meeting different kinds of people. You never can tell when and where you’ll find a friend!
5
@David
You could try moving to Williamsburg, Long Island City, Fort Greene, Bed Stuy or Harlem where the white population is exploding, pushing out long time residents of color.
15
This column keeps getting better. I have one quibble with this one, though. I know the intent was to debunk replacement theory, but I'm not so sure that trends don't point to a greater blending of ethnicities. While that message plays into the fears of white people who fear displacement, the point needs to be made that that fear is irrational and racist. Yes, immigration and the tumbling of racist barriers that used to bar inter-racial marriages are contribution to a greater blending of the world's people. So what? We need to counter replacement theory not by refuting its accuracy but by condemning its foundational ideology.
62
"The country is becoming more diverse, but white people are not losing their grip on America, nor on the world, not by a long shot."
The paradox is that this emergent white incitement undermines the interests of the very population it claims to defend. By overtly racializing the relations between whites and non-whites worldwide, it introduces a heavily emotional tone in foreign and domestic affairs while making countless new enemies. Don't you wish all that for the benefit of your best friend -- the 'now besieged' white population?
This piece loves a good straw man. "Extinction" is not the issue, but major demographic change within borders is not only possible, but happening now. Besides, the left constantly tells us, with no small schadenfreude, that white influence in this country is inexorable decline. Why, in an era of intense racial and ethnic consciousness fostered principally by the left, should a reaction be surprising?
4
Sadly, I have heard seemingly rational people of the baby boomer generation whisper this theory to each other on multiple occasions. Each time I corrected them, they looked at me sadly as if I was too naive to understand the truth. i have no idea what to do about folks who simply choose to believe lies.
People will one day get past their stupid toxic tribalism. Unless the ones who make a religion or political platform out of their stupid toxic tribalism get their hands on the nukes. Our intelligence is not keeping up with our capacity for annihilation by technology. And now all of us are held hostage by the religion of tribalism. Every mass shooter, every strongman president is working that us against them angle.
Your reporting piqued my interest. It not the usual far right or far left diatribes you usually read in the press.
I believe if I read your piece correctly there are three things that history has taught us.
1-Change in racial/ethnic composition of a country happens very slowly.
2-It is even slowed further by the definition of the majority ie what constitutes a white. In other words if blacks all of a sudden comprise 51% of the country as opposed to the present app. 12% that would be drastic. However suppose you define white as traditional caucasian/white hispanics/white middle easterners/light skin Indians etc. etc. The change will take even longer.
3-Even when a broader definition of whites takes place and they are in a minority, they will probably be the ruling class for a long time to come.
1
Something to be added here is, "So what if whites are not a majority? "
The Western World would not collapse under people of color. Whites in America may fear revenge from the relatives of black people who were slaves, and who still face prejudice.
But education is a wonderful thing. Any person of color elected to the White House, Congress or State governments will have earned at least one degree, and, unlike the current President, will have read the Constitution.
People who have faced suppression normally evolve into people who seek social justice, not revenge-seekers.
Our mass murderers in America are white. The pro-2nd Amendment, gun-toting folks are white. The current Congressional Republicans and Administration is almost 100% white.
These three groups have collectively caused grave harm to the American public, principally by death, including cutting life-saving vital human services, breaking laws and undermining Democratic values.
Would people of color do a better job? Possibly, and they certainly couldn't do worse.
2
The "great replacement" is just a made-up term coined by people who are in need of some reason to give actions to their personal bigotry. The reasons for demographic changes are many. If this refers to low birth rates among whites, or caucasian as "white" really has no meaning, it is generally due to better education and access to birth control and knowledge of options. This lower birth rate generally takes place in any culture where the people gain in education. What I think the New Zealand shooter's murderous rage was fueled by high immigration rates overall the past few years in Europe. The immigration in big numbers -- no disputing that -- was fueled in large part to the US. and other western nation's invasions of Iraq, among other ill-advised attacks that left so many people homeless, brutalized and desperate. Ironic, as a big chunk of the immigrant influx was caused by the west.
2
The country‘s largest minority population is currently Hispanic. Hispanic is an ethnic term, not a racial one. Past research by the Census Bureau, seeking to fine tune the census questions that produce data for civil rights enforcement, found that when people who identified as Hispanic were encouraged to also identify a race, about 90% chose white.
1
@Marty, white is also referred to as Caucasian, "The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid) is a grouping of human beings historically regarded as a biological taxon, which, depending on which of the historical race classifications used, have usually included some or all of the ancient and modern populations of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa."
BUT
"In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for white or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry."
So in America, caucasian leaves out a whole lot of people who are from Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and Horn of Africa.
It is bizarre, since
1
The subtitle is slightly misleading (though doesn't
detract from the essence of the piece). To be clear, this act of terrorism was committed by an Australian citizen, not a New Zealander. The Australian people, and government, need to begin to reckon with the social climate we have fostered that has led to this. Individuals, and their actions, do not exist in a vacuum.
You know, Farhad, the first two thirds of your column would be quite a fun piece of satire if it weren't for the fact that these Great Replacement people are obviously dangerous.
As for myself--I live in a census tract of Queens NY that is considered one of the most ethnoculturally diverse locales on the planet--I have little concern about being in the minority here as a Caucasian (though one with a Jewish background, which didn't used to be considered white, remember), if only because the cuisine choices here are SO much better than they would be in a predominantly white neighborhood. To me, chow fun and empanadas and vindaloo are more important than any vague disquiet that a lot of the people around me don't have a pre-melanoma complexion.
2
I'm not white and I have never cared that I live in a country which is predominantly white. I came to the U.S. from a lower-middle class Indian environment 33 years ago on a full scholarship to attend graduate school - and I remain indebted and grateful to the U.S. for all of the opportunities I have had.
But this piece by Farhad Manjoo is intellectually dishonest because it is the mainstream media which constantly talks about race. Leading up to last year's election - and practically every day since - there's always a piece about how minorities and women of color are now the new cornerstones of the Democratic party.
There are other stories about how TX and CA have turned minority-majority. David Frum in the Atlantic says that 45 million non-whites migrated to wealthy nations since 1990 alone. With such a drumbeat of news stories, some fringe extremists are likely to feel threatened. And this killer decided to publicize it all back in the very same media.
If the point of the piece is that there are fringe elements of whites who are obsessed with race, it is also true that the media is obsessed with race too, attacking whites and white privilege.
Ironically, Mr. Manjoo's piece may have calmed these desperate whites a bit. They may feel less threatened now.
5
My concern is that this argument doesn't challenge the delusion of an "us versus them" tribalism, it only seeks to reassure "whites" that their power is safe from "others". The real promise of diversity is that it increases the possibility that we might begin to see that in truth, there are no "others".
2
The article neglects to mention that the worst case described by "White Genocide" crowd is distressing only to the degree that society clings to a tribal, us-vs-them paradigm. Humankind is all of a single race.
When we talk about dogs and cats, agricultural animals and plants, wildlife and botany, we necessarily use the terms "species" and "race" and "breed" and "variety" properly and accurately. Not so with humans. "Breed" and "variety" are beneath our dignity: better to misuse the term "race" than to be reminded that we are a single species.
Really, if white populations decline and non-white populations increase, it is about as consequential as a decrease in white dogs and an increase in brown dogs.
So, beside the notion that "White Genocide" is not happening, there is the notion that "White Genocide" threatens nothing but our irrational societal view of race and species.
2
What everyone is forgetting is that is an Australian born and bred that has only lived in NZ for the last three years and didn't require a visa to come to NZ. Australia has a much larger population than NZ and there's more of these extreme radicals in Australia who can just walk into NZ. Working on preventing this from happening again should be NZ focus as you can't repair the unrepairable. Stricter immigration and gun laws is a start.
Also the government needs to pass a law that says they can inject the terrorist with a truth serum so to find out whom else is involved.
1
I have a very personal "take" on Mr. Manjoo's column. My mother was of Irish descent; my father's family came from Iran. Now in my sixties, I was born in the U.S. My coloring is closer to my mother's whereas my brother looks much more Middle Eastern.
Our family experience taught me something very early in my life. By the time I was old enough to go to school, I saw that people treated him very differently than they treated me. I saw that I was much more accepted by whites than he was. I wasn't teased and didn't hear the slurs that he did.
And these experiences didn't end with childhood teasing. He has had to face much more prejudice than I ever had. Whites eye him suspiciously when he boards planes. White parents often pull their young children away from him if he passes them in a grocery store aisle. White store employees treat him as if he were there for no other reason than to shoplift.
The fact is, I got to live in one America, and he had to live in another. I often wished whites could have been forced to live his life for even one week - to endure the slurs, the dirty looks, the hatred. Because this is the only way they will ever understand.
And as for me, the day that whites become a minority in this country cannot come too soon.
7
The Great Replacement is more likely to go the other way. In Britain, bout 50% of Afro-Caribbean men marry white women, and about 50% of black women marry white men. Within a couple of hundred years, wholly black people are likely to be a vanishingly small minority, with most people being white or mixed race. (I leave out south Asians, who have a low intermarriage rate.)
