Fear of a Nonwhite America
By Robert VerBruggen
April 17, 2019 6:30 AM
Are white identity politics a solution to our racial woes?
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
E ric Kaufmann’s Whiteshift is in part a very long, very academic exploration of how immigration is playing out across the West — in particular, of how white majorities are responding to demographic change, including through political resistance, “white flight,†intermarriage, and broadening the definition of whiteness to include those of mixed heritage (a category that includes Kaufmann himself).
But it’s also, in part, a normative argument about how society should change in response to these trends if it wants to avoid a backlash and potentially even violence, and Kaufmann’s core suggestion is an eye-catcher. He says we need to be more open to anti-immigration arguments rooted in white “ethno-traditional nationalism†— i.e., in the desire of whites to maintain a given ethnic balance in their home countries. This would resolve the double standard in which minority groups are allowed to engage in identity politics but whites are not, a double standard that will become harder to maintain as whites themselves become a minority group. And it would let populists talk out loud about what’s really bothering them, demographic change, so that it can be addressed through policy.
Kaufmann may have a point in regards to Europe — that’s not my area, literally or figuratively — but his narrative doesn’t quite hold up here in the States. Mass immigration poses real difficulties, but at least here, there’s little sign that these problems are reaching any sort of white-backlash crisis point. We don’t need to give in to identity politics and jettison the ideal of colorblindness. To the contrary, maintaining and strengthening this ideal may be the key to winning over the country’s center when its Left is falling off the deep end — and meanwhile, there are concrete changes to the immigration system that can aggressively address the concerns of populists without alienating the middle.
more
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/immigration-debate-white-identity-politics-whiteshift-book/
