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«	Making Amends Part 2: The Writing On The Economic Wall	Just a thought	»

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Making Amends Part 3: The Writing On The Demographic Wall

Fran here. I didn't originally intend this to be a series, but since I posted the first essay, I've received so much email and so many requests for elaboration that I couldn't refrain from extending and amplifying the thoughts behind it. Please be patient, Gentle Reader; we'll be back to the regular crap before you know it.

Demography, as Mark Steyn has told us, is destiny. Whither the population of a nation goeth, there also shall its fate be bound. So it behooves us to look closely at demographic trends in these United States.

Note: I said trends, plural. To extract any useful information from our demographics, it will be necessary to disaggregate the overall figures into sub-trends pertaining to specific cohorts of American society: some identified by race, some by ethnicity, and some by religion. Anyone who does this has to be braced for a storm of vituperation; as the old saying goes, he'll be called everything but white. These days, that's often the price of scratching at the troubles that beset our land.

***

CensusScope provides summaries of America's population by various criteria; here's its breakdown by race for the last three completed censuses. Wikipedia has its biases and flaws, but when the raw, unchallengeable data is available, it's as useful as any source on the World Wide Web. Here's its page on American demographics and trends therein. A summary of the trends by race and religion:

Category	1990	2008 est.	% Change
Total	248,710,000	304,100,000
White	188,128,000	228,000,000	-0.7%
Black	29,216,000	37,600,000	+0.7%
Hispanic	22,354,000	46,900,000	+6.4%
Asian	6,968,000	13,400,000	+1.6%
Amerind/Eskimo	1,794,000	2,400,000	+0.8%

Respondents to Religious Survey	1990	2008	% Change
Total	171,409,000	216,367,000
Christian	151,225,000	173,402,000	-8.1%
Jewish	3,137,000	2,680,000	-0.6%
Muslim	527,000	1,349,000	+0.3%
Buddhist	404,000	1,189,000	+0.3%

Thus, the population of the United States has been growing swiftly less white, more Hispanic and less Christian. It's also notable that the numbers of self-nominating Muslims and Buddhists nearly tripled over the 1990-2008 interval.

There are more, and more interesting, demographic statistics to be had in studying the geographic distribution of these sub-populations, but I dislike to overwhelm my Gentle Readers with too many numbers, so allow me to summarize:

• Our seaboard cities and our Southwest are growing swiftly more Hispanic and less Christian;
• A small group of urban and semi-urban/industrial areas are growing swiftly more Muslim and less Christian;
• "Red state America" is largely unchanged.

America's population growth is exclusively by immigration; our "pre-resident" population barely reproduces at replacement rate (2.1 live births per couple). Alongside that, Americans' fertility is non-uniformly distributed by race, religion, geography, and time of residence in America. Some of the asymmetries manifest as "culture zones," such as "Chinatowns" and "Little Italies." Some manifest as exclaves, where "outsiders" fear to tread. And some, it must be said, manifest as ideological communities, where certain postures on politics, social policy, and the like are prescribed and all others are proscribed.

The consequence to this point has been a slow but definite Balkanization of the United States.

***

"Balkanization" is an ominous term, which deserves explication. A Balkanized region is one that exhibits significant internal tensions and group hostilities based on ancestral, linguistic, religious, or tribal affiliations. Such influences will frequently evoke open, sometimes violent clashes. Thus, we may speak of a city divided into "turf" by violent gangs as Balkanized, just as the European Balkans are and have been for some centuries.

Owing to their immigration policies, the nations of Europe are Balkanizing themselves swiftly and radically. Islamic exclaves are rife in the Old World, as are violent clashes between European Muslims and the surrounding societies. If America has a problem of comparable magnitude, it would be the ongoing Hispanicization of our Southwestern states, an issue that's been much in the news due to Arizona's recent efforts to stanch the flow of illegal aliens across its southern border.

For America, this is a new phenomenon. We're having a spot of trouble figuring out how to handle it. Elements of our national history predispose many of us to a degree of "tolerance" that might prove to be fatally unwise.

Election 2008's notorious New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation incident provides a case in point. Many otherwise sensible persons have actually argued that "it was no big deal," "that district was almost 100% black," even that "turnabout is fair play." In short, for whatever reason, they'd prefer that the matter not be dealt with according to the law. Some are uncomfortable even to have the subject raised. Clearly, the operative motivation here is residual guilt over slavery, even though that stain on our history is now 144 years behind us. But it should be obvious -- a phrase to which I make a habit of appending that the Latin roots of obvious mean overlooked -- that when such tactics are allowed to pass unchallenged, the tendency toward them is reinforced. If the New Black Panthers are not severely punished for their open violation of federal election law, we may be sure that they'll repeat their Philadelphia performance in more venues, and with even more drama.

