04/15/2014
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Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson
In all the Main Stream Media propaganda about the desperate need for an Amnesty/Immigration Surge bill, you never hear that the bill will speed up the day when whites are a minority. The research of Northwestern University psychologists Maureen A. Craig (a white woman) and Jennifer A. Richeson (an African-American) shows why [On the Precipice of a “Majority-Minority” America: Perceived Status Threat From the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans’ Political Ideology, Psychological Science April 3, 2014]. Shockingly, it turns out that the great majority of white Americans are not at all like neocon Ben Wattenberg who famously asserted that “The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality.” [The Good News Is The Bad News Is Wrong, p. 84.] In fact, white Americans are afraid of becoming a minority. Being told about their impending minority status provokes whites to endorse attitudes linked to the political Right.The title of the Craig-Richeson paper is itself interesting. The standard dictionary definition of “precipice” is "the brink of a dangerous or disastrous situation" — which is exactly what Cassandras have been saying about the impending minority status of whites. Giving up majority status in a democracy has obvious grave implications. No ethnic group in history has ever voluntarily become a minority. Israel, for example, is fixated on Palestinian birthrates and absolutely opposed to a “Right of Return” for dispossessed Palestinians. Given that Palestinians are already a majority in the "de facto state of Israel," a one-state solution would mean that, if Israel remained a democracy, the Palestinians would govern. And that would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Being a minority is always problematic given the reality of ethnic conflict throughout history. This is particularly so when groups harbor historical grudges (e.g., slavery and Jim Crow for African Americans, anti-Semitism for Jews). It is especially worrisome in the case of America because the grievance industry promoted by elites in the MSM, the legal profession, and academe systematically blames “White racism” for all the problems of non-Whites.
It’s one thing to be demonized when you are the majority, but a far different thing when you are the minority.
Needless to say, despite Craig-Richeson’s use of the word “precipice”, they do not view whites’ impending minority status as problematic. Indeed, they are eager suggest ways to make Whites complacent about their impending status.
The theoretical framework for the Craig-Richeson paper emphasizes the general finding that people who feel threatened tend to adopt more conservative views. Studies show that whites adopt more conservative political views not only after terrorist events like 9/11, but also when they live closer to black Americans:
[A]n analysis of voter-registration data for Louisiana parishes revealed that the larger the percentage of Blacks in a parish, the greater the percentage of Whites who were registered as Republicans and the lower the percentage of Whites who were registered as Democrats.But it’s still very easy for most Whites to avoid the costs of diversity and multiculturalism — "out of sight, out of mind." The Craig-Richeson study reinforces this observation.
In their first experiment, subjects (all experiments used only whites) were told that California had become a "majority minority" state, while control subjects were told that there were now approximately as many Hispanics as blacks in the US. The experimental subjects reported they leaned more toward the Republican Party and toward more conservative opinions, and this effect was increased among subjects who lived closer to California.
In other words, people living in rural Nebraska, small town Montana or even Portland, Oregon are less worried about the disaster that is unfolding in California and many other parts of the US. Quite a few of these White subjects are in effect saying: "If it doesn’t impact me personally in my face-to-face world, I’m not going to worry about whites becoming a minority."
The Craig-Richeson study illuminates the mechanics of why the Republican Party is rapidly becoming de facto the party of White America: American politics is simply becoming racialized as a result of identity politics. In the 2012 election, a majority of Whites of all social classes, both sexes, and all age groups voted Republican. Obama won only 36% of the votes of non-college whites — a group that traditionally voted Democrat when social class issues were paramount.
Of course, VDARE.com has been highlighting this logically possible path to GOP victory for years — calling it “The Sailer Strategy” after Steve Sailer, who has calculated that even if immigration not curtailed, the GOP could win presidential elections by increasing its share of the white vote well into mid-century.
For reasons that would bear analysis, GOP strategists ignore this possibility. But the Craig- Richeson study suggests that this GOP whitening trend will accelerate anyway, as it becomes increasingly difficult for whites to escape diversity. When the effects of the immigration tsunami are all around, it begins to dawn on people that their country is being taken away.
In the second experiment, subjects read a press release on the impending eclipse of America as a majority-white country — I hesitate to call America a “nation” — and were then asked about their sense of uncertainty about the future and whether they perceived the racial shift as a threat to the social status of whites. They were also asked about five issues that liberals and conservatives typically disagree about. Three directly related to race: increasing or decreasing the required time to be eligible for U.S. citizenship; increasing or decreasing foreign immigration to the United States; and support for Affirmative Action.
Subjects who read the press release were more likely to endorse conservative positions on all five issues, i.e., including questions directly related to race as well as those not related to race (health care reform and defense spending). They were also more likely to agree with the idea that increases in racial minorities’ status will reduce white Americans’ status.
