There was actually pretty big ethnic tensions in the 90s between the Asians and Mexicans when I went to school there. There were lots of Asian/Mexican street gangs then. When I was a teen, I thought it would be a semi-permanent conflict, but when I go back; it's pretty much disappeared. The ones who still hold the resentments are people from my generation, but the younger cohorts do not feel the same way.
You see this also among Asians: Koreans hated almost all other Asian groups when I was growing up. The younger ones now don't mind being pan-Asian and don't feel the hatred towards other Asians their parents felt (Koreans have this disposition because they have a made up history constructed by nationalists in Korea). Parents can't pass it on, especially in America.
Extremely important article--fantastic work. This is something everyone on the Right needs to internalize.
In 2013-2015 a bunch of journos misread the 2012 exit polls while massively underestimating Castizo assimilation into White society. The subsequent gloating about Whites becoming a minority in Buzzfeed articles and talk shows made a lot of guys like me radicalize and become White Nationalists for a few years. But if we understood what was actually happening this never would have occurred, and the nation would have had a much healthier discourse during the 2010s. So many young guys had their lives ruined at Charlottesville for no reason.
Ultimately White America has a weird, toxic, almost quasi-religious relationship with black people where we constantly cycle between worshipping and imitating them, ignoring or disdaining them, and trying to make them like us.
I think the most healthy path forward would be a Reparations plan proposed by a GOP leader who codes as pro-White, like Vance or Hawley, and can sell it in a "Nixon Goes to China" way. This plan would require Black leaders like Sharpton, Obama, Jay-Z, Kanye, Oprah et al to sign a Declaration of Forgiveness that formally absolves all White people of any guilt over slavery and accepts that Affirmative Action is over.
This could be accompanied by a large monument and a National Day of Racial Healing where White and Black families are encouraged to have barbecues together or something. Maybe pour federal funding into an initiative that encourages White and Black Southerners to explore their shared heritage and build a sense of ethnic kinship.
I think White conservatives would overwhelmingly support this if it meant permanently abolishing the Race Card in all aspects of life (this kind of sentiment is basically why Obama won Indiana and North Carolina in 2008). You could also use the massive short-term wealth transfer to Blacks as cover to dismantle a lot of the welfare state long term.
New Mexico has the fourth highest murder rate in the country, despite having a very tiny black population. We've had multiple statue tear downs in recent years, small scale rioting in 2020 (just because our state's so small), this fall someone was shot at a statue protest, and Native American issues are always on the top of the political agenda. New Mexico is one of the worst functioning states in the country. We routinely rank at deep South levels of poverty, bad educational outcomes, and have the added bonus of CA level political dysfunction. Why do you keep coming back to New Mexico as a boon to your arguments?
As always, you read the top entry of a Wikipedia page or NYT article and act like you know what you're talking about.
Interesting essay, mostly true in my experience living in the USA as a middle-class immigrant.
I see a lot of anti-black social sentiment around me but I suppose that’s the rational result of black lefty activists dominating social discourse on what ails America.
I’d love to see Richard and others write more on “Blacks vs Everyone Else” as it’s an under explored topic.
I believe that Ron Unz argues along similar lines. He loves the new Asian-Hispanic ascendancy in California, and is also exasperated with the white-nationalist right. Steve Sailer sometimes argues that the most salient division of humanity is “black vs. nonblack.”
Normal Asian & Hispanic people may be perfectly happy to live in the US, but there are also a nontrivial number of Sarah Jeongs who see that white-bashing is rewarded with high status. https://twitter.com/ArminNavabi/status/1025015489729196032
White libs may not *cause* black nationalism, but they certainly do all they can to further its success. White libs are why white-nationalism is a complete nonstarter. How are you supposed to deal with 50% of your putative ‘white nation’ loving Ibram Kandi and hating Stonewall Jackson? Counterfactually, if “Albion’s seed” had come from Balkan/Slavic/Mediterranean whites instead of Northern Euro Protestant whites, there’s no way that American whites would have greased the skids for Black nationalism to they extent that they have in fact done.
