where are those economists, I just want to talk 😠🔪

I always chalked that up to the "I want things to be different" fallacy

okay, so they clearly know what they're doing? or perhaps sometimes the problem is that literally everybody claims membership to the same party whether they belong there ideologically or not. you can't have a liberal democratic party that includes conservative hawks.

"shares continues" great journalism NYT

@dietotaku While there are plenty of assholes who oppose immigration due to being hateful racists, seems to me at least as often opposition to immigration is rooted in a fear of erasure by dilution - both culturally and biologically - *without* hatred of the "other".

Which, if you think about it too hard, is not difficult to empathize with; people cling to the familiar, they resist change, & many if not most are deeply afraid of one day waking up to a world they no longer recognize as "theirs".

@IrelandTorin i still qualify that as racism. the nazis were "afraid of erasure by dilution" too, and you'll seldom find a racist willing to admit they hate other races. simply being intolerant of their presence, for any reason, qualifies as bigotry.

@dietotaku I'd say there is a significant difference.

The Nazis detested the fact that other ethnic groups even *existed*, let alone within their borders.

There is a difference between being intolerant of the presence of others (which is clearly racist) & being tolerant of whoever's already there but not inviting more outsiders; one seeks a racist "ideal" society, the other simply seeks to avoid change.

Not being a xenophobe does not automatically make one a xenophile, & vice versa.

@IrelandTorin what you're describing sounds like either racism or xenophobia, maybe both but definitely not neither. not to mention I don't think I've ever encountered someone who is opposed to all new immigrants but tolerant of the ones already here - they're always "THE COUNTRY'S FULL!" as well as "GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!" and seeking to avoid change is not exactly an admirable quality either.

@dietotaku Well, that's because generally speaking those folks aren't *totally* opposed to immigration... it's more that they'd like to see it limited to an amount low enough that their unique heritage and culture will still be recognizable a few generations later.

They're also generally not loud/aggressive, since they aren't at all motivated by hate... odds are you've met some and didn't even notice.

Seeking to avoid change may not be admirable, but it's not detestable either.

@IrelandTorin it's more like they'd like to see it limited to other countries and cultures that look like them. like Trump wanting to completely shut down all Hispanic immigration but wondering how to get more Scandinavians to move here.

you also don't have to be loud in order to be hateful.

and I do find seeking to avoid change detestable. but I guess that's what makes me a progressive instead of a both-sidesing fence-sitter.

@IrelandTorin also, i find it extremely difficult to empathize with resisting change and especially with considering the world "no longer theirs." i'm much more concerned with minorities being able to one day wake up in a world they DO recognize as theirs.

@dietotaku Apologies, my wording was unclear due to character limit.

What I meant is - the world they grew up in, the world they know/knew, that which is familiar. I did not intend to apply ownership, just familiarity - what can I say, it was first thing in the morning.

As for that last point, that'll probably never happen... unless that minority group becomes a majority, which would seem to defeat the point. Innate human in-group/out-group bias isn't an easy obstacle to surmount.

@IrelandTorin well I don't have any empathy for people who want the world to stay the same either. ain't happening, sister, time marches on so either keep up or shut up.

my point is that I would like to see a world in which minority groups feel like they belong and are included. if that means my race becomes a minority, that's fine. I'm not afraid of being the only white person in the checkout line. to those who are, I say: why? are minorities treated badly in this country or something?

@IrelandTorin an indigenous culture safeguarding themselves against actual genocide which has actually already happened to them is not remotely the same as "safeguarding their lineage against erasure by dilution in the global gene pool," the latter of which is absolutely racist as all fuck. anybody, and i mean ANYBODY, saying "we don't want race-mixing" is a racist piece of shit that is absolutely demonstrating racial hatred.

@IrelandTorin it's as if you didn't know that many east asian countries already restrict immigration and are openly racist against non-asians (and sometimes even asians from other countries). you don't have to be burning crosses to demonstrate racial prejudice and intolerance.

@dietotaku I'm not talking about the "race mixing is bad" folks. You're right, they're a bunch of racists.

Safeguarding against erasure is very different than the disgusting (and, from a genetic point of view, nonsensical) racist concept of "purity": the former simply seeks to ensure that *some* population (potentially a very small one) with majority-<x> ancestry/culture can persist; the latter abhorrently rejects or seeks to destroy anything that does not conform to a given stereotype.

@dietotaku From a preservation point of view, quite a lot of immigration and race-mixing is fine and even good... as long as it's not so much that no examples resembling the past can be found.

Which is the case with an alarming number of historical Indigenous communities, and will be the case with yet more as time goes on.

When the entire next generation of an Indigenous community is totally indistinguishable from a bunch of white kids straight from Europe... that is erasure by dilution.

@IrelandTorin "some race mixing is good, just not too much" is a stance I just cannot get behind. I don't see any difference between "don't intermingle with my people because your blood is dirty" and "don't intermingle with my people so that my grandkids aren't white-passing."