As the article notes, much depends upon how people of mixed race identify. I doubt if people who are 1/32 black will identify as black, even if in the US people who are 1/256 native American may identify as such. So black people, as a separate group, are likely to fade from view.
The US has a higher percentage of people who are black, and a lower rate of intermarriage, so the process may be slower there. But I still think the white supremacists have got it wrong.
2
Most countries outside of Europe and North American have very strict anti-immigration policies.
Do you think African countries try to keep African immigrants out because they are black? Obviously not. Nations can have valid reasons to control immigration.
True, some people will have less than noble reasons for fighting immigration, but Mr. Manjoo paints with too broad a brush. His tone is too dismissive, judgmental, and intolerant. It's voices like his, that I fear will hurt Democrats' chances in 2020.
2
Like it or not, people need an in-group and an out-group. You can be 100% right and present your case with impeccable logic, but you're fighting an uphill battle against Hamilton's rule.
1
Perhaps, if the point included coming up high on google searches, Great Replacement should have been in the title? Hope it’s in metatags. It’s catchy because of its lack of actual meaning, as with all successful slogans. Coke is NOT the real thing, for example.
1
Actually, if we are going to be honest, this existential threat, at least to white America, began in the mid 1990s when it was 1st predicted that the United States would be majority minority by 2020. Since that time, some Americans, mostly those believing in white privilege, have become increasingly fearful of this change. Now that we are nearly there, they are acting like cornered animals would act. It is really not that surprising, Though the perceived global threat is far less real, and probably has more to do with emigration/immigration.
"Existential decline." Does that mean we are running out of existential philosophers? Heaven forbid.
Farhad Manjoo overstates the case, simplifying a very complex situation.
The issue was never about whites going extinct. It is about the loss of an inherited Anglo-Saxon national identity that is linked to loss of majority status. Horace Kallen, for one, was a remarkably prescient analyst who engaged many of the complexities of American pluralism in the early-twentieth century.
Demographic projections suggest a Latino majority in the US by 2050. Such a shift may witness changes in governance, public policy, institutional structures, and values.
Whites are not troubled by immigrant populations that readily assimilate and contribute to the prevailing culture. Trouble arises when immigrant groups are perceived not only as unassimilable but inimical to assimilation. It begins with language, but also encompasses religious practices, education, treatment of women, and other spheres of life.
Here is a provocation. What good reason is there for Muslims and Sikhs to wear religious garb in the West, when this attire is prescribed by an archaic religious prophecy and custom that arguably suppresses human fulfillment? Of course, the same criticism can be levelled at the oppressive aspects of many religions.
4
The “Great Replacement theory the author refers to may be a racist and misogynistic conspiracy theory, but population replacement is very real. It is part of human evolution.
The unraveling of the human genome has revealed the human past is not nearly as simple as archaeologists and historians once assumed. Virtually no population group inhabits the space it inhabited thousands of years ago.
In “Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past,” David Reich writes: “In the last few years the genome revolution—turbo charged by ancient DNA—has revealed human populations are related to each other in ways no one expected. . . It is full of surprises: massive mixtures of differentiated populations, sweeping population replacements and expansions, and divisions in prehistoric times that did not fall along the same lines as populations differences that exist today.”
There is no reason to think population replacements will not occur in the future as they have in the past, and it is unrealistic to expect that some will not be accompanied by violence in the future as they were in the past. Most population groups that could resist replacement did resist.
Perhaps America can continue to peacefully transform itself by absorbing, assimilating and acculturating millions of illegal and illegal immigrants from non-Western cultures, but it is likely to succeed only if the process is carefully managed.
8
Calling massive demographic changes, and the upheaval they cause, a conspiracy theory, will not solve our problems.
We need to be honest with people and talk to them directly.
7
I'm not concerned about white extinction. We're all the children of an African mother as far as I'm concerned. I do, however, worry about the loss of hegemony of the ideas of the enlightenment, reason, the rule of law, the scientific method, Liberalism, non-violent civil disobedience, and republican democracy. Unfortunately, I'm racist enough that I equate these ideas with European heritage, - all except the non-violence - which intuitively in my mind is "white." I know no race has a monopoly on any of these concepts, but not all cultures are created equal.
7
Not here for white people who are afraid of being "replaced" whether it is happening or not. People of northern European decent, who are light skinned due to an evolutionary adaptation that allows absorption of more Vitamin D in less sunnier climate, move to warmer places and then gripe that they have to share space with people of color? Those obsessed with their light skin should go where it it is cold and sunless; their children will be white forever. I would be only too happy for my progeny to marry into more melanin and less skin cancer risk.
1
@Ritch66 Oops! "... northern European descent ...."
The problem with this essay is that the author both wants to debate empirical questions regarding changing demographics, and label those who may disagree with his answers to those questions as “racists.” His term.
I don’t think this is a legitimate way to discuss public policy questions with one’s fellow citizens. But it is a common approach among many liberals talking about race: a hectoring, arrogant approach that assumes a clarity and wisdom on the topic that the speakers do not, in fact, possess.
8
The real issue is: on cosmological plane, what is the purpose of human existence, anyway? We are all going to die as individuals, and it's looking like our species might be on the way out as well. The supremacy or demise of one race, one nation, one religion, or one civilization, is, in the long view, irrelevant.
1
While it is comforting to think that "when you present white people with facts that counter the white-extinction theory, they become less alarmed and anxious about demographic change",
the problem is that most of the people holding that view do not get the message. They are subjected to, and subject themselves to the conspiracy theory, via right wing talk radio, the internet and of course Fox.
1
I appreciate the attempt but this column is very backwards. The message to people scared of becoming a minority shouldn’t be “don’t worry, you’re still really in power.” It should be “don’t worry, race is a fake construct and if you fear non-white people having more power you need to re-examine your belief system.” Which, admittedly, is harder to convey and convince people of. But the net take away from this column, while possibly squelching anxiety in the short term, would reinforce someone’s opinion that they must fight to keep that power (via the electoral college and senate filibuster, and fighting against progressive programs that lift up people of color). In other words, we need to convince people that THERE IS NO WAR. Not that they’re still winning it.
5
Can we at least agree that whatever race that comes to dominate in society is as equally corruptible as any other? That would be a good place to start. Finding a way to alter that grim statement requires humility not seen in our leaders of late. Pay-offs to distinct sub-genres might get politicians elected but does nothing to address the problem of a species reaching the limit of its viability on a finite speck in the cosmos.
4
The issue is not White Replacement it is the population boom in Developing Countries. There are practical and cultural concerns some groups do not assimilate well, there are language and skill levels issues. A simple example is the need in France to ban the hijab in schools. Why someone would expect to live in another culture not follow the norms and complain that the norms they left were not being respected in France defies rationality
8
It is critical to look not just at the content of the message, but how extreme conspiracy theories are delivered to an unwilling public. Extreme views take hold because they are easily communicated. Not so fifty years ago, but look at how easily fascism grew in the 1930's with books and newspapers. The power of extremism is multiplied, unfiltered at internet speed, and no one seems willing to do anything about this. Many people of all races may have never heard of "white-extinction" but thanks to mass media, this has been planted into the imagination of individuals everywhere there is internet, television or cellphone service. Even New Zealand, an isolated nation, is now swept up into the rot of extremism. The question to ask is this: how will civilization isolate and contain these extreme views, and prevent them from growing into vast social movements?
1
I know that it has become common practice to speak of someone's net worth or even worse saying someone is worth such-and-such. But I cringe every time.
This is a strange article since the evidence presented seems to strongly support the replacement theory, while the author argues that the theory is "bonkers" and "unscientific." Is the author criticizing the forecast time frame or arguing that the theory although scientifically well-founded should not be mentioned? It is not clear what criticism the author is trying to make.
15
I'd be more worried about running out of functional antibiotics, a new virulent flu strain, big climate change, shortages of fresh water, damaging chemicals, and a crazy man in powerful office too near the red button.
Populations come and populations go. You do not always have a say in what group comes out on the other side. But then, that fragment of non white genetic material may be helpful and the skill of someone from another race may save your cohort. Humans, what a picky tribe.
7
The second paragraph states "the theory is about as deep as the one pushed by flat-earthers, though without that group’s scientific rigor." Then the rest of the article can't help but admit that the basic premise is true.
Why open like that? If you think a gradual replacement and mixing is not a problem or even a good thing, argue that directly. In fact, I'm with you. If you want to say that it's horrible how extreme fear of demographic trends has led to acts of terror, we're all with you.
Just, why the need to attack the facts? Why the need to obfuscate?
10
Perspective: Here we all are. On an amazing, beautiful planet. But it is after all a speck orbiting a star that is just a speck in a galaxy that is just a speck in the universe. Yet we manage to destroy our environment, push other species to extinction, torture and kill each other because the "Other" looks, thinks, acts differently than we do. In spite of the achievements and goodness of humanity, we are motivated by primitive drives: fear and desire. I guess we all should just do the best we can. I guess.
