Am I too racial in my thinking about immigration?

I know that I must explain my position, and do so over and over again. But, at the same time, isn’t it getting rather late in the game for this kind of discussion?

Kilroy M.writes from Australia:

In your statements about the genesis of the American constitutional order, you correctly point out that this system was not generated out of a vacuum but grew with a particular ethno-religious context. This is, of course, true of all cultures across the globe. Accordingly, is not the failure of non-Caucasian immigrants to live up to our civic standards based on the fact that their cultural traits are alien to us instead of their race per se? It appears sometimes that you are confusing correlation with causation. Perhaps this is why some people feel uncomfortable when it seems like you are appealing to the very race-reductionism you yourself have rejected in the past.

In one of your recent posts you suggest that culture has nothing to do with race (if we are to understand the law as a product of culture) though ethnic groups acting as tribes attack it due to it being a particularly Caucasian legacy. There is obviously a nexus between race and culture here, but I think your readers could benefit from a clarification of what the crux of the issue really is.

Moreover, when you talk about America being formed as “a people” you remind me of an ongoing discussion I’ve been having with a close friend and fellow traditionalist. We both live in Australia, but neither of us was born here. I happen to have Central European ancestry, his is from the Subcontinent. Both of us however are passionate opponents of the Randian and leftist agenda, everything from open borders, to gay “marriage.” We both embrace our Flag, Anthem, Constitution, traditional view of society, gender roles etc. In one of my discussions with him concerning the nature of a country, I suggested that states can be divided up into two types: one is the ethno-state, such as my and his country of heritage, and settled-states, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and of course, your United States. The point being that both of us could be “Australian” because there is no unique “Australian ethni,” while none of us could be Chinese, as an example, even though we were both to be born, raised and paid taxes in China. Your country’s history and values are not alien to us in any way, shape or form—I believe I could move in tomorrow and fit right in; not so for China, Nigeria or Turkey. Do you agree with this, and how would it fit into your understanding of the U.S. being “a people” (as opposed to a tribe) in the context of non-Caucasian immigration?

As an aside, regarding a prior entry of yours, I suggest that it is not immigrants themselves that are the root cause of most of your nation’s problems but members of your own community: Anglo Americans infected with the illness of liberal cultural relativism. I concede the point before you make it that for every non-US citizen like myself who would embrace your country’s traditional heritage and legacy should he find himself living among you, there will be 10 or a hundred that are either indifferent or hostile to it. But is this merely an exception proving the rule? Or is it the case that different races “carry” their cultures with them into our world causing social balkanization. If the later is true, perhaps if a country focused on acculturating immigrants these problems would not arise. That would require the rejection of cultural relativism, which brings us back to culture being the problem, not race as such.

LA replies:

The more different people are racially, the more different they are, period. Yes, individuals of a different race can assimilate into a host culture; in that sense, race does not absolutely determine culture. But an entire population of a different race will inevitably displace the host culture. Whether the newcomers are racially too different, or culturally, it’s really not possible to break this down so finely and control the whole process the way you would like to do. When we’re talking about a large population of racially distinct immigrants and their overall impact on the host society, the race and the culture are not practically extricable from each other. America’s massive Hispanic population is certainly racially conscious of itself as a people gaining power in relation to Anglos. Yet you, like a standard liberal, are worried if any white person thinks that race matters.

Many of your arguments are the standard mainstream conservative arguments: race doesn’t matter, only culture matters. The assumption is that a white people could be wholly replaced by nonwhite peoples, and somehow nothing would have changed. Such “conservatism” is really liberalism. It must lead inevitably to the disappearance of every white people on earth, as it is indeed doing at this moment.

Another of your standard conservative or neoconservative arguments is that the real problem is the left, not the immigrants. The implication is that if the left were not left, if the left were conservative, we could take in unlimited numbers of non-Westerners and everything would be fine. Once again, your implied program is for the total race replacement of the Western peoples and their disappearance—our disappearance—from history. And what drives you to this program? Your need to prove that race doesn’t matter.

