1/ There's an incredible irony in all the white nationalist paranoia abt the 'great replacement' (i.e., the idea that people of color, Muslims & other 'non-Westerners') are demographically supplanting whites & Christians in places like the US/Europe due to higher birth rates...
2/ That irony is this: the differential birth rates between women of color and whites (and which they find so calamitous) is entirely a function of the very inequalities the far right demands be kept in place. How? Simple: birth rates are driven by educational levels for women...
3/ So women w/access to education & better jobs have fewer kids, per capita, than women w/o access. This is true for all ethnic/national groups at all times in history...it's why immigrant working class "whites" who came here used to have 5-10 kids but their descendants don't...
4/ So as 'white' women have gained opportunity (not fast enough or completely but relative 2 women of color for sure, globally), they have reduced birth rates, while women of color (still lagging in access due 2 systemic inequities which the right defends) have higher rates...
5/ Meaning, if the right is so worried about "replacement" due to birth rates there is a simple answer: a massive investment in opportunities for women of color for schooling and jobs, globally! That would bring down their birth rates very quickly actually...
6/ It's why in the U.S., for instance, birth rates for black women with degrees are equal to white women with degrees, and why black birth rates generally have fallen dramatically as opportunity expanded...
7/ But of course the right will NEVER call 4 more investment in expanding opportunities 4 women of color, even though this would "solve" their stupid replacement fears (re: demographic change). Hmmm, why? Must b bc demographic # s alone aren't their real concern. It's power...
8/ So expanding opportunity 4 women of color would defeat the purpose of their entire politic: maintaining white male dominance. Even if they retained numerical majority in the culture, if folks of color have = opportunity what good is that?...
9/ Which then brings us to the link between their racism and their misogyny. Rather than expand opps for WoC, which would solve their demographic "problem," they advocate restricting opps for white women. They want "traditional families" so white women have to bow to them too...
10/ And if white women don't have opportunities, presumably, they will start making white babies again and solve the demographic "problem" that way...in other words, they just want hegemony. They want to control POC and white women for their own benefit....
11/ It's not about demographic numbers alone, because that part could be addressed by producing greater EQUALITY. Inequality is what drives the very phenomenon they now fear. But they can't give up inequality because they are dependent on it for their own sense of importance...
12/ And 4 the relative benefits it provides them (privileges & advantages) which they're loath to give up, even as they deny they exist. They just want power at the expense of every1 who isn't white & male & are willing 2 use force, violence & authoritarian means 2 maintain it...
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