3
I certainly agree that there is no such thing as white replacement. At the same time this topic is merely a distraction. Only an extremely small percentage of people are white extremists who believe in such a thing. There is zero chance that such a theory becomes mainstream. Overreaction can be nearly as dangerous as the extremism we seek to end. Just as we have learned after 9/11, heavy handed tactics only lead to more radicalization. Implementing free speech restrictions on social media or breaking up social media companies won’t be any more moral or practical than increasing surveillance against Americans and limiting immigration has been. America needs to find its balance again.
1
Imagine what the world could be like if:
1) People stopped acting like they were a god (small 'g'), rule-maker, and judge of others, and instead
2) Starting doing what God actually told people to do - recognize that all people are made in His image and that we are to do the simplest thing of all (yet seemingly difficult to comprehend, adhere to, or do) -- love one another. That's it... that's our one and only purpose.
The Truth is that we are not in charge, we're just made to and commissioned to love one another; then God will take care of the rest. And one day He will be the ultimate and only judge.
6
... and here they are (thanks).
Those who politically steer us seem to believe that we can not or should not handle the truth. IMO, we shouldn't sidestep the truth because some individuals might find this a dire scenario and do terrible things, as a result. Perpetuating myths because of worse case scenarios among fringe individuals is irresponsible; truth is a prerequisite for many essentials of our society. If our political handlers had more faith in their fellow human beings maybe they would believe that most members of a racial group in demographic decline would identify themselves, first and foremost, as HUMAN BEINGS and could therefore handle such truths - as long as humans, as a whole (i.e. our species) were not in serious decline. Just another adverse effect of identity politics.
1
This is all of a piece with what “MAGA” panders to: the notion that the United States is in decline, and Americans betraying their forebears, if the nation is perceived as falling behind any other in any number of largely arbitrary criteria, such as economic output, military strength or, as personified by Donald Trump, naked and pointless arrogance.
To Trump and those who listen to him, there is no distinction between “losing” and merely not winning (in the same way that no Oscar nominee actually “loses” anything; he or she merely fails to win). It is not that the U.S. is in decline, but that other nations, like China, long part of the developing world, are now ascendant.
It may be nice in one sense to go to sleep at night knowing that the society of which one is a part sits at the pinnacle of human existence, but it cannot be but tempered by the inescapable fact that to be in that position is to know there’s no direction to go but down.
1
The US is in decline, or better said, has already declined. But it is because of Trump, MAGA, and frankly Republicans. We don’t fix decline by regressing to the past.
4
What I like, read, watch and create (my culture) is not defined by my skin color. I'd be thrilled if my children, or grandchildren, found partners of darker skin and introduced a little melanin into our day-glo skinned family.
My descendants would still be exactly as related to me as they were before - so what is the problem?
8
@odiggity one problem is that for the vast vast majority of people, race is real. Its tied closely to their identity. Pretending it doesnt exist isnt a smart or effective way to navigate society and politics.
2
@Lilo
@JA
As much as I despise Republican administrations, I recognize that birth rates in some countries are attributable to other 'causes' as well. Here in Uganda (with a population of @ 45 million, and where I have been told -quite matter of factly by locals - that it will be 100 million by the year 2050) the present 'Big Man' 'disapproves' of contraception by any means other than abstinence and the concept of 'womanhood' and 'manhood' are intimately linked to 'motherhood' and 'fatherhood'. While 'The Great Replacement' is an unnecessary boogeyman (although I find the Americo-centric direction of the piece disturbing), the very real boogeyman facing ALL humans is the horrifying growth in populations (which happen to be for the most part in the so-called Third World). And as a consequence, my children (who live where population growth is relatively minimal) will be facing a MORAL dilemma that presumably has nothing to do with race or 'replacement', but has everything to do with hunger and survival of the refugees from countries that cannot support them and may very well result in changes in their culture that has nothing to do with race or 'replacement' but with something as 'simple' as access to livable space. As long as the human population grows simply because it can, the magnitude of this moral dilemma will only continue to grow.
20
The manifesto reads like the work of a simpleton who is echoing affiliated internet echo chambers. "Great Replacement", as the author points out, ties in with the internet origins of this crime.
Politicians and media have been appealing to "identity" for a long time in their search for votes and audience respectively. On the internet everyone is their own media, and and "identity" has gone into hyperdrive, so that people can stand higher than the other billion soapboxes.
Most of the "internet" today is however a walled garden, managed by companies such as Facebook. They make their money by knowing their customers inside and out. Facebook was a cornerstone of this crime, has been particularly silent since, and is one place to start looking to dampen down identity battles.
4
This article is probably true and I have to say that it makes me sad. I’m looking forward to the day when white people become a political minority in this country. Their impact on my race has been devastating for four centuries now and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So the day they have less political sway will be a good one. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime, though, which is unfortunate. It would have been nice to see.
7
@Lisa Post I'm afraid that racial intolerance isn't monopolized by just one group of people. It's pretty ubiquitous. In other words, nobody is immune and the tone of your post underscores this fact. In light of that sad reality, one should be careful of what one wishes for.
3
There's no scientific rigor at all behind this comment, only what I take to be a reasonable assumption or two.
You point out the inordinate political and economic power that whites in the US will retain despite a dwindling share of the population. That's not all. The next step for non-Latino whites after ceasing to be a majority of the population will, I suppose, be to hold the status of largest single group. From then on, the question will increasingly be whether the various other groups are really invested in the ad hoc "people of color" combination compared with which whites might appear to be a demographically beleaguered minority.
That may be the case if America comes to resemble the old South Africa, with an outnumbered white caste holding a genuine monopoly of power and privilege. Considering where American society stands now, that seems unlikely. So a natural dispersion of identity should occur, and the notion of a cohesive non-white tidal wave should become harder to sell.
The danger of white-supremacist terrorism will remain, since terrorism can be conducted by the smallest clusters of misguided people. However, it should not spread as racial formations change and interactions shift. At the moment, it looks more like the anarchist terror whose perpetrators had their hour upon the stage around the end of the 19th century.
1
Regrettably until the concept of race itself is totally debunked as 18th century pseudo-science, then debates like these are pointless. The challenge is not convincing anyone not to worry about White Replacement; rather, it's that we continue to buy into the idea that there is any such thing as a White, Black, Brown, Red, or Yellow race to begin with.
Genetic science has proven repeatedly that the physical distinctions we have classified collectively as race don't amount to more than eye color as a correlative measure of our respective humanity. Every time we engage a debate—no matter how well intended—to address a racial conundrum without first calling race out for the counterfactual it is, then we have set up a losing argument. Because so much of our personal identity has been enmeshed in this contrivance defining our places in the world, we cannot seem to get out of our own way to realize how crippled we are by accepting race as something to "overcome."
What we really need to overcome is the continued belief in a socio-political construct that was simply confected to justify the inhuman exploitation of human beings by other human beings. The idea of race and its institutionalization were enacted by man. They must also be undone by man if we ever expect to permanently address the injustice done in their names over the past centuries. Otherwise, as long as we hold onto race as something real, then it shall hold sway over us we can never overcome.
17
@Gui you said it a lot better than I did in my own comment.
The history of the human race is one of adaptation and change. What is there to fear?
9
@theresa check whats going on in south Africa, what happened in austria Hungary, and countless other examples of ethnic strife in our human history.
When I moved from Southern California to the Midwest 10 years ago, whites in California already amounted to less than 50% of the population. All other minorities total 51%, with whites accounting for 49%. It didn't make a bit of difference in anyone's mind. So the rest of the country might as well get used to the idea that whites in the U.S. will soon enough represent less than 50% of our population. And it won't make a difference then, either.
14
@DBA
Better check the definition of "white". Last I heard Hispanics were defined as non-white, even though "Hispania" (Spain) is a European country where most people are Caucasian. Redefine "white" to include Hispanics and the statistical problem goes away.
I'm glad you referenced Shaun. There is a significant strain of genuinely educated youtubers who have formed a sort of counterbalance to the reactionary alt-right and alt-right enablers who have claimed the platform as their own for far too long.
Vice just did an excellent piece on ContraPoints aka Natalie Wynn who is another Youtuber who regularly debunks alt-right fearmongering and misinformation.
6
How does the "Great Replacement" square itself with gentrification?
3
Whatever you call it there are some fundamentals that I, an old white guy, hope persevere... the 17th century Scientific Revolution, the 17th century Age of Reason, the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, the Bill of Rights, free politics and free markets ... there are others, but that should do it for now. The above are accessible to all regardless of race, gender, etc. The above fundamentals form the reason why so much of the world struggles to emigrate to Europe and the United States.
36
Are the markets truly, free, open, and transparent? I agree with Warren that the lack of oversight favors the strongest and most ruthless players.
