Going Rogue Again with Jon Talton: White Majoritarianism

February 16, 2017

White majoritarianism

Source: Rogue Columnist

Budweiser's "Born the Hard Way" advertisement during the Super Bowl won plaudits for putting today's anti-immigrant sentiment under a harsh light. But it was a stretch. . .  

For example, especially after the failed revolutions of 1848, German immigrants transformed Cincinnati. . . The Irish were reviled in many cities in the same century. They went on to become among the most American of Americans, producing two presidents. The largest mass lynching in American history was carried out in 1891 against 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans. Italians, too, assimilated, and became a distinguished (and sometimes, with the Mafia, notorious) part of America.

In the early 21st century, the governor of Arizona, most prominent businessman in Phoenix and, ironically, anti-immigrant sheriff of Maricopa County were all Italian-Americans (many of Phoenix's most important earlier leaders were of Jewish extraction). So it went for scores of different ethnic and religious groups who came here. Native fear, discrimination and even atrocities, assimilation and acceptance. America is a credal nation, not an ethnic one. And we have been stronger for it.

Still, America — the empire built by conquering 500 indigenous nations and the enslavement and long, often brutal, discrimination against blacks — was always a white majority nation. And that majority, whether WASP, Scots-Irish, German or Italian, traced its roots to Europe and Western Civilization. The academic-protest left despises this and claims that America holds a unique place in the world for ethnic cleansing, discriminatory criminality, and hatred of "the other." But it is the American creed and the tenets of reviled Western Civ that even give birth to such intellectual conceits.

As of 2015, the United States was 61.6 percent white (not Hispanic), down from 63.7 percent in the 2010 Census. According to the Brookings Institution, almost half of young people under 18 are racial minorities. Meanwhile, the white population is aging. The Census American Community Survey in 2014 showed that the immigrant population was 42.4 million, or 13.3 percent of the total U.S. population.
This is an unprecedented high as a percentage, more even than the historic wave of immigrants of the late 19th century immortalized by the Statue of Liberty ...
Unlike in the past, America's elites oppose assimilation. Many celebrate the looming end of a white Christian majority. On top of this, norms and a broad national consensus on American values have crumbled.

I suspect that a large number of Trump voters were not white supremacists, white nationalists, racists, or whatever names are hurled at them (some surely were). But many are definitely white majoritarians who don't want to lose that country. They support equal rights and opportunities for minorities. But they want a white majority America. They won't tell pollsters this precisely because of the calumny that would be hurled at them. I've even talked to many African-Americans who quietly resent losing their status as the minority to Hispanics and others.
History shows no example of a nation that survives long as the kind of polyglot entity for which many progressives long. It shows many examples of the unsustainability of such experiments. The Austro-Hungarian Empire existed from 1867 to 1918, most of that time peaceably under the reign of the beloved Emperor Franz Joseph. But the empire was comprised of dozens of different ethnic groups, often jealous of each other and holding grudges. When World War I destroyed Austria-Hungary, it became the "killing fields of Eastern Europe" for much of the 20th century. Conversely, China is reclaiming its world power role after "the century of humiliation" with a conscious tilt to a Han Chinese majority and assimilation of "superior" Chinese civilization.
Progressives would like to see an America like Seattle. It's an amazingly international city on the surface, full of tolerance, cutting-edge left policies, diversity, and boasting a Socialist-Alternative member of the City Council. The Mexican Consulate is in my block — the only protests I've ever seen there are by Mexican nationals outraged by the mass kidnapping of students in 2014. At the airport, announcements for flights to China are read in Chinese and English. Faces from all over the world are found along Seattle's sidewalks
"I voted for Trump because of the economy" makes no sense, either. Many Trump counties are doing quite well. And he's put in place people and policies representing the buzzard capitalism that devastated the worst-hit pockets of the nation. But Trump and his dog whistles do appeal to demographic and cultural anxiety. White majoritarianism is "a thing," as the saying goes. It's powerful and deserves thoughtful consideration, not glib dismissal.

Rogue columnist Jon Talton