Are Republicans just a bunch racists? That’s certainly the narrative that the corporate media is pushing as hard as it can. This time, the context is the horrific killing spree in Buffalo (New York) perpetrated by a mentally deranged racism whose online manifesto contains a host of racist and antisemitic conspiracyacies.
Are such things part of mainstream Republican thought, or are they just a fringe opinion? This is not what I’ve experienced as an Indian American immigrant and conservative Republican.
The racism charge today is based mostly on an alleged “great replacement theory,” which the left claims a number of top Republicans and conservatives subscribe to. This theory, that a group of elites and Jews want to flood America to displace white Americans with a new immigrant minority, is not something I’ve ever heard.
What I have heard by both Republicans and Democrats is the common belief that increased immigration from developing nations, both legal and illegal, will resound to help Democrats’ electoral chances. This belief is not controversial. It has been the accepted wisdom for many years by both political parties. This concept is not an American invention. “Demographics is destiny” is a widely accepted concept originating from a 19th-century French academic.
Far from being a right-wing notion, this concept has been espoused by the Center for American Progress, the Clinton-associated left-wing think tank that, in 2013, published a paper titled “Immigration Is Changing the Political Landscape in Key States.”
The summary of the piece stated: “Supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.” The entire piece analyzed how increased Latin American and Asian immigration would help Democrats in a number of states. This was yet again the conventional wisdom.
Latin American and Asian voters traditionally favored Democrats. Dems will benefit from more of them. That’s been the theory. These ideas are not new. They were, in fact, well summarized in the widely cited 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority” by liberal authors John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Their thesis was that demographic changes in America, partly driven by immigration, were changing voters to favor Democrats.
It is impossible to believe that these bipartisan beliefs are rooted racism. They are rooted in historical data. So where did all the racism accusations come from? Many Republicans have repeated the basic “demographics is destiny” theory to rail against the nearly unfettered illegal immigration America is now facing. Their concerns are primarily political. The people who are bringing up racism accusations are missing key details about this group.
Many of the most vocal critics of illegal immigration are more concerned with the impact on working-class Americans, regardless of their color, from massive increases in relatively low-skilled labor. Even studies that show net economic benefits of immigration admit that lower-skilled workers may be hurt by the pressure to lower wages due to a growing unskilled labor pool.
Which Americans are most affected the most by this downward wage pressure Hispanics, African Americans, and Hispanics are most affected by this downward wage pressure. It’s quite a leap to say those concerned most with the well-being of existing American minorities are acting based on racist motivations, but that’s the case many on the left are trying to make.
The most interesting aspect of today’s obsession with race and immigration is that some of the conventional wisdom may actually be wrong. Recent elections are providing reason to question the entire “demographics is destiny” conventional wisdom altogether. Between 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump saw huge increases in his Hispanic vote share. Hispanics favored Democrats 38 points in 2016, and only 21 points in 2020. Nearly 4 out 10 Hispanic voters in America voted in favor of Trump.
And maybe this is what’s driving the hysteria. A party confident in its “demographics is destiny” future domination is realizing that the “enduring majority” future they imagined may be slipping away. The social and cultural policies have driven the shift. Many Hispanic immigrants, as well as Asians, are culturally more conservative than the liberal base within the Democratic Party.
All bets are off if the populist wing is able to stop running amok and combine these cultural gains with a policy agenda better suited for working-class Americans from all backgrounds. That’s a five-alarm emergency for a partisan Democrat.
The majority of Americans today believe strongly in merit. The classic Martin Luther King Jr. “judge people on character and not skin color” notion is ascendant (while, ironically, this notion is now abandoned by the left). Conservatives should repeat this as often and as widely as possible. This should be clear in all policy areas, including immigration and school admissions.
Additionally, any Republican who associates himself with a small fraction of the right who are motivated by identity politics will pay a political price. The quickest way to prove that the “demographics are destiny” theory was right all along is for Republicans to be cavalier about these associations. Finally, the right must be clear about its agenda when it comes to trade and immigration, tax policy and regulatory policy, and other areas. This includes the needs of regular Americans as well as the Asian, Hispanic, and Black Americans who are being harmed by so much left-wing policy.
If Republicans could do that, they would have an unalterable majority.
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