1
The left has been publishing essays and articles predicting USA becoming a nonwhite country for some time now. The numbers and timelines vary but are always presented as inescapable destiny. Some of the good things usually listed to come with this change are supposed to be the end of the Republican Party and the whites having to give up their power and privileges. The latter is not elaborated on and nor is it illustrated how it would play out in people’s lives. Stands to reason different people will react in different ways.
37
@Just Saying important point. The left sort of assumed that white folks didnt understand what was happening, and why they are so excited. People know.
I don't think the Republucan values are heading to extiction. Latonos and Asians have conservative, family-based values. The Republican party has only to embrace these groups if they want their votes.
I am puzzled by this whole issue. I happen to be born of white parents, but that is not my identity as a person. I am a human being equal in importance to billions of others of various origins. If, in the future, human beings fall in love and have children I am untroubled about the resulting skin colour. What possible difference does it make.
In any case, the future population of Canada (or the west) is something that will happen after I am gone. It won't affect me in any way. What I can say is that, living in Toronto, the increase in diverse populations over my lifetime has made my world richer and better. I am really proud that people from all over the world have chosen Canada as the best future for their family and the future for their children. We are doing something right and need to do more of it.
For the religious among us or the secular humanists (moi) when Jesus said "Love thy neighbour" he didn't mean just white people. He meant everybody. Tout le monde.
42
@Michael Greason
" I happen to be born of white parents, but that is not my identity as a person."
Unfortunately, to people obsessed with identity politics, that IS your identiy. Identity has been redefined to mean what group you belong to, not what makes you unique as a human being. It makes it easier to write sociological treatises or to plan election campaigns if you can ignore people's real individuality.
This column had to cover a lot of ground, and no doubt didn’t have space to cover broader demographic trends in developing countries. In every case, when women are educated and families are able to accumulate capital, the birthrate plummets. As an example, I have a Mexican-American coworker who has two children (and is adamant that is all), although she was one of six siblings. Her immigrant mother was one of twelve! Educate women and let them participate in the labor force—the rest will follow.
33
Just what mem fear. A evangelical Chicano male friend once blamed juvinielle delinquency and gang violence on mothers' participation in the work force. If womem would simply stay home and parent, he reasoned, they would be more effective in leeping their kids out of trouble.
When I stayed in Berkeley some 40 years back, it's not easy to find decent Japanese, Chinese, Indian or Thai restaurants. When I came back there recently, it's even harder to find decent sandwich or hamburger restaurants. Some kind of "Replacement" has already happened.
29
@KI, here in the north east one couldn't find cilantro in grocery stores 35 years ago, we had to go to an asian market to buy "Chinese parsley" as it was known. Wow, what a change!
3
Honestly, is it about extinction or displacement?
Don't you think these people seem to be worried about losing their home?
While I do not want to give them much space, I think it is worth truthfully identifying their issue.
I imagine they see countries in say Asia, and they want what they have. While there are minorities in those countries, of course, the movement of those in the ethnic majority having to move out of cities is not as big a shift.
They are feeling displaced. They are losing what they grew up to expect. That IS hard for people. It would be in any country in the world.
While I have no interest in living in an ethnically pure society, here is the thing, the majority of the people in the world do. What these people are rallying for, is not a hateful idea in many countries on the planet. It is an accepted everyday paradigm.
That said, places like the US, Canada, Australia and NZ are COMMITTED to multi-cuturalism. Getting sections of the white population on board with that is the challenge.
27
This is what happens when a problem is allowed to fester and grow. First, there was the horror of slavery and its centuries long lingering affects. Then there was the concept of Manifest Destiny, where white settlers pushed westward in the mid-1800s believing it was their God given right to trample over native people. In the 1950s and 60s, after landmark civil rights laws passed, discriminatory practices endured subtly even after being outlawed, as society crowed about successes while kicking the can down the road, failing to address the core systemic, ingrained racism and disenfranchisement that favors one race over others. Now the ugliness is staring us in the face.
11
Note there is one other group with a dangerously irrational belief that "demography is destiny" and that "white people face existential decline": Democratic party operatives and Progressive activists who somehow believe, despite the 2016 evidence to the contrary, that they can win national power with little to no address to white people, particularly to white men. It's the fun-house mirror image of Trump's white nationalist conviction that his white base is the "real America" he only needs to rouse to victory.
24
@RRI
Just for the record, 47% of white college-educated men voted for Democrats in 2018. 32% of white non-college educated men voted for Democrats. I know a lot of progressive activists and none of them thinks elections are won with everybody but white people. First, they’re not stupid; second, they know the current numbers; and third, they’re not racists. Trump, of course, can win with his white base if elections are stolen in four states as they were in 2016. For those who think that’s conspiracist or paranoid, look at voting patterns that changed for the first time in three decades. In one state, maybe. In four? Difficult to buy. Start with disappearing voters in Detroit and move on from there. And by the way, it would hardly be the first time. Lyndon Johnson made it a trademark in his early years. Jack Kennedy in West Virginia didn’t make much of an attempt to hide it. Karl Rove knew what to do in Ohio and predicted the outcome practically down to the vote before the election. And then there was that little thing called the Brooks Brothers riot organized by Roger Stone and Matt Schlapp with help from a lawyer named Alito (who was later amply rewarded) and a Supreme Court coup called Bush v. Gore. If 2018 proved anything, Democrats need three things to win elections: turnout, turnout, and turnout.
1
RRI,
"Existential decline" does not mean the same thing as extinction. These white power idiots are equating the two. They are letting their fears overcome their reason. The USA is a country of laws and immigrants. If they want a white power nation let them move somewhere else and create their own.
1
@RRI
There is nothing in the democratic party that disregards white people. Many white people are in the party.
But what a good number of whites want is a purity that doesn't allow for tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism. They fight against allowing minorities join the US culture. That is why they don't join the democratic party.
The republican party has used dog whistles to scare those white people to vote against their economic interest. And the bullhorn that trump used shows how it works when you gin up fear against those who are not white straight males.
The Baha'i Faith----perhaps the most advanced and pro-science religion in the word----advocates intermarriage of all races and creeds, for the purpose of bringing us a world with the very best traits and characteristics of all humanity. Sounds right to me.
31
Your claim that Bahá'í is somehow advanced would be more convincing if they offered LGBT folks anything more than condemnation.
Making oneself out to be a victim is quite often the first and most important step in justifying persecution and violence against whatever group one has chosen to blame for the frustrations and disappointments of ones own life. But the idea that caucasians have somehow been victimized as a group is absurd on every level, leading to the next question: what are the people who say they believe this actually angry about? Is there a way to define that anger, to direct it in more constructive ways -- at least something other than mass murder?
25
@Chintermeister: Good question. There was the labor movement, there was the leisure time movement, where everyone's energy was going to go into perfecting their fishing or woodworking or motorcycle maintenance skills, there was music... I suppose you could include drinking and drugs, they aren't great but they're not as bad as white supremacist activism. Unfortunately, a lot of people do both.
I'd look to something along the lines of the labor movement, if the lies of the right wing could be confuted, and people could envision a genuinely better future, and a path towards it. Part of their energy is that they think they are working for a better world: if only that could be made real.
This gets complicated depending on location. Imagine being a lower middle class white person surrounded by other like-classed people in Montana. You are comfortable in your community because you fit well into it. Then, if you are in pictotesque Jackson Hole and a bunch of wealthy coastal elites start buying property, you suddenly find your hometown unrecognizably gentrified, and with the skyrocketing property values, unaffordable. Even if you own your home free and clear, you might not be able to pay the property taxes. You could be priced out of your own hometown. Displaced from the community you never wanted to leave, where do you go? There is genuine suffering with loss of economic opportnities, and in some cases, gentrification, in rural America.
1
@Chintermeister
If you believe America is a white christian country that should be under the dominion of white males, then seeing other racial or ethnic groups increase in population, and political power, then chances are that's going to make you angry and that these people are taking something that you think that's yours from you.
It has been said that "white" is the only so-called race that is defined not by what it is but by what it isn't. That is because in the false construct of race, whiteness in mainstream parlance was meant to exclude all descendants of various ethnicities, depending on given points in our collective American history and at times meaning Jews, Irish, Southern Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and obviously, Africans. The "one drop rule" meant that one could not be considered white as long as one had an identifiable nonwhite ancestor even when appearing to look as white or even whiter than some of those considered to be white. At best one might be considered "almost white". It is interesting to note that those individuals who cling so tenaciously to their whiteness and therefore sense of privilege reveal that their whiteness is the only attribute that they feel distinguishes them from the feared other. They fear that they may not be as smart, talented or successful as the other but they cherish the sense of entitlement that whiteness conveys. They persistently vote against their own interests, failing to accept the fact that they have more in common with others who share their socioeconomic status than they have with those whites in positions of power. No one is more dangerous than the person who feels his status and identity under threat especially when that is all they have to provide themselves a sense of worth and importance.
30
Your condescending and anger fueled ideas are one of the reasons people are fed up enough to vote for a guy like Trump.