@IrelandTorin I really genuinely don't see how "safeguarding against erasure" is any different from "race mixing is bad" or racial purity. you literally defined it as ensuring the existence of >50% racial purity. is there functionally any difference between someone seeking to prevent racial dilution and someone seeking to exterminate the racially diluted?

@dietotaku That's very black-&-white...

To illustrate the difference, imagine both taken to their final endpoints.

Taken to its endpoint, the former (safeguarding against erasure) would result in thousands upon thousands of small communities all over the place sustaining different traditional ways of life & phenotypes... embedded in a larger vibrant multicultural society.

OTOH the latter (racist extermination) results in monoculture after one culture/ethnicity brutally massacres all others.

@IrelandTorin taken to its endpoint, "safeguarding against erasure" does result in monoculture as exterminating other races is the only 100% guaranteed way to "prevent racial dilution," and which monoculture that is just depends on which one is most successful at "safeguarding against erasure" in the extreme.

@dietotaku Sure, if you're a hateful racist who doesn't care about safeguarding *other* cultures/ethnicities against erasure as well to preserve as much cultural and phenotypic diversity as possible...

But if you're not, well, that isn't considered an acceptable (or logical) endpoint because it would result in the erasure of nearly 100% of extant cultural and ethno-phenotypic diversity.

@IrelandTorin so at worst we have genocide and at best we have a fuckton of segregation and *still no race-mixing bc it is physically impossible to ensure racial preservation w/racial interbreeding.* neither one seems like a win to me.

also we're talking purely phenotypical here, bc your culture has nothing to do w/the color of your skin. you can be white as rice & still preserve the cultural traditions of your ancestors.

@IrelandTorin frankly, I don't see any intrinsic merit to phenotypical diversity that makes it worth segregation and practical eugenics.

@dietotaku You're assuming it's forcible. That doesn't necessarily have to (& I'd say shouldn't) be the case; most people *like* close-knit communities.

There are significant practical advantages to maintaining/increasing phenotypic diversity that way; essentially it stimulates divergent evolution, leading to the development of *wildly* different pheno/genotypes & even speciation.

A critical advantage: limiting the spread & evolution of disease. Disease is an existential threat to our species.

@dietotaku Many, many species have been wiped out by disease; the more homogeneous a species is, the more likely it is to be driven extinct by disease.

At the extreme end, you have monoclonal crop cultivars. These can rarely be farmed widely for more than a few years before a pathogen capable of completely wiping them out arises.

Our global civilization makes us especially vulnerable.

By maintaining and increasing diversity, we can massively reduce the ability of disease to spread globally.

@dietotaku I should note this is not my personal ideology - I am merely "in character", arguing for something I have encountered as if it was my own, much as one does while writing a position paper.

Ironically my real position is quite the opposite - in that I see race and culture primarily as distractions from more important issues...

Like tackling carbon emissions (with nuclear of course), keeping civilization from collapsing in the face of climate change, minimizing economic inequality, &c.

@dietotaku Of course my proposed solution to the disease problem is even more radical...

Human genetic modification.

Well, that and rewriting regulations on ventilation / air filtration in public spaces, developing standardized protocols for rapid distribution/deployment of high-grade respiratory protection when airborne pathogens of concern are present, prohibiting those sick with transmissible diseases from travelling by plane and making it an offence to knowingly do so, and so on.

@IrelandTorin okay I'm not interested in engaging with someone cosplaying as an internet dipshit to play devil's advocate. do the world a favor and just argue your actual positions instead of giving oxygen to racist bullshit.

@IrelandTorin so on the one hand you acknowledge that genetically homogenous groups are more likely to go extinct, which is true. but then you say the solution is to allow groups of humans to perpetuate genetic homogeneity.

bwuh?

@IrelandTorin referring to racially segregated populations as "close knit communities" is egregiously bad faith. just because people will self-segregate doesn't mean that's a good or acceptable thing.

if disease is an existential threat to our species, then wouldn't it be more advantageous to intermingle, and innoculate through exposure?

@dietotaku You're still thinking about this in a very black-and-white way.

Imagine for a moment the goal is not to create/preserve some "pure" version (impossible, that's not how it works), but simply to preserve something that remains *identifiably different*... even though it will change over time.

In theory phenotype has nothing to do with culture. In practice when there are no phenotypic differences, cultural assimilation / homogenization is much easier and thus more likely to occur.

@IrelandTorin you're still defining that preservation with a degree of purity. what is the fundamental difference between "people must be 51% [race]" and "people must be 100% [race]"? what's the difference between "we must safeguard against racial and cultural erasure through dilution" and "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"?

@dietotaku Not quite - if the only requirement is that distinctiveness from other groups be maintained over time, "purity" can be said to be either overly simplistic to the point of absurdity, or simply irrelevant.

Aaaaand the key difference is that the former (considering the need to preserve other ethnicities/cultures too) only really implies a couple relatively small, but stable and sustainable, communities. Not growth, just maintenance.

The latter implies growth / expansion / domination.