Similarly, because America hasn't always lived up to its pledge to respect freedom of religion, we tend to be sensitive to claims of religious discrimination, even when no such thing has occurred. There were lynchings of Jews, and occasionally of Catholics, during the KKK's peak years. There have been laws at the state and local levels aimed at discouraging the practice of certain faiths. There have been arsons of black churches, though there the motivation is at least as likely to be racial as religious. So when a Muslim claims he's being discriminated against because his employer won't provide him with a prayer room, halal food in the cafeteria, or four breaks for prayer during his work day, we don't automatically laugh the accusation off as we should. Too many of us will attempt to placate the complainers. For, as Mark Steyn wrote in America Alone:

[T]here's an old technique well understood by the smarter bullies. If you want to break a man, don't attack him head on, don't brutalize him; pain and torture can awaken a stubborn resistance in all but the weakest. But just make him slightly uncomfortable, disrupt his life at the margin. and he'll look for the easiest path to re-normalization. There are fellows rampaging through the streets because of some cartoons? Why, surely the most painless solution would be if we all agreed not to publish such cartoons.

Again, when such tactics are allowed to succeed -- indeed, when they're treated as respectable to any degree -- they're reinforced, and are guaranteed to be deployed over and over again. More, they will be emulated by other groups in other venues.

***

A few words on group pathologies and I'll close for today.

An identifiable group that possesses any sort of intra-group loyalty will exhibit a perverse tendency: it will reflexively defend its predators, parasites, and social marginals against criticism by outsiders. For example, one cannot deny that the overwhelming majority of American Negroes are decent, law-abiding, self-supporting persons whose contributions to our society are entirely positive. Yet they will defend the black criminal element, insisting that its size and threatening aspect are largely due to racial discrimination in law enforcement, against any attack by whites...even though the principal victims of black predators are decent American blacks. Similarly, the overwhelming majority of Americans of Hispanic descent are perfectly decent...yet they, too, will defend the vicious Latin gangs that terrorize them above all others, when the attack comes from outside their numbers. As difficult to understand or explain as this may be, it's been so frequently observed as to be undeniable.

That reflexive defense of intra-group predators synergizes most evilly with group geographic segregation. Let it be admitted: when not prevented, we do tend to separate into racially and religiously homogeneous communities. We do tend toward "Chinatowns," "Little Italies," black and Hispanic neighborhoods. We want to feel that we're "among our own," whether the consequences are for good or for ill. We feel safer and better understood that way. And of course, communities with that degree of racial or religious uniformity are the natural "manors" (John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar) of predators from that group. Not only will they enjoy the abovementioned defense by their neighbors; they'll also enjoy a degree of practical concealment available nowhere else.

To the extent such predators "range afield" from their home manors, they greatly heighten inter-group tensions. They make clashes through the media and the legal system exponentially more acrimonious and intense. In other words, they accelerate our Balkanization.

The great irony of this phenomenon is how relentlessly American left-liberals call for "tolerance" among all races and creeds. Scarcely one such voice in a hundred comes from a neighborhood that suffers significant extra-group predation. Yet they lambaste the rest of us about our conditioned-in wariness toward persons from outside our groups, belittling our fears as mere "prejudice."

I can't imagine what might be done about this. Not even were America wholly free and healthy.

***

Our demographics point toward our future. We've been lax about insisting on the Americanization of immigrants and the assimilation of our racial minorities. Indeed, in recent years suggestions of that sort have been treated as next to criminal, under the prevailing ethic of "cultural relativism." But however one might feel about "cultural relativism" in the abstract, when it equates to the surrender of social peace and the defeat of public justice, it becomes just another term for "death wish," to be implemented on a national scale.

We've been even more lax about the creedal threat of Islam. American Muslims might not be terribly numerous yet -- those Census Bureau estimates suggest that Muslim-mouthpiece groups are prone to heavily overstating Muslims' numbers -- but each of them has pledged his nominal allegiance to a creed that commands the conversion, subjugation, or execution of every human being on Earth. The minority thereof that act on that command might be small, but the larger community affords them an unholy degree of protection and sustenance.

Should the economic deterioration of which I've written accelerate further, subsectors of our population we currently deem tolerable will be tempted toward extra-group militancy: "us against them." The time to head that off is now, before our economy and our money finish their march into Hell.

More anon.

UPDATE: The final scherzo can be found here.

Comment Form    |     Back to Top/Original Post

1. If the New Black Panthers are not severely punished for their open violation of federal election law, we may be sure that they’ll repeat their Philadelphia performance in more venues

   I speculate that voter intimidation will shift to other forms. I suspect that if the NBP or some other group of thugs is stupid enough to try this again in 2010, they will find themselves quickly under arrest by the police, who will be aware of the high likelihood of violence summoned against the thugs.
   Here in Oregon, we vote by mail, which reduces the potential for voter intimidation while vastly increasing the potential for other fraud.