1
It is pretty interesting to me that this stuff is happening. I'm a white person.
At one point I'm quite certain that I suggested that 'white people will have to be made a bit uncomfortable for a while'.
When I heard the quote from a guy in Texas I felt assaulted, but they were my own words.
I think we're doing well here. I think the fear is being extinguished. Many media channels are increasingly black, and I applaud it. We knew this would be tough. I also knew I'd be a bit uncomfortable for a while, and I gave the go ahead anyway. Yes, I've been a bit uncomfortable, and yes, it is ok.
I hope I helped a bit. The human race is one. We know this now.
9
I absolutely LOVE this article!
Funny but also very serious, sarcastic while truthful with no holds barred, and oh so necessary.
I'm sure this piece will be dismissed as "more of the same", but to me, this speaks volumes - a truth I seldom see in newspapers. Thank you Mr. Manjoo.
One point, though - if feminism is to blame for the decline of white majority, I truly fear for white women who choose to be moms to bi-racial children. Hard enough to straddle two cultures, but now they are also responsible for the decline of white majority? My, oh, my. That's a new thought for me.
(and no, I don't agree feminism has anything to do with lower birth rates, I think there are many other factors at play).
3
The NZ attacker also wants everyone to go absolutely bonkers with plans to limit speech online, because that will make more and more people like him feel trapped and ready to explode. And early signs are, the nannies of government and Silicone Valley are only too happy to oblige him. The proper response to this is to get the sunlight of reality into sites like 4Chan and 8Chan, not to block their access. We need people with healthier points of view, and basic demographic facts, challenging these destructive narratives on their home turf. Because the conspiracy theorists won't be silenced, they will simply move on to another web site, even less visible to the rest of us, and they will fester there in the absence of dialogue with the outside world.
6
@Dan D exactly. And we see cries to limiting social media! How backwards is that notion?
1
How strange that so many people seem oblivious to the contradiction between their celebration of "diversity", and their eagerness for a world full of people who look mostly similar, i.e. brown-eyed, brown-haired, tawny people of medium build.
I am a medium-brown eyed and haired person of medium height and build, and the world would be very boring if it mostly consisted of people like me.
While I celebrate all the many different combinations and permutations happening today, I would mourn the disappearance of dark blue-back and ebony people, and pale, blonde, blue-eyed people, equally.
Vive the extremes!
36
@AG: Yes, there is a well meaning fantasy of race-mixing until we all look similar.
In reality though, there are endless examples of hatred between similar-looking neighbors: our race-based hatred may be unusual in the history of the world.
On a more positive note: as you say, our ideal should be to cherish differences. Maybe we should even stop falling back on slogans about how we are all one human race. Who cares? Now I'll stop before I start getting all "Mr Rogers"... but yes, vive les differences!
3
@AG
"When everyone is diverse, no one will be."
But that requires looking at a big picture, something most people fail hard at.
@AG Don't forget red hair. In remote Chinese villages traffic stops and children dance around you once they get over their terror!
1
With the expansion and ubiquity of social media, we now see more (mostly) people with diminished critical thinking skills espousing and spreading their "ideas".
This resulted from:
• the ease with which intelligent comments -- on social media & official media -- can be attacked by those with limited understanding
• our weakened and politicized education system, which creates "kids" who believe nonsense.
• people's misunderstanding of what constitutes a "reliable" source for information. Blogs, "news sites", and social media are rarely factual or trustworthy. Wikipedia is rarely an "expert"-level source.
We must:
a) limit social media. It poses more social problems, with few benefits. The greatest problem with current social media platforms (primarily facebook) is that a comment shared by anyone can be distributed around the world, with little activity by others. It can almost "automatically" reach viral spread. This must be changed. No speech should be able to go "viral" by being automatically broadcast/rebroadcast.
b) strengthen our primary educational systems. A national (or perhaps international) Common Core curriculum (with strong scientific basis) is essential.
c) elect politicians who are not corrupt, and who legislate only to benefit their nation and constituents - rather than for themselves.
6
@IN limit social media? Like they do in countries that suppress their people and have human rights violations? No! The only way to combat this is through education.
You won't be able to suppress technology in an open Western society. Nor do we want to.
Tell that to patent owners who hide patents in order to not obsolete their main product. We stifle ideas all the time in the name of profit.
The one step Facebook and youtube should take immediately is to turn off their live streaming feature. That would have made the white power attack a lot less effective.
Opinion pieces and subsequent reader comments that are so extreme instead of nuanced, like this article and so many of the comments here, do a disservice to discourse in American society. Much of the anxiety over what Farhad Mango terms "white extinction" is actually a fear of a loss of culture and heritage. There has been rapid cultural change in America in the last few decades, much of it do to technological changes as well as the rise of the internet and social media. To pretend that this is not the case or to disregard it completely or worst of all to disparage through ridicule or moral rightousness those who feel isolated by the changes, will only cause more unrest and danger to us all. The term "white" is an umbrella term, and within it, there are many different cultures and identities, some which are actually becoming extinct. For example, in Italy the risk of Italian extinction is actually very real and well-documented by serious scholars at the best Ivy League Schools in this country. Italy has had a negative birth rate for decades now, and if it continues there will be few Italians left in a centuries time. To think that an entire population will be almost wiped out is upsetting to those who have Italian heritage or an attachment to the country. It doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage other ethnicities to live and flourish in the country, but the complete dismissal of the pain caused by this loss is also irresponsible.
78
@Matt Levine
"Italy has had a negative birth rate for decades now, and if it continues there will be few Italians left in a centuries time."
As someone not Italian, there is nothing I can do to reverse the negative birth rate of Italians. It strikes me that this, if it really is a problem, is fully within the control of any Italians who want to address it.
8
@Matt Levine
"...culture and heritage..." is not defined by race. Sicilians are Italians with distinct Moorish DNA are you going to tell a Sicilian he is not Italian?
there will always be plenty of Italians, they just won't all be caucasian. Italy is a nation, not a race
1
The comical aspect of this article is that what is going to be extinct is race itself. You see it’s not just white extinction, but the ultimate extinction of all race factors. It is only in the past half century that air travel has become so common (let alone communications to the farthest reaches) that it is actually impacting the face of humanity.
In the scheme of things, the pace at which we are blending races, religions, nationalities, and nearly every other identifier is relatively new. As more and more of it takes place, and it will take place, race and other distinctions will cease to exist.
Sure it’s going to take time, but at some point, if we don’t blow ourselves up first, there will be white extinction, or better yet, the extinction of race as a point of distinction. But fear not, no doubt our future selves will find a new and novel way to discriminate against each other.
10
@SG1
I read somewhere that the gene for six fingers is dominant over the five fingered gene... if this is true, perhaps it'll be between the Fives and the Sixes!
I don't like your ending sir. It lacks a "nor would it be a problem". Seriously. As long as noone starts offing us and we live in relative comfort I don't think anyone should care that much which particular demographic group is the biggest in any particular country. It's not really something that's relevant to anyones wellbeing.
4
I wouldn't call it "Replacement Theory", but just do the math.
Soon you realize that if a minority culture reproduces say four times more than the majority, then it does not take long before that minority culture become the majority with numbers like we currently have in US.
Why such an emotional argument without being rational and logical when it is only a matter of running numbers?
How you interpret those numbers is another question, but let's at least try to agree on the truth when it is obvious.
89
@Dan
There is a difference between not being the majority and becoming extinct. Many white people in America find the thought of not being the majority something to be by anxious about. They simply cannot conceive what's that like.
1
@Dan
Thank you for this. The statistic projection arguing against this silly op-ed are easily available. For example:
https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/files/wpp2017_keyfindings.pdf
1
Caucasians will likely not become extinct. However the number of h. sapiens, will eventually. and certainly, be reduce. The inevitable will follow from many realities due to human affects to the blogosphere -- significant increase in the number of humans (perhaps 10 billion by 2050; accelerating depletion of Earth resources, for example Ocean fisheries, are able land due to urban encroachment on agricultural lands, depletion of the petroleum resource, the root resource for all present and future human enterprises; human-caused climate change and its affect on world-wide boots -- or put succinctly the "four horseman of the apocalypse.
5
@Robert Do you mean biosphere, or 'blogosphere?'
I think you mean "biosphere"
@Robert am glad I wont make till 2050 on this earth. Good riddance to homo sapiens. The planet will heal when ware all gone.
Eventually, we will all be some shade of beige really.
That is to say that eventually we will all (well at least most of us being a clear majority) will look at and treat each other as equals regardless of skin color, or anything else.
I do not believe that white privilege is a given to continue on unobstructed. I think that the human race is going through a crisis right now, where we are going to have to come together on a global scale to save ourselves as a species overall. (regarding climate change)
Wealth or privilege isn't going to matter in the face of that.
15
@FunkyIrishman
Climate change will probably wipe out most of humanity before the beige sets in.
