Inez begins by telling me about her recent move within NYC. This leads to a discussion about housing prices and the American dream, which finally transitions to a debate over immigration, nationalism, and social cohesion. We had planned on discussing Trump’s coming indictment for his activities surrounding the 2020 election, but didn’t have time for it. We’ll get to it next week, by which time the indictment is almost sure to have been handed down.
Jul 21, 2023·edited Jul 21, 2023Liked by Richard Hanania
As a moderately conservative person living in bay area, I disagree with Inez's characterization of immigration and national cohesion. If you live in Palo Alto, Mountain View or Sunnyvale you are relatively isolated from crime and that is mainly due to the communities here being mostly white and Asian. Our kids attend school in Palo Alto and the class is about 50% Asian ( Chinese and Indian) and due to relatively conservative mindset of these immigrant communities our school does not have too many LGBT students. If the school was full of fellow whites, then it would be overwhelmingly culturally liberal with excessive focus on LGBT issues.
Secondly, crime is mainly a function of African American population. In Oakland or SF downtown, shoplifters, carjackers etc are overwhelmingly African American. I do not buy into this cultural cohesion narrative. I feel much safer living in a community with fellow middle class whites and new Asian immigrants rather than this culturally cohesive vision of White, African Americans and Latinos living together.
White and Asian communities share small 'c' conservative values ( focusing on family, lower rate out of wedlock births, etc) , Inez is right about bringing back social shame to address societal ills but that can only happen when majority of people in the local community adhere to these values. 72% of African american children are born out of wedlock, how do you bring social shame to such a community when out of wedlock birth is a norm.
I'm not in favor of mass immigration, but I can partly sympathize with the argument that American social cohesion is already a thing of the past (partly due to mass immigration); since we're all atomized now anyway, sometimes there are local social benefits to immigration, particularly from Asia, in places where the white culture is particularly diseased.
You could call it the "This is library!" Effect, after that video in which a Korean student responds to some Woke protest happening in a library by shouting them down with those famous words. Middle-class economic immigrants tend to be very practical people, not would-be Red Guards.
Of course, in the long run, one of two things will happen: their children or grandchildren will either fully conform to the values of the local white population (which, in the case of the Bay Area, means they'll go insane), or they'll remain a people apart for many generations, which goes back to that "social cohesion" point.
America never had social cohesion like you imagine. Even in cities like NYC and Chicago until 1950s, there were strong ethnic neighborhoods - Jewish, Italian , African American majority neighborhoods. Even WASP Americans lived in different neighborhoods than white ethnics ( Polish, Italians etc).
After passage of civil rights act, northern cities were under pressure to integrate. A famous example is Marquette park rallies in 1966 in Chicago, When MLK marched through Chicago neighborhoods of Marquette parts which was white ethnic neighborhood with mainly Americans of Irish and Polish descent (and not WASPs), there was deep opposition by white ethincs. However, there was forceful integration of such neighbourhoods by 1970s and whites fled cities to move to suburbs. By 2010, the neighborhood had changed : blacks were 49% of the population, Hispanics 45% and whites 4%. Immigration is not the reason for lack of social cohesion. We have historically never been a cohesive multi-ethnic society.
On some level true -- cohesion was always local in the US. It's just that it's harder to find places that are cohesive.
Also, America's present social malaise isn't monocausal.
Easy to overplay the white ethnic angle though. My Boomer parents were white ethnics by heritage, the descendants of Ellis Island-era immigrants growing up in the suburbs of a melting pot Northern city in the 1950s, but they never really saw themselves as being distinct from the WASPs in any important way. It probably helps that due to earlier conversions, they were born into Anglo forms of Protestantism.
The break from mass immigration between 1924 and 1965 contributed to a growing cohesion that's probably impossible now, unless Asians and Hispanics intermarry with whites to the point of ceasing to be distinct groups. But 40 years isn't really that long a break from mass immigration. So I do think that in a world in which the 1924-1965 immigration regime remained in place, and illegal immigration were tightly controlled, the US would be a more cohesive society today.
I just do not follow your logic sorry. It was civil rights era changes that destroyed local cohesion that you mention and not immigration. Chicago, Detroit, NYC all had locally cohesive communities that had to be disbanded to integrate by 1970. Immigration was non existent at that time.
Even today the most socially cohesive communities are suburbs where it is almost always white, Asian and (some) Latino families living among each. You are mad at the wrong thing, civil rights era destroyed America and not immigration. Most things we hate Affirmative action, disparate impact as a basis to adjudicate discrimination cases, destruction of vibrant urban areas like Chicago, Detroit etc are result of civil rights era changes and not immigration.
Let us imagine a hypothetical where immigration was restricted, in that case, we would still have Afrolatory. This is because, the areas in US which are most supportive of BLM are overwhelmingly white majority areas.
Ken Boone did a Reddit AMA with his existing screen name and people read and reported on his past *public* comments. I’m not sure that’s the kind of example Inez was aiming for...
Good discussion. I like the fact that you two disagree a lot. That’s good. Although I generally agree with Richard’s more libertarian take on quality of life, one think Inez gets right (although she might not have said it explicitly) is that community effects have degraded in many ways. For example, while one literally *can* afford small cheap houses nowadays, they are often in depressing, high crime areas.