To what extent are Black African immigrants seduced by the siren song of Black Nationalism? Quite a number of them seem to be successful, conservative business-oriented Christians who aren’t big fans of the US “ghetto culture” they encounter. I mean, by definition, such immigrants have had first-hand experience with living under Black Nationalism, which for some reason they were willing to abandon in order to be oppressed by American White Supremacy an ocean away. In fact, Gallup suggests that 30 percent of Black Africans living under Black Nationalism would prefer to voluntarily place themselves under the bootheel of Western White Supremacy, for some strange reason https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx
I've said for a while that "diversity" is mostly a euphemism for black people.
This article seems largely correct. Unfortunately, what this means is that, if we are ever to leave ethno-nationalism behind and progress well and truly towards a real "post-racial" society, we are going to have to leave blacks behind as well. Blacks have only ever engaged in democratic politics through the lens of racial tribalism, and there is no evidence to suggest that they are capable of doing otherwise. At some point, if we are to do away with racial conflict, the rest of us will have to become apathetic to the tribal concerns of blacks.
We can’t become honest about race for the simple reason that if we were to do so, blacks would begin to vote for their own interests rather than as the interestless D-voting bloc they’ve been since 1928. If they did, the D party would evaporate. D leadership will always keep lighting the race fire because they know this.
Interestingly enough, when in other countries we speak about "importing racial categories from the US", we use the categories that fit this narrative you just presented.
The last Argentinean census had those exact three questions: check if Native, check if African, check if Else. I think this reflects that Argentinean progressives have accurately evaluated that in order to be perceived by the US as having "a legitimate and conscious racial politics", they only really care about us contending with Native and Black issues (despite our history not necessarily aligning with US experiences, of course). There isn't a domestic effort or a foreign demand to compartimentalize, say, Asians in the same way.
This very same process is underway in Australia with the rise of Indigenous nationalism, which was born in the 60s (copying the US as always), lost steam in the early 2000s, and now since the great awokening is arguably the most powerful force in Australian political life, despite Indigenous people being ~3% of the population (and many of those being racially + culturally + economically assimilated into mainstream society). Australia is stuck in this hopeless cycle of giving enormous and ever growing political, legal, economic and symbolic concessions to 'Indigenous issues', while outcomes for the Indigenous underclass continue to stagnate if not actively deteriorate. When these concessions naturally fail to 'Close the Gap' (because they don't remotely address the actual causes of Indigenous disadvantage), activists simply double down and demand that the state give more concessions, which of course doesn't achieve anything except empower a minority of Indigenous elites and give the group more symbolic status. (This was what the failed Voice to Parliament was)
Also naturally, the conservative Liberal party (confusing for Americans I know) has been completely unable to resist the rise of Indigenous nationalism, so that it is now completely taboo across the political spectrum to meaningfully oppose it. It is difficult to see this changing anytime soon.
-country of origin (select country if less than third generation no mixed and still assimilating)
The reality is we are a mulatto nation (that’s what assimilation is), it’s embarrassing for people who have been here for 5 generations to call themselves have German half Italian, they’re American ethnically as they don’t speak the language or share the culture and non of those countries would claim them. The best way to look at it is there are genetics, ethnicity and nationality. If it was phrased this way we could see which groups make the best immigrants and still have people join the ethnic core as naturally happens in three generations.
One of my theories is that the reason why the left and the pro black interests movement has gone so gung ho on afrocentrism is due to the fact that the 1960’s civil rights era paradigm on race is coming to an end.
For one, Hispanics, Asians, and other groups combined outnumber blacks now, and their interests clash with what Tariq Nasheed would call FBA interests. Thus while Democrats (despite not anywhere near as much as they used to) still win the latter demographics, they have a far deeper connection and vice versa with the black community. And black interest groups correctly view the newer populations as having interests different to theirs.
All types of Asians oppose affirmative action and while it hurts whites greatly as well (the demographic it was historically designed to) Asian activism was pretty central to eliminating it. Hispanics are not a centralized group at all but none of them seem to care much for blacks or vice versa, and their interests collide frequently. I think the woke/pro black wing of the Democrats realize this and went full in on black interests, even in states like CA with very few blacks.