1
@FunkyIrishman tells us "That is to say that eventually we will all (well at least most of us being a clear majority) will look at and treat each other as equals regardless of skin color, or anything else."
Absolutely ... or sumthin'
It is my impression that people in eg Iraq or Syria have the same skin colour. They don't fight each other?
1
@FunkyIrishman
When, exactly, do you predict that a majority of populations in Africa and Asia are going to become this uniform "beige" color?
Or do you just mean "the US and Europe, aka the entire world to me, outside of which nothing else exists"?
For me, the retort is "who cares if white people go extinct?" The particular skin tone of my great-grandchildren doesn't concern me in the least.
I love music and poetry written by white people, black people, brown people (etc). Those will always exist: they have a history we should know about, but who cares if our "color" matches the color of those who wrote them? Good grief.
And the only Great Replacement I care about is Paul Westerberg.
21
With the popularization of DNA and ancestry testing, isn’t it time to concede that there are no “white” people but only fifty shades of brown? As I travel around the planet with my backpack as something I have done for forty-seven years, I mainly meet people, and we all have much more in common than we don’t. It is also far past time to realize that the current toxic rhetoric of divisiveness is nothing but a tool to gain and hold power. In fact it may be Trump’s only discernible skill set.
36
@Chuck Burton
Funny, as a woman who has traveled with a backpack quite a lot, I have come away from those experiences with an acute appreciation for the differences between cultures in how free I am to do just that...
15
@AG. I love the differences between cultures and it is the main reason I travel. I was referring, however, to our common humanity which supersedes these differences.
6
@Chuck Burton
And I love those differences between cultures that do not impede my freedom as a woman., and that is why I travel.
As a man, however, you are no doubt are treated as fully belonging in public space wherever you go, unlike me.
3
I have seen the Great Replacement theory discussed in other places. A very important part of it seems to be the concern that white women are not bearing enough children, and the blame for that is often attributed to the fact that so many women are working instead of staying home to raise a family. (This, of course, ignores the fact that two incomes are almost a necessity to support a family in today's economy.) In other words, the supposed "existential threat" to the white race is attributed to the empowerment of women. Naturally, this leads to calls for reversing that empowerment in many different ways, even including taking away women's right to vote. The whole theory is downright scary!
29
@Debra Petersen it’s called misogyny! Some men have thought this for years and good luck you little losers because women will not be pushed around again. Get over it or you will find yourselves in a bad place. Guaranteed!
Agreeing with a previous commentator, Sharron, the whole neat division of white, black, etc. is a nineteenth-century construct that has no meaning beyond self-identified groups creating and retaining economic power through facile classifications. How many of us have seen our fore-bearers classified as non-white, viz., most of us Mediterraneans, as well as Jewish peoples, mid-easterners, et al., only to later cross the threshold of acceptable whiteness? Let's face it, like all other species, our survival depends on our rich genetic variations. Let's call this xenophobia for what it is, a fear of change that romanticizes a past that never was so wonderful for any but the wealthiest. Reinforcing the myth of race serves as a convenient screen for the real problems of economic class division.
9
@Michael Grillo
Our concept of race maps onto gene clusters with great accuracy. David reich makes this point in a recent article here in the NYT. "Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
14
@SneedHearn: On the other hand, there are plenty of gene clusters that don't map on to what we call races. Obviously populations have developed in regions for long enough times to evolve regional adaptations: notoriously, skin color relating to sunlight, sickle-cell protecting against malaria... and there are many others. No recent genetic studies are needed to be familiar with lots of these regional differences.
The "social construct" idea relates to the significance of social groups. The purpose and meaning of creating categories of "Black" and "White" isn't about an interest in the genetic history of the human race. Unfortunately global politics had begun to corrupt even the scientists in the days when Europeans were beginning to sketch their categories. Huge amounts of effort were wasted...
@SneedHearn
Except that race is not a real thing, it was invented by so call whites to be superior to others and justify how they treat their 'inferiors'.
There are many different ethnic cultures that do have differences between, probably hundreds across the earth. But they are not different races.
And if we go down that road, then we would have hundreds of classifications of different groups. And who would we consider superior? Would brown hair people be superior? Because that was the whole idea behind classifying people in different races.
The whole theory is based on a fallacy: that there is such a thing as being "white." Race is not a biological fact; it is a construct of 19th century racists. Stop worrying about "white" people disappearing, people! Your genes, whatever they are, will persist even if you do not yourself reproduce, because your genes are much, much older than you are, and you share your genes with millions of other humans (and animals). A little science would help here. Not that anybody pays any attention to science.
39
@shannon, you discard the idea of race as a biological concern...only to mention genes a few sentences later. The notion of decoupling race and biology is a defiant stone throw into the Ocean of Science, on the level of denying climate change. Let me assure you that race is indeed a biological concept, encoded into each one of us at the cellular level (ie DNA). Please let's not deny science for the sake of sociological expediency.
3
@shannon your claim is false. Our concept of race maps onto gene clusters with great accuracy -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
2
so, so true. thank you.
I don't think ideas like this should be dignified even by rebuttals. It just extends the message. White supremacy isn't an agenda with an intellectual or public-policy basis. It's just words to incite unwell people to violence for violence sake.
260
The notion that we can simply ignore white supremacy and other forms of virulent bigotry and they will go away is why these ideologies continue to fester unabated within all corners of the internet. Averting your gaze from the growing problem means that these narratives are allowed to be spread in an uncontested manner. I understand the idea behind what you're saying and I sympathize with the sentiment, but we've already tried inaction and it solves nothing.
41
I disagree- these fallacies must be addressed, particularly because of the media and political figures that the author mentions who seem to be endorsing them. Refuting the replacement theory with facts is important, as well as exposing the motives of its propagators, who do not serve disadvantaged "whites" in any way whatsoever.
29
@Stevenz I disagree. I do agree that the closed minded white supremacists will not be influenced by the facts and evidence presented - extremists will happily ignore facts that don't support their belief system. However, articles like this are important for mainstream consumption - those who are swayed by facts and evidence. It is important that these facts are presented to prevent the extremist fallacies from being accepted in the mainstream.
31
Ok, nice article. I believed every word you said.
The rise of populism across the west is simply an accident.
17
@BillyBob, nice try.
It's actually not an accident that 40 years of neo-conservative economic policies and more broken promises than you can count have eviscerated the middle class, resulting in the rise of populism.
Feel free to blame it on the trends that the writer cites, but just know that won't fix what neo-cons have deliberately broken.
9
@BillyBob
Not an accident but certainly a mistake.
1
Crazy. This is nothing new. For as long as man has inhabited this earth there have been nut-jobs running around and they're not going away. Maybe we can tag them and Baker Act them before they commit their atrocities.
7
When you fly over the country, you can see most of it is empty. This is mostly a question of assimilation. That takes 2-3 generations. It always has. I think it would be faster if we went to a merit based system.
6
@Roy-“When you fly over the country, you can see most of it is empty”... Those “empty” spaces produce the food, energy, and resources that you and I need to survive. Those “empty” spaces preserve the last remnants of intact ecosystems in America. Finally, those “empty” spaces often times have clear restraints (e.g. lack of water abundance) that limit human settlement. Our country is nearing a carrying capacity and it is extremely naive to think we are “empty”.
17
@Roy if you think flyover country is empty, then you don't know what you are looking at. It is farms, protected lands, open spaces. What are you talking about here?
@Roy,
Really? Merit-based system? You did hear about the college admission scandal did you not?
I don't think the white-extinction theory is a conspiracy. Just look at the demographic changes happening across the Western world in the past 50 years that the media and globalist elites have been openly celebrating. Also, notice how it's only white countries that are expected to become more diverse and multicultural? Why aren't the elites encouraging the resettling of Somalian and Syrian refugees to Japan, Israel (a nation of refugees), or Costa Rica?
Ironically it's the exclusive neighborhoods/gated communities where these elites live that have been the most resistant to these changes (the Clintons live in Chappaqua which is 90%+ white). I bet if these communities were experiencing the similar demographic changes the rest of the Western world has been seeing, there would have been an immediate halt to immigration a long time ago.
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@M. Gessbergwitz
Spot on! Japan resists these trends strenuously and they receive no condemnation
1
Facts seem to get in your way. There are far more refugees in countries such as Kenya, Jordan and Pakistan. Another funny fact American wasps in the 1800 did not consider Irish as whites or Eastern Europeans as a group of people who should be allowed in the country. Get over your fear life is too short
@M. Gessbergwitz Just stop talking. Who cares. White people are not better or smarter. Ya, so what if I’m A white Dnr. My white ancestors were crazy drunks. Woo hoo! Move on people. Worry about things that matter— like population control and the planet.
An excellent way to start a fresh discussion of race is clarifying the term "white" as a racial classification.
In the United States, white is meant to designate people of European origin. However, there is no such thing as a "white race," only white-skinned people.
Here's how the Census Bureau treats the term:
"White" refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "White" or reported entries such as German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.
