The Not So Great Replacement

Just so far in the 2020s, America's number of white children has declined by 5%.

In recent decades, it has become a norm among social scientists to explain away social problems statistically associated with blacks as the fault of “segregation:” e.g., Malcolm X High School has low test scores due to segregation; the reason Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood has a high murder rate is segregation; the reason Jackson, MS has a hard time providing clean water to residents is segregation.

And indeed, one of the most common correlations in American social science is that the higher the percentage of blacks in a community, the more problems it has, both overall and per black.

Occam’s Razor might suggest that is more or less the fault of blacks, but Occam’s Butterknife won’t get your career canceled, so you blame “segregation.”

Who is at fault for why highly black places are troubled? Obviously, white people for segregating blacks and engaging in white flight.

The solution is of course integration. (But not gentrification, God forbid.) If only the tiny number of blacks could be spread amongst the vast majority of whites (whites are a vast majority, aren’t they?), segregation and all the problems it causes would disappear.

You might think that therefore respectable voices like the Democratic-affiliated Brookings Institution would be publicly worried about the fact that America is increasingly running out of white kids with which to solve the problems of blacks.

But they aren’t going to come out and say that.

From the Brookings Institution:

Census shows America’s post-2020 population is driven by diversity especially among the young

William H. Frey

July 24, 2024

I’ve met Dr. Frey. He’s a reasonable, honest demographer. But the most he can do is try to get you to read between the lines:

Last month, the Census Bureau released new data for geographic areas which provide a glimpse of how the nation’s population has been changing over the first third of the 2020s decade. It emphasizes that people of color are the main drivers of population growth for the nation as well as shifts across states, metropolitan areas and counties.

The 2020 census showed that the 2010s was the first decade in the nation’s history when the white population declined and the second consecutive decade when the white population under age 18 declined. The new census estimates for the period between April 2020 and July 2023 have made plain that both of these trends are continuing though the 2020s. This is leaving the growth of many areas reliant on the rise of members of other races and ethnic groups, especially among their youth. All of this reinforces my earlier view that the nation’s “diversity explosion” represents an important part of its future, a phenomenon that American policies and politics need to recognize.

Over the last 51 months, the number of non-Hispanic white kids under age 18 has dropped by 1,660,000 from 34,580,000 in April 2020. That’s a drop of 4.8% in just 4.25 years.