Another and arguably a more explicit and important reason is due to the days of the civil rights regime slowly coming to an end. Part of it is due to the above factors I mentioned but also, said CR regime is getting weakened legally and thus becoming less popular. I think that Obama’s regime during his second term may have predicted this, which is why they went all in on black nationalism, although Obama has always been a very weird and lefty figure who has always held a chip on his shoulder.
Regardless I agree with this article as a whole, and while I don’t personally believe increased immigration will further combat the CR/Black nationalist regime, I would recommend more conservative lawfare as well as the GOP building a type of coalition against not only psuedo black nationalism but this idiocy as a whole. It’s more sustainable than the “multiracial working class” long term after Trump is out of the picture.
Along these lines, it seems that “cultural appropriation” is something blacks care about but other groups seem not to and in fact enjoy seeing white Americans partake in their culture.
See videos here contrasting reactions of college students with actual Mexicans and Chinese whose cultures are being “appropriated”:
Reminds me about why black-aligned activists popularized “people of color.” That term suggests some commonality among sundry non-whites. It’s shorthand for a political coalition. Like, originally, when someone identified as a “person of color,” they aligned with black nationalists despite not being black or even having anti-black views. To me, “BIPoC” and “white-adjacent” seems like strategic error. But some people can’t resist ethno-narcissism or purity-signaling, I guess. Interesting, “default American” is like “people of color” but in reverse, aligning non-blacks with whites.
Also, about Latins and Asians, I was thinking about Fujimori (also Bukele). Seems like Asianness is not as big of deal in Latin America as it is in North America? Might have even been a plus for Fujimori, with the 80s being Japan’s golden age.
America is not alone in the world. From the experience of other countries, it is clear that there are two other identities that will greatly complicate assimilation, even if they are marginal in America: Islam and Native American.
The overall point - that the real Balkanization, and the one with the most real-world ramifications, is Black vs. everyone else - is correct. But this feels like a hand-wave to me:
"Some kinds of racialized politics exist among Chinese Americans, Jews, Hispanics, etc. But everything in life is a matter of degrees. If you live in a black area, racial concerns basically dominate local politics. Even if you live in a not-so-black place like California, you’ll run into quite a bit of it! But you can spend your life in a city that is majority Asian and Hispanic, send your kids to public school, and follow the local news, and race will be a complete non-issue."
It's really not a non-issue. It's just baked in. It's a given that areas with large numbers of Indians will begin to vote for Indian interests. In some suburbs in my metro, school boards are increasingly East Asian and the schools are taking an East Asian style. (To be clear, I regard this as mostly a good thing, despite not being East Asian myself.) And one of the reasons that Hispanic enclaves remain Hispanic is that they run them as sundown towns. (Again, a perfectly rational thing to do.) These things ultimately do matter to the social fabric at a local level; and that's before we get into state and federal politics, where every group except Whites has all kinds of caucuses, grants, ethnic lobbyist organizations etc.
You have argued that this kind of mosaic (as opposed to melting pot) ultimately serves the body politic well because mutual mistrust will lead to less socialism. I disagree with this not just morally but because it's plainly not really happening. But at the local level the only way to say race is a non-issue is to ignore the manifold ways in which it's actually the biggest issue, because non-white demographics tend to stick together (as well they should.)
The problem with the intractability of Black Nationalism today is that it has no end state. BN used to have goals like "pay us for the work we did during slavery so we can start again in Africa," but now it seems centered entirely on feeling approved of by the overarching national culture. The solution to this is straightforward — no one is reflected in national culture, it should be a legalistic nullity. But no one wants to make this argument, and I can't tell if it's because they themselves want hegemony or because we use it as a foreign policy weapon.
I grew up in the area that you now live in.
There was actually pretty big ethnic tensions in the 90s between the Asians and Mexicans when I went to school there. There were lots of Asian/Mexican street gangs then. When I was a teen, I thought it would be a semi-permanent conflict, but when I go back; it's pretty much disappeared. The ones who still hold the resentments are people from my generation, but the younger cohorts do not feel the same way.