Craig and Richeson view this last finding as particularly important. Whites confronted with their impending minority status are concerned that their social status will suffer, and this motivates their attraction to conservatism. Craig’s reaction is particularly blatant:
“These findings may be particularly relevant to media and government agencies who are currently reporting on these racial shifts, presumably without awareness of these potential threat effects,” Craig told Association for Psychological Science. “We’re working on ways to present information regarding these very real and important shifts in the country’s racial demographics that don’t engender these type of threat responses and, instead, promote positive relations among members of the majority and minority groups.”You see, Craig, along with the rest of the academic Establishment, is entirely on board with eliminating America’s white majority through immigration policy. So the problem, as they see it, is not how to prevent the shifts, but how to make them palatable. How can the fears of white Americans be made to disappear so they won’t be drawn to the evil that is inherent in conservative political opinions and the Republican Party? How can White America be induced to embrace the harmonious multicultural future as America enters the golden age of diversity (and White America heads into the sunset)?Study Finds This Factor Leads People to Make More Conservative Choices, by Liz Klimas, The Blaze, April 9, 2014 (Emphasis added.)
In their third experiment, Craig and Richeson laid the groundwork for the new propaganda. They added a condition where some subjects read a paragraph reassuring them that white social status "is unlikely to change" even after whites become a minority (the "assuaged threat condition"). They write:
The article in the assuaged-threat condition included the same information about the impending racial demographic shift as the article in the status-threat condition, but also indicated that “despite the shift in the demographic make-up, the relative societal status of different racial groups is likely to remain steady” and “White Americans are expected to continue to have higher average incomes and wealth compared to members of other racial groups.”Results indicated that subjects who read this assuaging paragraph were no different from controls (Jamelle Bouie, writing in Slate, gets this wrong: Could America Become Mississippi? April 9, 2014). But those who read a passage about white Americans becoming a minority with no reassurance on their social status showed the same shifts to the right found in Experiment 2.
Voilà! Simply add a reassuring paragraph and the status-threat disappears! Frame the issue by reassuring whites that they will not suffer economically from becoming a minority, and they will be more likely to endorse Leftist nostrums approved by academic and MSM elites.
So here we obviously have a game plan for the MSM:
The downside for conservative media like FOX News: whites would then take also positions on immigration, Affirmative Action and other issues related to race that would be anathema to the neocons and to corporate America.
Drs. Craig and Richeson conclude:
One implication of the present work is that Whites may be increasingly likely and motivated to support conservative candidates and policies, in response to the changing racial demographics. These results suggest that presumptions of the decline of the Republican Party due to the very same changing racial demographics (e.g., Heavey, 2012; Shear, 2012; Wickham, 2012) may be premature. Future research is needed to examine the extent to which Whites’ status concerns, triggered by the changing racial demographics, may influence their political affiliations. Nevertheless, should White Americans (on average) respond to the changing demographics by becoming more politically conservative, the U.S. political landscape is likely to become increasingly racially polarized. [Emphases added]Of course, the reality is that American racial and ethnic landscape is already well on the way to polarization. Already an average of 80% of non-Whites voted for Obama in the last election. Whites have been relatively less polarized, even though 60% voting Republican in recent elections. But all the indications are that they are becoming more so. Not only are the majority of Whites of all social classes, both sexes, and all age groups voting Republican, as I mentioned above, but Republicans are increasing their share of the White vote by 1.5% in every presidential election cycle since 1992.[ “Does GOP Have to Pass Immigration Reform?, By Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics, June 25, 2013]
This is occurring despite a virtual blackout of discussion of the impending white minority in the MSM. Imagine how quickly polarization would increase if the racial shift were emphasized — and especially the downside for Whites. Imagine how hard it would be to sell the immigration amnesty/surge bill to white America if its acceleration of the racial shift were publicized.
The general lack of awareness also shows that there is a huge untapped source of conservative strength in the US: Accentuating the impending eclipse of White America would result in an upsurge of support for conservative positions on a wide range of issues.
The fact that the subjects in these experiments seemed unaware of these population shifts prior to the experiment is a telling testimony to the power of the MSM in shaping perceptions. Deciding what’s not fit to print is at least as important as what is fit to print.
So it’s no accident that the MSM is intensively policed to eliminate voices that conflict with the Leftist world view — people like Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs. This is why Media Matters was so upset when CNN quoted VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow and James Edwards on immigration-related issues. [CNN Article Legitimizes "Pro-White" Commentators, by Todd Gregory, March 4, 2011]
And of course the Establishment Conservative media is no better. It’s interesting that when New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait reviewed studies on the effects of liberal domination of the entertainment media, he reported that conservative talk radio and Fox News harp on "the fears that torment conservatives today — overweening regulators, welfare layabouts, the government seizing our guns" — anything but the fear of becoming a minority. [The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Is on Your Screen, August 19, 2012]
The political landscape would change rather quickly and dramatically if one above-ground, widely available, well-funded, MSM outlet told the truth.
But the data show that the landscape is changing anyway. Despite the MSM, Whites are waking up to the reality of their dispossession, even if the changes are slow. In the next 30 years, fewer and fewer whites will be able to escape the consequences of the immigration onslaught. The political landscape will continue to be more racially polarized. Whites will be looking for leadership that addresses their fears. Conservatism Inc. boilerplate about government regulation, welfare queens and even gun rights won’t hack it. Politicians like Jeb Bush, and the others who came to genuflect before Sheldon Adelson won’t cut it.
What will appeal to these whites — the great majority of whites — is explicit talk about white identity and white interests.
It will be a revolution.
Kevin MacDonald is professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. His research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives in developmental psychology, personality theory, Western culture, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He edits and is a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly. For his website, click here.
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