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Love it or leave it, but woke.
This weekend, The University of Texas played The Ohio State University in Austin, TX. A screen shot went viral on Twitter showing a crowd of Indian students celebrating the victory.
"Heritage Americans", the dissident right, the Woke Reich, or whatever you want to call them went crazy, pointing out the massive demographic changes in Texas that are happening. This is true. Anyone who has been to Texas knows whites are a minority here in any medium sized and larger city. The changes have been stunning and within 30 years, it is unrecognizable.
Critics rightfully pointed out that they were pretty much just being racist. You talk about integration, and here are immigrants and children of immigrants celebrating a victory in football wearing cowboy hats. What is more American than that? You clearly just don't like Indian people.
An Indian politician said that this is what Texas is. If you don't like it, LEAVE! There is some truth to this. This is what Texas is now, but historically the South Asian population has been tiny. This is a very recent development. Is 20 years all it takes for Texas to become something new? If you are 30 and above, you probably grew up with almost no Indians. Now this is what Texas is and you have to leave if you don't like the changes?
This reminds me of the UK. Pre-Windrush, the UK was 99.9% white. As recently as 1991, it was 95% white. Now though, if you complain, you are going against British values. For thousands of years, the UK was essentially 100% white. Within a few generations, it is a multi-cultural country and if you don't like that, LEAVE! We are not a white society, and actually never were. I could go on and on, but with the exception of Reform, that is the general consensus now.
Back to Texas. It's crazy how quickly this can happen. Mass migration can happen and within one generation, this is seen as the new default and any complaints about this are seen as against the new values. Of course, the biggest gatekeepers of this isn't the left. They really have no control over their outgroup other than canceling people and social pressure, but if you don't care what they think, what can they really do? The center-right has also rushed to condemn people criticizing the massive demographic replacement in Texas. People like Dan Crenshaw rushed to condemn the racism and call out this anti-Indian racism and essentially sided with the left, who hates them. They have essentially said the same thing as the left and that these aren't Texas values to be racist. So basically, love it or leave it, but woke. If you don't like the new Texas, leave.
But where will they go? You basically have to live in a state like Texas for access to the best jobs. schools, dating, etc. It's insane to me how fast we can accept something new that is unprecedented as the new normal without considering the consequences. Only weirdos and disagreeable people point this out, and by the time people start to see the consequences, it will be too late (assuming there are negative consequences, which should be obvious is my POV).
I suppose this is this week's race discussion thread; could someone actually steelman the "white supremacy" takes, for lack of a better way to put it after a minute's thought, that seem all the rage on the Motte lately? For example, this post from last week's thread, and the OP.
I can quite well understand the theory of mind of people who complain about mass immigration, or even immigration in general.
I can also understand the theory of mind of the HBD realists and the scientific racists who go on about the Hajinal line or Ashkenazi selection pressures or whatever. If you're actually a WASP nativist or something then alright, at least you have something cohesive going on there.
Yet when people start going on about whiteness it just seems really silly to me. Just in the last hundred years Greeks, Italians, Slavs, Irishmen went from distinctly "other" to "white" to all but the most dedicated haters. Likely in another hundred years assimilated Hispanics, Indians and East Asians will probably be considered "white" for all intents and purposes.
If "white" is just a Schelling point for the things you actually care about (culture, immigration, governance, whatever) then complaining about some dudes wearing cowboy hats just makes you sound like a base racist that misses the point entirely.
I wasn't alive a hundred years ago, so their categorisations mean nothing to me. I'm not inheriting their ideology, I'm not defining myself by their beliefs. That their beliefs bear superficial resemblance to mine doesn't matter at all to me.
What I am looking at is the reality of keeping these pet minorities around. The culture they bring with them, the habits they cling to, the enclaves they form to avoid dispensing with any of those things. The relapses their subsequent generations have when they "rediscover" their roots and reabsorb all the worst parts of their ancestral cultures. I look at these things and I see no benefit to myself or the people I care about, so I want them gone.
I don't want Indian hygiene culture in my nation. I don't want the Indian work culture of just lying about things. I don't want interethnic rivalries on my streets. I don't want to hear word one about Israel or Palestine or Pakistan or Somalia or any of those; nobody here should even be able to point to those places on a map. And I equally don't want minorities wearing my culture like a skinsuit, partaking in my traditions as if they're their own, I don't want to see ethnics morris dancing while the media propagandises to me about how they're the new face of Britain, just as British as me, these people who washed ashore five years ago, while I can show you my family name on war monuments and in town hall records and point out buildings my grandparents helped build. It is gross, debasing propaganda intended to humiliate.
It is simply not my problem that their forefathers weren't capable of building countries worth a shit; that doesn't entitle them to mine.
We can eliminate racism by simply removing the other races.
Britishness is a tricky subject, though. I do agree that it's conferred far too easily, but I'm personally Anglo/Irish stock and have a UK passport through heritage despite being born and spending the majority of my life in Australia. I'm currently in London on business for a couple days, haven't stepped foot into the UK since I was a teenager and did the perfunctory 2-week tour of London and family oop noorth. I consider myself part of the Anglosphere tradition and racially English, but when I'm wandering aimlessly around London in present it's hard to feel particularly 'British' or 'Yookayish'.
On the other hand, my dad's gotten massively into genealogy since retiring and I've got all the same heritage aspects in terms of Christening records and 'here's a photo of my great-grandfather on a fishing trawler'
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