You see this also among Asians: Koreans hated almost all other Asian groups when I was growing up. The younger ones now don't mind being pan-Asian and don't feel the hatred towards other Asians their parents felt (Koreans have this disposition because they have a made up history constructed by nationalists in Korea). Parents can't pass it on, especially in America.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-10-ga-1831-story.html
Extremely important article--fantastic work. This is something everyone on the Right needs to internalize.
In 2013-2015 a bunch of journos misread the 2012 exit polls while massively underestimating Castizo assimilation into White society. The subsequent gloating about Whites becoming a minority in Buzzfeed articles and talk shows made a lot of guys like me radicalize and become White Nationalists for a few years. But if we understood what was actually happening this never would have occurred, and the nation would have had a much healthier discourse during the 2010s. So many young guys had their lives ruined at Charlottesville for no reason.
Ultimately White America has a weird, toxic, almost quasi-religious relationship with black people where we constantly cycle between worshipping and imitating them, ignoring or disdaining them, and trying to make them like us.
I think the most healthy path forward would be a Reparations plan proposed by a GOP leader who codes as pro-White, like Vance or Hawley, and can sell it in a "Nixon Goes to China" way. This plan would require Black leaders like Sharpton, Obama, Jay-Z, Kanye, Oprah et al to sign a Declaration of Forgiveness that formally absolves all White people of any guilt over slavery and accepts that Affirmative Action is over.
This could be accompanied by a large monument and a National Day of Racial Healing where White and Black families are encouraged to have barbecues together or something. Maybe pour federal funding into an initiative that encourages White and Black Southerners to explore their shared heritage and build a sense of ethnic kinship.
I think White conservatives would overwhelmingly support this if it meant permanently abolishing the Race Card in all aspects of life (this kind of sentiment is basically why Obama won Indiana and North Carolina in 2008). You could also use the massive short-term wealth transfer to Blacks as cover to dismantle a lot of the welfare state long term.
Seems to me like this would be great politics.
New Mexico has the fourth highest murder rate in the country, despite having a very tiny black population. We've had multiple statue tear downs in recent years, small scale rioting in 2020 (just because our state's so small), this fall someone was shot at a statue protest, and Native American issues are always on the top of the political agenda. New Mexico is one of the worst functioning states in the country. We routinely rank at deep South levels of poverty, bad educational outcomes, and have the added bonus of CA level political dysfunction. Why do you keep coming back to New Mexico as a boon to your arguments?
As always, you read the top entry of a Wikipedia page or NYT article and act like you know what you're talking about.
Interesting essay, mostly true in my experience living in the USA as a middle-class immigrant.
I see a lot of anti-black social sentiment around me but I suppose that’s the rational result of black lefty activists dominating social discourse on what ails America.
I’d love to see Richard and others write more on “Blacks vs Everyone Else” as it’s an under explored topic.
I believe that Ron Unz argues along similar lines. He loves the new Asian-Hispanic ascendancy in California, and is also exasperated with the white-nationalist right. Steve Sailer sometimes argues that the most salient division of humanity is “black vs. nonblack.”
Normal Asian & Hispanic people may be perfectly happy to live in the US, but there are also a nontrivial number of Sarah Jeongs who see that white-bashing is rewarded with high status. https://twitter.com/ArminNavabi/status/1025015489729196032
White libs may not *cause* black nationalism, but they certainly do all they can to further its success. White libs are why white-nationalism is a complete nonstarter. How are you supposed to deal with 50% of your putative ‘white nation’ loving Ibram Kandi and hating Stonewall Jackson? Counterfactually, if “Albion’s seed” had come from Balkan/Slavic/Mediterranean whites instead of Northern Euro Protestant whites, there’s no way that American whites would have greased the skids for Black nationalism to they extent that they have in fact done.
