Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Here's a thread about race and national identity in America.

As everyone knows perfectly well by now, Trump's immigration policy is about racial engineering - making the U.S. population as white as possible.

vox.com/2018/1/18/1689…

2/Every part of it is just about racial engineering.

Deporting DREAMers is about deporting Hispanics.

Cutting legal immigration is about reducing nonwhite population increase.

"Muslim ban", H-1B hassles...it's all just racial engineering. All of it. Every bit.

3/This isn't the first time American leaders have engaged in racial engineering. We did it in the 1920s. You can read that history here: amazon.com/Strangers-Land…

4/So, to some people this is going to sound like a stupid question, but...why is this bad?

I grew up in an America that was over 80% non-Hispanic white. It was a nice place. A bit less nice than now, but not bad. So why all the horror over racial engineering?

5/The first reason it's bad is because it turns America into more of a fascist country.

Expelling large numbers of nonwhite residents turns us into a police state.

aclu.org/blog/immigrant…

6/The second reason racial engineering is bad is that it devalues the lives of every American who isn't white. It tells them: "You aren't a real American. Your race makes you a second-class citizen."

7/Not only is that cruel and undemocratic - people should be able to feel like full and equal citizens of their country - it's also very harmful to the nation.

You just can't build a successful nation if half the people feel like they're second-class citizens.

8/Let's be honest and realistic: Using racial engineering cannot preserve a white supermajority in America.

Since 2012, more than 50% of the babies born in America each year have been nonwhite. Every single one of those babies is an American citizen.

washingtonpost.com/local/census-m…

9/Does that mean white people will become a minority? Not necessarily. Ethnic attrition, plus intermarriage, mean that whites could remain a majority indefinitely.

But not a *supermajority*. That ship has sailed.

10/So going forward, it's going to just be flat-out impossible for "white" to be the default national identity of the average, normal American.

It's just not an option that is open to this country anymore.

11/As an aside, having "white" be the default national identity for the average, normal American was always grossly unfair, as it excluded black Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, etc. from "normality". But it was *possible*. Now it's not.

12/In the 1800s, America was grudgingly forced to accept that "American" couldn't just mean "Protestant".

In the 1900s, America was grudgingly forced to accept that "American" couldn't just mean "Anglo-Saxon".

13/Now, in the 2000s, America will be grudgingly forced to accept that "American" can't just mean "white".

Either America succeeds as a polyracial nation, or it does not succeed as a nation at all.

That is simply the choice facing the country now.

14/I consider myself a nationalist, because I want to have that sense of national identity.

I want to walk down the street and feel that the people I meet are my *countrymen*, not just people who happen to live near me.

15/And of course, strong national identity is good for public good provision and institutions and all the stuff that makes us rich and prosperous and blah blah blah. That part by now should go without saying.

16/And if America is going to have that national identity, if we're going to be a real nation in the 21st century instead of just a bunch of people who live near each other, that national identity will have to include both white Americans and nonwhite Americans.

Period.

17/Alt-righters think that building a shared American national identity that includes both white and nonwhite people constitutes "genocide". vox.com/2018/1/18/1689…

But that's stupid. It's not genocide. It's NATION-BUILDING.

18/If immigration stopped on its own tomorrow, our economy would take a big hit, but we'd be OK.

But if we stop immigration by engaging in racial engineering, we torpedo our chances of forming a shared American national identity in the 21st century.

19/For us to have a free, democratic, prosperous, equal, fair, united United States of America this century, we can't become racial engineers.

That's a dead end road.

Instead, we have to work on building that shared, poly-racial American national identity.

(end)