9
It's not bonkers. It's inevitable. Population growth is collapsing across Europe and the US because people (men and women) see no urgency in having children, they have the means to avoid having children and when they do decide to have children in their 30's are usually having one or two. I see it in my own family. In four generations they went from four to six children each, down to two or one or none. That's no way to replenish the population. Then there is the matter of choice. When everyone you have contact with is white if you choose to pair up, you'll select from that pool. Well, now that pool is technicolor and frankly a lot of people find white to be... boring. It's rather sad that what really vexes the white supremacists is the knowledge that in fact their genome is so weak that they can't produce a white child from a mixed shade pairing. We really need to get past this and get on board with the one race we are: the human race.
13
I am Asian of south Asian origin and I see members of my family who are second generation either not having children’s or limiting the number of children’s. Welcome to middle class life. Even happening in India
14
@Dharma I think some of it is economic but then I look at some of my well off children, nieces and nephews who made a firm decision not to have kids because... Children would ruin their lifestyle!
If the white share of the population is not falling fast, it's only because the East Asian birth rate is even lower. People who can plan for the future and defer gratification don't have as many unplanned children and having a lot of unplanned children is a very effective way to procreate in the modern, food-rich world. China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have fertility rates per woman of 1.1 to 1.6, way below replacement. Given that most scientific work is done by people with very long attention spans, it is not a problem to casually dismiss.
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@Amanda
What 'problem' do you think is being 'casually dismissed'? The earth is overpopulated, the environment is befouled, extinctions are on the rise, oceans are overfished. How could increasing the birth rate help in any way?
Get a grip - those who think it's their job to fight fate (or god's will), and the ignorance to believe they can, need a dose of realism and the wisdom to know the difference. I suspect you'd have just as much chance of changing the direction of the wind, by yelling at it on any given day. And who made the New Zealand shooter god? Why him, and not me? Or you?
I suppose that one alternative might be reproducing only with same-skinned people. But if the numbers are correct, if the curve is heading in a different direction, then to maintain your `whiteness' offspring, your next begatting-mate might become your own parent or sibling. And that introduces a whole other aspect of change.
I, for one, don't want to go there.
2
I find it hilarious (and very telling) when white extremists worry about becoming a minority.
A common response is "we shouldn't be minorities in our own land". But this land first and foremost belongs to Native Americans. None of these people seem to be bothered that Native Americans, against their will, were brutally made to be minorities in their own land. There's no problem with white immigration, I guess.
Funnily enough, the same white people who claim we live in a racism-free society are the ones fearful of becoming a minority. Why, are minorities in America treated badly, or something?
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@Meg tells us that "But this land first and foremost belongs to Native Americans."
Precisely.
What happened to the Native Americans as a result of immigration?
are they a majority or a very small minority in their own country?
1
@Meg
Thank you, great comment.
@Meg,
I could recommend this comment a million times.
Hard to believe an entire column was needed to prove that 'the white - extinction conspiracy theory is bonkers'. Scientific rigour is not necessary. All one has to do is see and hear the people espousing it. Consider the source.
7
The low birthrate among white women was never something that was planned. It just happened, much to the surprise of demographers who made their predictions 30 years ago. People used to think that because the Catholic church was against birth control, Catholics would have huge families. Wrong again. Italy and Spain have very low birth rates. Most demographic predictions have been wrong.
14
@George
Agreed. My favorite serious, and seriously wrong, prediction was something I heard back in the early days of birth control pills. Someone posited that soon, thanks to the newly arrived contraception controlled by women, only women who loved having children would be reproducing and having large families. Thereby giving birth to girls who would inherit the love of having children from their prolific mothers and who would then upon maturity have large families of their own. Leading to a population boom wherein women who didn’t want children would be replaced within a generation or two by women who had a biological propensity to birth lots of them...leading to the birth control pill being no longer desired or necessary.
It was a man speaking, of course.
—a contented mother of two
11
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "existential decline." Back in the 1960s, somebody pointed out that Jackie Robinson and Henry Aaron didn't mean black equality in baseball. That wouldn't come until it was as normal to see a black .240 hitter as a white one. It is incontrovertible that the mediocre white man is not in the position he occupied 50 or 75 years ago because he now has to compete on a much more level footing not only with exceptional nonwhites and women who he grudgingly admits are his clear superior but with ordinary nonwhites and women here and worldwide who are his equal in what they can do. He can no longer assume that he is the standard of normality at home and the default choice for any job he wants. He can no longer assume that the ordinary American woman considers marriage to him as fulfilling or even necessary. Nor can pride himself any longer that "wogs begin at Calais" abroad. The competition is a lot broader and tougher than it was for granddad. Too bad.
The demographic panic about feminism has been going on since Edwardian times, ~100+ years ago, when British aristocrats and their WASP American counterparts began to complain that the best people would be overwhelmed by the rabble who breed like rabbits because the women of the elite were shirking their reproductive duty and no longer having 6 or 8 kids like their Victorian grandmothers.
5
@JackCerf
"...the mediocre white man is not in the position he occupied 50 or 75 years ago because he now has to compete on a much more level footing, not only with exceptional nonwhites and women..."
So there is no problem with discrimination anymore, right? No need for Affirmative Action because whites are no longer competitive with "exceptional nonwhites and women"? I think you just made an argument for the end of preferential treatment for "minorities."
@Scott Read what I wrote. I was careful to say "on a much more level footing," not "on a level footing." You tell me if we have yet arrived at the age of the universal .240 hitter. I don't think we're there yet.
We are all victims of identity politics. As we know, "CIS White Males" are automatically disqualified from making any statement other than self-condemnation, so is it any wonder why this group would now feel threatened, as non-white groups have previously claimed?
45
Did this really need to be written about/published in the New York Times...? Try, idk, a conservative media outlet who's content consumers might actually fear a concerted effort toward white extinction?
1
They do, along with everyone else, with climate change.
3
I don't know about extinction, but one of the commentators noted that there are 1 billions whites in the world. The population of the world is 7.75 billion. We had better start being extra, super nice. Really, really nice. Pleasant and unassuming. Try to fit in. Etc.
7
Thank you for tackling this head on and not pretending the manifesto would not be googled up by 10 million people.
3
Maybe white simply fear that the pain and suffering they've inflicted upon indigenous and minority populations will be visited upon them. We simply want equality, pray we don't decide we want vengeance.
1
@Destro If this is the line of reasoning of "minorities", then maybe whites should be way more worried than they are.
Also, Magna Carta. Enlightenment. Bill of Rights. US Constitution. Renaissance. Flight. Space exploration. Modern Science. Etc. Etc.
You are welcome.
That is PRECISELY the kind of statement that drives seemingly reasonable white voters to Trump. Why would anyone try to empower a group or groups of people they think will seek vengeance against them? You’d have to be a fool or a masochist.
I don't care if white people are absorbed into another ethnicity/race. Populations have always changed along with their cultures. I hope that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, but my faith in that has been shaken lately by the behavior of white people (mostly men).
I am concerned about human extinction from a wildly fluctuating climate and the ramifications for an overpopulated planet.
14
Nothing in your article actually refutes or disproves the Great Replacement. If anything, most of what you wrote affirms it. Let's unpack this:
1.Not certain whites will be a minority. Really? Political rhetoric and planning constantly timelines when whites will be a minority. You're maybe "Politifact" level truthful in your statement that yes, it isn't CERTAIN, but the current trend certainly points that way.
2.Whites are, in fact, experiencing disproportionate levels of despair as measured by addiction and suicide rates. The paper has written how many articles on the opioid epidemic, JD Vance Hillbilly (classicist and racist term, btw) observations, etc. You even acknowledge that and then try to hand wave it away. Again, doesn't disprove the assertions of the Great Replacement.
3.Whites are, in fact, losing political power. You do some verbal sleight of hand by categorizing their current level as disproportionate, but the net effect is yes, they are losing power. You dismiss it by framing it like some sort of equitable justice that it's happening, but it is happening. Again, that latter point is all the Great Replacement movement is stating.
Everything you wrote pretty much establishes the Great Replacement as grounded in fact, and the only counters you present are "yeah, well, it's factual but the changes are justified and whites will still hold some power, so nothing to see here folks, move on". Keep trying to keep me and my peeps out of Stuy and Harvard!
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@Sara Yin
1) No, read demography links in the piece, which point to actual studies from experts on this subject. The projections based on when whites will become a minority have shifted, and are shifting, both higher and lower, based mostly on different definitions of who counts as white.
2) Not sure what you mean by "disproportionate" levels of despair. Suicide/overdoses are up. But on a variety of other health and social stats, whites as a group are doing better than a lot of others in the US. A "replacement" or "decline" would imply there are fewer or falling numbers. That is not true for whites as a group.
3) Yes, they are losing political power: In Congress from 100 percent of the power to about 80 percent of the power. That should be tolerable to anyone but racists.
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@Sara Yin
And who exactly is "planning" this? You do realize that repeating the conspiracy theory does not an argument make.