To what extent are Black African immigrants seduced by the siren song of Black Nationalism? Quite a number of them seem to be successful, conservative business-oriented Christians who aren’t big fans of the US “ghetto culture” they encounter. I mean, by definition, such immigrants have had first-hand experience with living under Black Nationalism, which for some reason they were willing to abandon in order to be oppressed by American White Supremacy an ocean away. In fact, Gallup suggests that 30 percent of Black Africans living under Black Nationalism would prefer to voluntarily place themselves under the bootheel of Western White Supremacy, for some strange reason https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx
I've said for a while that "diversity" is mostly a euphemism for black people.
This article seems largely correct. Unfortunately, what this means is that, if we are ever to leave ethno-nationalism behind and progress well and truly towards a real "post-racial" society, we are going to have to leave blacks behind as well. Blacks have only ever engaged in democratic politics through the lens of racial tribalism, and there is no evidence to suggest that they are capable of doing otherwise. At some point, if we are to do away with racial conflict, the rest of us will have to become apathetic to the tribal concerns of blacks.
We can’t become honest about race for the simple reason that if we were to do so, blacks would begin to vote for their own interests rather than as the interestless D-voting bloc they’ve been since 1928. If they did, the D party would evaporate. D leadership will always keep lighting the race fire because they know this.
Interestingly enough, when in other countries we speak about "importing racial categories from the US", we use the categories that fit this narrative you just presented.
The last Argentinean census had those exact three questions: check if Native, check if African, check if Else. I think this reflects that Argentinean progressives have accurately evaluated that in order to be perceived by the US as having "a legitimate and conscious racial politics", they only really care about us contending with Native and Black issues (despite our history not necessarily aligning with US experiences, of course). There isn't a domestic effort or a foreign demand to compartimentalize, say, Asians in the same way.
This very same process is underway in Australia with the rise of Indigenous nationalism, which was born in the 60s (copying the US as always), lost steam in the early 2000s, and now since the great awokening is arguably the most powerful force in Australian political life, despite Indigenous people being ~3% of the population (and many of those being racially + culturally + economically assimilated into mainstream society). Australia is stuck in this hopeless cycle of giving enormous and ever growing political, legal, economic and symbolic concessions to 'Indigenous issues', while outcomes for the Indigenous underclass continue to stagnate if not actively deteriorate. When these concessions naturally fail to 'Close the Gap' (because they don't remotely address the actual causes of Indigenous disadvantage), activists simply double down and demand that the state give more concessions, which of course doesn't achieve anything except empower a minority of Indigenous elites and give the group more symbolic status. (This was what the failed Voice to Parliament was)
Also naturally, the conservative Liberal party (confusing for Americans I know) has been completely unable to resist the rise of Indigenous nationalism, so that it is now completely taboo across the political spectrum to meaningfully oppose it. It is difficult to see this changing anytime soon.
Richard
The census should be:
What’s your ethnicity:
-American (third gen or later/ on American parent
-American Black (50% or more descendant of slave)
-country of origin (select country if less than third generation no mixed and still assimilating)
The reality is we are a mulatto nation (that’s what assimilation is), it’s embarrassing for people who have been here for 5 generations to call themselves have German half Italian, they’re American ethnically as they don’t speak the language or share the culture and non of those countries would claim them. The best way to look at it is there are genetics, ethnicity and nationality. If it was phrased this way we could see which groups make the best immigrants and still have people join the ethnic core as naturally happens in three generations.
One of my theories is that the reason why the left and the pro black interests movement has gone so gung ho on afrocentrism is due to the fact that the 1960’s civil rights era paradigm on race is coming to an end.
For one, Hispanics, Asians, and other groups combined outnumber blacks now, and their interests clash with what Tariq Nasheed would call FBA interests. Thus while Democrats (despite not anywhere near as much as they used to) still win the latter demographics, they have a far deeper connection and vice versa with the black community. And black interest groups correctly view the newer populations as having interests different to theirs.
All types of Asians oppose affirmative action and while it hurts whites greatly as well (the demographic it was historically designed to) Asian activism was pretty central to eliminating it. Hispanics are not a centralized group at all but none of them seem to care much for blacks or vice versa, and their interests collide frequently. I think the woke/pro black wing of the Democrats realize this and went full in on black interests, even in states like CA with very few blacks.