An important fact to point out is that you can’t possibly get a modest, durable house built these days…..they’re all 4 bedroom+ or luxury condos. If they do build something smaller, the cost is still wild. For example, I live in BFE Western Kansas and a clearly cheaply built 2 bedroom, 2 bath is still going for $259k…..just very hard to justify, even on a good salary. Just my two cents!
As a moderately conservative person living in bay area, I disagree with Inez's characterization of immigration and national cohesion. If you live in Palo Alto, Mountain View or Sunnyvale you are relatively isolated from crime and that is mainly due to the communities here being mostly white and Asian. Our kids attend school in Palo Alto and the class is about 50% Asian ( Chinese and Indian) and due to relatively conservative mindset of these immigrant communities our school does not have too many LGBT students. If the school was full of fellow whites, then it would be overwhelmingly culturally liberal with excessive focus on LGBT issues.
Secondly, crime is mainly a function of African American population. In Oakland or SF downtown, shoplifters, carjackers etc are overwhelmingly African American. I do not buy into this cultural cohesion narrative. I feel much safer living in a community with fellow middle class whites and new Asian immigrants rather than this culturally cohesive vision of White, African Americans and Latinos living together.
White and Asian communities share small 'c' conservative values ( focusing on family, lower rate out of wedlock births, etc) , Inez is right about bringing back social shame to address societal ills but that can only happen when majority of people in the local community adhere to these values. 72% of African american children are born out of wedlock, how do you bring social shame to such a community when out of wedlock birth is a norm.
I'm not in favor of mass immigration, but I can partly sympathize with the argument that American social cohesion is already a thing of the past (partly due to mass immigration); since we're all atomized now anyway, sometimes there are local social benefits to immigration, particularly from Asia, in places where the white culture is particularly diseased.
You could call it the "This is library!" Effect, after that video in which a Korean student responds to some Woke protest happening in a library by shouting them down with those famous words. Middle-class economic immigrants tend to be very practical people, not would-be Red Guards.
Of course, in the long run, one of two things will happen: their children or grandchildren will either fully conform to the values of the local white population (which, in the case of the Bay Area, means they'll go insane), or they'll remain a people apart for many generations, which goes back to that "social cohesion" point.
America never had social cohesion like you imagine. Even in cities like NYC and Chicago until 1950s, there were strong ethnic neighborhoods - Jewish, Italian , African American majority neighborhoods. Even WASP Americans lived in different neighborhoods than white ethnics ( Polish, Italians etc).
After passage of civil rights act, northern cities were under pressure to integrate. A famous example is Marquette park rallies in 1966 in Chicago, When MLK marched through Chicago neighborhoods of Marquette parts which was white ethnic neighborhood with mainly Americans of Irish and Polish descent (and not WASPs), there was deep opposition by white ethincs. However, there was forceful integration of such neighbourhoods by 1970s and whites fled cities to move to suburbs. By 2010, the neighborhood had changed : blacks were 49% of the population, Hispanics 45% and whites 4%. Immigration is not the reason for lack of social cohesion. We have historically never been a cohesive multi-ethnic society.
On some level true -- cohesion was always local in the US. It's just that it's harder to find places that are cohesive.
Also, America's present social malaise isn't monocausal.
Easy to overplay the white ethnic angle though. My Boomer parents were white ethnics by heritage, the descendants of Ellis Island-era immigrants growing up in the suburbs of a melting pot Northern city in the 1950s, but they never really saw themselves as being distinct from the WASPs in any important way. It probably helps that due to earlier conversions, they were born into Anglo forms of Protestantism.
The break from mass immigration between 1924 and 1965 contributed to a growing cohesion that's probably impossible now, unless Asians and Hispanics intermarry with whites to the point of ceasing to be distinct groups. But 40 years isn't really that long a break from mass immigration. So I do think that in a world in which the 1924-1965 immigration regime remained in place, and illegal immigration were tightly controlled, the US would be a more cohesive society today.
I just do not follow your logic sorry. It was civil rights era changes that destroyed local cohesion that you mention and not immigration. Chicago, Detroit, NYC all had locally cohesive communities that had to be disbanded to integrate by 1970. Immigration was non existent at that time.
Even today the most socially cohesive communities are suburbs where it is almost always white, Asian and (some) Latino families living among each. You are mad at the wrong thing, civil rights era destroyed America and not immigration. Most things we hate Affirmative action, disparate impact as a basis to adjudicate discrimination cases, destruction of vibrant urban areas like Chicago, Detroit etc are result of civil rights era changes and not immigration.
Let us imagine a hypothetical where immigration was restricted, in that case, we would still have Afrolatory. This is because, the areas in US which are most supportive of BLM are overwhelmingly white majority areas.
Ken Boone did a Reddit AMA with his existing screen name and people read and reported on his past *public* comments. I’m not sure that’s the kind of example Inez was aiming for...
Good discussion. I like the fact that you two disagree a lot. That’s good. Although I generally agree with Richard’s more libertarian take on quality of life, one think Inez gets right (although she might not have said it explicitly) is that community effects have degraded in many ways. For example, while one literally *can* afford small cheap houses nowadays, they are often in depressing, high crime areas.
An important fact to point out is that you can’t possibly get a modest, durable house built these days…..they’re all 4 bedroom+ or luxury condos. If they do build something smaller, the cost is still wild. For example, I live in BFE Western Kansas and a clearly cheaply built 2 bedroom, 2 bath is still going for $259k…..just very hard to justify, even on a good salary. Just my two cents!