“In one of your recent posts you suggest that culture has nothing to do with race (if we are to understand the law as a product of culture)”

That wasn’t my meaning. Some could. A small number could. But we’re way way beyond that now. At the same time, now that we have all these unassimilables among us who are hostile to our culture, Joseph’s argument is a good basis to try to defend and preserve what we have.

You need to read The Path to National Suicide and Erasing America, where I deal with these issues at length. Your assumption that I have not spelled these issues out with care and nuance is not correct.

The fact that white “settled states” can assimilate whites of other ethnicities, does not mean that they can assimilate vast numbers of nonwhites. Race matters. The more different the immigrants are from the host population, and the more of them they are, the harder they will be to assimilate. Please “assimilate” that thought into your thinking.

LA continues:

I have to say that there is something unreal about this exchange. It’s very late in the game for this kind of discussion. It’s as though we, white Westerners, were at leisure, securely in charge of our societies, and can have a nice intellectual conversation about how much race matters, how much culture matters, and who should be let in, and who shouldn’t, and you think my standards are too stringent. What you don’t seem to understand is that all the European and European based people are in the process of rapidly becoming minorities in their own countries. So this is not about some non-threatening question of who can assimilate and who can’t. This is about our racial, existential survival, right now.

Here’s the last section of Richard Lynn’s recent article at Vdare. Read it, and then tell me if you’re still worried about whether I am too racial in my thinking and not sufficiently open to nonwhites:

The Twilight of the European Peoples

Only one conclusion is possible. The rate of increase of the non-European population could be slower or it could be faster than the projections given in Table 4 but the broad picture is clear and inescapable: at some point in the foreseeable future the white British people will become a minority in these islands, and whites will likewise become minorities throughout the economically developed nations of European peoples.

As the proportion of non-Europeans grows in Europe and in the United States (and also in Canada and Australia) and eventually become majorities, the intelligence of the populations will fall. The strength of the economies will equally inevitably decline to the level of developing nations.

World leadership will pass to Russia and Eastern Europe, and to China and Japan, if these manage to resist the invasion of non- European peoples.

We are living in an extraordinary time. Nothing like this has ever occurred in human history. Mass immigration of non-Europeans will inevitably result in the European peoples becoming minorities and then increasingly small minorities in their own countries, as they are in most of Latin America and the Caribbean islands. Throughout the Western world the European peoples are allowing themselves to be replaced in their own homelands by non-Europeans.

What is even more remarkable is that the European peoples have become quite complacent about their own elimination. Some even welcome it. Hardly a week goes by without some intellectual or politician declaring that immigration has been good for the country, that “in our diversity is our strength” and “we must celebrate our differences”.

Others announce that they look forward to the day when whites become a minority.

This is the first time in the whole of human history that a people has voluntarily engineered in its own destruction.

- end of initial entry -

Edward F. writes:

In response to Kilroy M., you wrote: “The fact that white “settled states” can assimilate whites of other ethnicities, does not mean that they can assimilate vast numbers of nonwhites.”

Kilroy M. completely overlooks the fact that Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand were all founded upon an English ethnic base. Subsequent waves of European immigration into these countries only worked because the new arrivals shared a common racial background with the founding English-descended core populations. This is certainly not the case today.

June 1

LA writes:

Kilroy sent a reply that I have not been able to write a repy to yet. Pending.

Richard S. writes:

Regarding this issue, our racial extinction, I read only one response proposed on the sites that address it: secession. We’ll secede, we’ll form a nation out of those parts of the United States that are still largely white and take a stand in that reduced territory. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas: that’s the territory usually referred to. But no specifics as to how such a solution is to be achieved are ever offered. Just, we’ll secede and then … nothing. Can it be done? Is it possible? I hope I’m not one of those who take a perverse joy in their kind’s defeat, but I don’t see secession—given the inevitable fierce establishment opposition—as possible. I suspect many of those who make the proposal don’t believe in its viability either. Of course, what a huge violent blowup would result in is anybody’s guess, but now we’re in the realm of pure speculation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 31, 2009 01:32 AM | Send