Another and arguably a more explicit and important reason is due to the days of the civil rights regime slowly coming to an end. Part of it is due to the above factors I mentioned but also, said CR regime is getting weakened legally and thus becoming less popular. I think that Obama’s regime during his second term may have predicted this, which is why they went all in on black nationalism, although Obama has always been a very weird and lefty figure who has always held a chip on his shoulder.
Regardless I agree with this article as a whole, and while I don’t personally believe increased immigration will further combat the CR/Black nationalist regime, I would recommend more conservative lawfare as well as the GOP building a type of coalition against not only psuedo black nationalism but this idiocy as a whole. It’s more sustainable than the “multiracial working class” long term after Trump is out of the picture.
Along these lines, it seems that “cultural appropriation” is something blacks care about but other groups seem not to and in fact enjoy seeing white Americans partake in their culture.
See videos here contrasting reactions of college students with actual Mexicans and Chinese whose cultures are being “appropriated”:
https://youtu.be/IT2UH74ksJ4?si=be 6gan-RV3-V3aXJ2D
https://youtu.be/GNXm7juuM-8?si=NPpA2DxP_wpdRF21
Reminds me about why black-aligned activists popularized “people of color.” That term suggests some commonality among sundry non-whites. It’s shorthand for a political coalition. Like, originally, when someone identified as a “person of color,” they aligned with black nationalists despite not being black or even having anti-black views. To me, “BIPoC” and “white-adjacent” seems like strategic error. But some people can’t resist ethno-narcissism or purity-signaling, I guess. Interesting, “default American” is like “people of color” but in reverse, aligning non-blacks with whites.
Also, about Latins and Asians, I was thinking about Fujimori (also Bukele). Seems like Asianness is not as big of deal in Latin America as it is in North America? Might have even been a plus for Fujimori, with the 80s being Japan’s golden age.
America is not alone in the world. From the experience of other countries, it is clear that there are two other identities that will greatly complicate assimilation, even if they are marginal in America: Islam and Native American.
The overall point - that the real Balkanization, and the one with the most real-world ramifications, is Black vs. everyone else - is correct. But this feels like a hand-wave to me:
"Some kinds of racialized politics exist among Chinese Americans, Jews, Hispanics, etc. But everything in life is a matter of degrees. If you live in a black area, racial concerns basically dominate local politics. Even if you live in a not-so-black place like California, you’ll run into quite a bit of it! But you can spend your life in a city that is majority Asian and Hispanic, send your kids to public school, and follow the local news, and race will be a complete non-issue."
It's really not a non-issue. It's just baked in. It's a given that areas with large numbers of Indians will begin to vote for Indian interests. In some suburbs in my metro, school boards are increasingly East Asian and the schools are taking an East Asian style. (To be clear, I regard this as mostly a good thing, despite not being East Asian myself.) And one of the reasons that Hispanic enclaves remain Hispanic is that they run them as sundown towns. (Again, a perfectly rational thing to do.) These things ultimately do matter to the social fabric at a local level; and that's before we get into state and federal politics, where every group except Whites has all kinds of caucuses, grants, ethnic lobbyist organizations etc.
You have argued that this kind of mosaic (as opposed to melting pot) ultimately serves the body politic well because mutual mistrust will lead to less socialism. I disagree with this not just morally but because it's plainly not really happening. But at the local level the only way to say race is a non-issue is to ignore the manifold ways in which it's actually the biggest issue, because non-white demographics tend to stick together (as well they should.)
The problem with the intractability of Black Nationalism today is that it has no end state. BN used to have goals like "pay us for the work we did during slavery so we can start again in Africa," but now it seems centered entirely on feeling approved of by the overarching national culture. The solution to this is straightforward — no one is reflected in national culture, it should be a legalistic nullity. But no one wants to make this argument, and I can't tell if it's because they themselves want hegemony or because we use it as a foreign policy weapon.