   Posted by  on  07/13/2010  at  12:46 PM

2. We’ve been lax about insisting on the Americanization of immigrants and the assimilation of our racial minorities.

   Almost without fail by the time an immigrant family is in the 2nd or 3rd generation, the children are Americanized.  Similar fears have been harbored throughout our history.  But now, no one gives a second thought to whether an Irish, Jew, or Pole will assimilate nowadays. 

   In a generation or two, I expect the same will be said of the current wave of immigrants.

   Posted by Liquid Egg Product  on  07/13/2010  at  02:32 PM

3. "In a generation or two, I expect the same will be said of the current wave of immigrants.”

   Perhaps the best example of being utterly blind to the realities of modern immigration I’ve yet seen.
   For an example of second and third generation “assimilation” take a look at Britain, Sweden and France.

   Posted by KG  on  07/13/2010  at  04:38 PM

4. Egg, listen up: the Irish, the Jews and the Poles (to take your three examples) have histories, cultures, social structures, technologies and - above all - belief systems (to cite but a few criteria) that are culturally, historically linked to those of the USA.

   Compared to that, today’s plague of Muslim immigrants appear as if they’re from another planet - which they might as well be. Not only are they unassimmilable and incompatible, they insist on staying so, often violently (the prime example is their wilful refusal of, and attacks on, free speech). 

   There are none so blind as those who refuse to see this. Including you.

   Posted by  on  07/13/2010  at  10:36 PM

5. "An identifiable group that possesses any sort of intra-group loyalty will exhibit a perverse tendency: it will reflexively defend its predators, parasites, and social marginals against criticism by outsiders.”

   Local police and federal law enforcement agencies.

   Posted by  on  07/13/2010  at  10:37 PM

6. Sweden’s problems with immigrants are first-generationers.  I don’t know enough details about France and Britain.

   Worrying about immigrants is barking up the wrong tree.  When we see a much weaker US in 20 years, it will be due to years of crappy policies that have been implemented by our primarily white and Christian leaders.

   Posted by Liquid Egg Product  on  07/13/2010  at  11:10 PM

7. Egg, you’re supposed to be smart. At least, Robert Pearson thinks so, though I have yet to see convincing evidence of it. But I do know that you’re a decent chess player. So allow me to remind you of an old chess player’s maxim: Don’t let the brilliance of your strategy blind you to the stupidity of your tactics.

   A strategy of growing the country through immigration and the assimilation of immigrants sounds quite lovely. And indeed, historically we’ve managed to assimilate our immigrants fairly well, given enough time and enough determined insistence. But today, both time and insistence are lacking, with the consequence that mass immigration, particularly from Mexico and the Middle East, has been forming fortresses designed to repel assimilationist influences. In a previous essay, I called those fortresses exclaves. Read it and reflect.

   Even if we stipulate that, two or three generations hence, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of today’s Mexican and Muslim immigrants would likely be Americanized, we still have the problem of getting to that point. Focusing your attentions that far into a wholly theoretical future, heavy with optimistic assumptions about what will have happened in the meantime, is like focusing all your attention on undermining your opponent’s principal pawn chain while ignoring your vulnerability to a back-rank mate.

   Finally, you know I’m sensitive to denigrations of Christianity. I certainly give enough warnings that you shouldn’t need one. All the same, I’m feeling generous this morning, so here’s yours: Don’t do it again. And don’t bother with any explanations about “what you really meant.” I don’t care about “what you really meant.” Stay within the lines or suffer the consequences.

   I only warn once.

   Posted by Francis W. Porretto  on  07/14/2010  at  07:12 AM

8. Regarding our “white and Christian leaders” Egg mentioned, I think “white and soi-disant Christian leaders” would probably be a better term.

   Also regarding Muslim immigrants many of the ones who’ve been blowing things up or arrested trying to have, in fact, been second and third-generation whose parents have actually assimilated.  The melting pot seems to have trouble handling that situation.

   Posted by  on  07/14/2010  at  12:52 PM

9. I am totally opposed to illegal immigration and I believe the only honest and real solution to the problem involves deportion or incarceration of every illegal.  Having said that I also feel no fear or worry about a growing hispanic population.  I am very worried about the criminals who flood over our border from Mexico and I am concerned about the drugs and many other bad things (diseases) that come with them.  But if we were able to stop illegal immigration and deport all illegals I will be quite comfortable with hispanics who immigrate legally or hispanics who are already citizens expanding at a rate greater then other groups.

   Posted by  on  07/14/2010  at  07:31 PM

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