6
What does have to do with keeping you and your peeps out of Harvard? What’s happening on the middle of the country described by JD Vance has to do with deindustrialization. And finally those who you seem to sympathize with the white indentarians will prefer that we return to the Asian exclusion act.
4
This paper has been celebrating the coming demographic shift for years now. It's working, America is starting to look like the rest of the world. Is it everything you dreamed of?
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@Brian
Better than it was when we didn't tolerate minorities and did the best the country could to make them 2nd class citizens.
@Briane Why is this a problem? We “replaced” native Americans, brutally...it was their land first, so we have nothing to be proud about.
TLDR: As Chris Rock once said, "White man, you gonna be alright!"
3
I am a white person and I could care less about whether whites become a minority in the future. I think these horrible groups proliferate for several reasons: they are looking to make money off gullible individuals (example: alex jones); they are looking for someone to blame/scapegoat for their loser lives; they lack self confidence and loath themselves and have to denigrate someone to make themselves feel superior; they have treated non-whites horribly and are fearful of the repercussions if they do not maintain majority status.
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@Julie
you forgot the last category: they are highly successful and realize that their privileged lifestyle is due to the accomplishments of their ancestors and are greatly concerned about the future of their civilization that's the envy of the rest of the world.
It is a lie, of course--not to mention a lie firmly in the territory of mental illness. So why do you feel the need to respond to it? The 12 or so white supremacists who read the NY Times are probably not up for persuasion m8.
1
@Josh Lyman Explained in the piece: So that when people google the manifesto they aren't presented with the lie. Check google now, seems to be working.
It might be a lie, but I fear for the political damage it will do.
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@Rob Crawford
"REPLACEMENT MIGRATION" on the UN's OWN WEBSITE :
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/ageing/replacement-migration.asp
See UN resolution 96 Article 2 for the UN's own definition of genocide.
Draw your own conclusions
1
I am increasingly hopeful that the vast majority of the young people of the world will commingle and make lots of beautiful babies of every shade and hue. This will put the entire problem of White Racial Fear to rest. We’ve lived with it long enough.
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@Richard Frank
I agree, if we "get after it", within a few generations we could have one common gene pool, problem solved. Factually, we have the same DNA in the mitochondria (energy factories) in every single cell in our body of every person on planet, thanks to Mitochondrial Eve.
19
@Richard Frank
Miscegenation is one of the fears of the believers of "The Great Replacement". They see that the increased number of multi-ethnicity persons is one of the trends that will result in white replacement.
3
@Richard Frank. Do you think it would put racism, and accusations of same, to rest as well? That would be a great relief.
5
As opposed to asking whether "white extinction" is happening, maybe we should ask whether it even matters?
From personal experience (I'm a white male), my cousin married a Japanese woman and has three beautiful daughters (all mixed). My son has almost every color of the rainbow on his hockey team (and there doesn't appear to be any correlation between hockey skills and skin color). While my kids are white, my future grand-kids may not be.
So, let the "pure" whites go extinct. The replacement will be just as good (if not better).
555
@JP you said it for me. Thanks!
41
@JP There never was a "pure" race of humans in the first place. We've been blending since the beginning of the species, and then we spread out and obtained some slight genetic differences. But all the while, tribes and nations have been interacting, warring, and making "mixed" babies. I think that we have only about a hundred thousand problems I'd rather worry about than the complexion spectrum that H Sapiens will have a couple centuries from now.
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@Dan D
And yet, take a plane and land in different parts of the world, and everywhere you land the appearance of the populations there will be quite distinctive...
20
It really is simple; one race, one planet.
We need to bury the antiquated notion of different human races based on skin colour. We humans are just one race among many other animal races. We have many different cultures, but that doesn't change that we are all from the same human race.
The first five mass extinction of life events on this planet were caused by meteors, the sixth is likely to be manmade if we can't get over our difference and live together with a common humanity goal of improving the lives of all living things on this planet (not just human lives).
21
Social & Cognitive psychology provides fairly clear evidence of the source of stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination - society, for the most part, chooses not to listen since it conflicts with various political agendas (as well as established sectors of the economy). We know how to fix this world there simply is not the political or economic motivations. We want to eat lots of cake plus not exercise and lose weight - can we please come up with a magic pill for that? That is the mentality in which we approach these problems and that is why we will be unsuccessful in solving them.
Americans (and everyone else) taking in refugees yet export war, predatory economics, and only embrace non-disruptive climate change initiatives - nonsense. We can begin having real conversations about solutions when people accept basic reality and not the fantasyland that 90+% live in.
5
After the iron curtain disappeared, I remember grumblings in western Europe about 'cheap Polish and Hungarian immigrant laborers' lowering wages for native born residents.
Kind of curious then that a refugee crisis from the middle east is what is driving the EU and European politics in general over the cliff.
Let me repeat: these people aren't coming for your jobs, they're literally running for their lives to the safest place they can find.
7
@Mike
Yes you are so right and the solution is to end US interventions in Civil Wars like in Somalia, Libya etc which causes the massive flight of war refugees to mainly the EU countries. Without US involvement bet these wars would conclude quickly with a winner. How did the US destroy ISIS? by destroying every town/city where they were in control and now US doesn't want to rebuild what it destroyed. Syria/ISIS/Libya etc were no threat to the US and we should have stayed out. The EU countries have noble policies toward refugees but cannot absorb millions of them causing backlash from heavily taxed citizens.
11
@Mike
"the safest place they can find" that isn't Turkey or any country outside the Eurozone.
"The safest country I could find was Sweden, a thousand miles away!" I guess that's true in a sense. Just not a geographic sense. But then, this is the Age of Amazon. Why doesn't like to shop around?
The US culture of constitutionally given individual freedom is clearly the light of the world and has long assimilated many races and ethnicities. It doesn’t matter your race or ethnicity to believe maximizing human freedom by a set of laws is the best. The extinction of the culture of constitution and the freedom it gives is what everyone should be worried about when discussing immigration, not the race of the immigrants. Yet Democrats rejected merit immigration, even if mostly from the third world. Do Democrats not like the Constitution and bringing people here likely to support the freedoms limited constitutional government gives?
10
@Thomas Are you suggesting some kind of belief test for entry into the US? Otherwise how would you know that "merit immigration" would lead to people "most likely" to support American ideals -- ideals about which there's little consensus, ideals that native-born Americans have huge disagreements about all the time?
7
@fmanjoo
Hmmm.... Thomas suggested merit-based immigration (that they have in Australia, Canada) as opposed to chain migration and illegal border trespassing. He also points out that Democrats seem to be surprisingly tolerant of undocumented immigration where the state loses control and say over who gets in and who does not. To say that there is no consensus on "merit" is to try selling a red herring.
6
Yes, we better have some sense about the belief systems of people seeking to immigrate here. If you sincerely “know” that God commands you to kill gay people or blasphemous people or that honor killing is your duty if a situation calls for it than the answer is no.
1
That does put my mind at ease. Thanks.
Here's a test for the theory: for the next ten years the United States (and my country Canada) will only allow Ukrainians and white South African farmers as immigrants, who are facing oppression in their countries either politically or by conflict. We know what the response would be.
My country was 95% white within my lifetime, now is about 70% white, a number projected to reach 50% by 2036 or thereabouts. Adding 1% to our population every year will do it that quickly. Something about diversity pushed this political solution for which the population was never consulted. Because French, English, Scottish, Irish, Italian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian etc isn't the right kind of diversity. Why isn't that enough diversity? Hmmm
I'm sure it's all completely innocent; thanks for the reminder how wrong I am as a white man, to live in a white country where white people hold political and economic power! That would be racist.
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@Rob. Watch your food, music, arts and culture become richer, deeper and more interesting. Old Canada was quite boring and dull. Even the hockey will improve, eh?
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@Rob I don't understand your point. First of all, this country was once 100% not-white. That it became (according to you, I'd need to check your stats) 95% white is a travesty and a result of genocide (which is, btw, why Canada cannot sign the Geneva convention on what constitutes a genocidal nation, because it would include us.)
Sure, "white" has a lot of diversity, but why are you so insistent that that is "enough"? There was a time when Ukrainian, Polish and Italian immigrants were seen as a terrible threat to the English-French culture of Canada. But look! All was fine, Canada and Canadian culture persists, as it does today in our multicultural cities with people who fully endorse Canadian values who happen to have a slightly different skin pigmentation.
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@Rob
I'm guessing First Nation people didn't count in your calculation of what constitutes "your country"?
You complain about the "population" never being consulted regarding immigration?
Well, who consulted with the First Nation peoples or the WW2-era Japanese -Canadians before they were forcibly removed?
Who consulted with the First Nations people before the Indian residential school system was implemented?
What do you say to the thousands of innocent children killed or mentally scarred by their experiences in those camps?
Also, can you point to any evidence that Canada has been harmed by immigration from non-European countries?
Lower GDP? Lower wages? Increased disease rates?Anything?
4