Steelmanning pro-diversity arguments

Due to being a cynic and pessimist about human nature I’m naturally skeptical of views that the diverse future of Western societies is one of harmony bonded together by exciting diverse cuisine, or even one of well functioning societies at all.

However, I admit there is definitely a tendency for people to catastrophise about the impact of rising diversity, so it’s possible I am guilty of this too. So if I was going to argue against my natural inclinations, here is my steelman argument for why rising diversity can be handled by Western societies.

Liberal democracy is deeply embedded, and is an effective framework for handling ethnic change

Rights regardless of demography

Fears over ethnic change generally come down to one group fearing the domination of another group, often in states where liberal democracy is absent, or recently and patchily implemented (e.g. post-colonial states). A good example of this is the push for partition by the Muslim league in late colonial India, and the violence that then went with it. There is therefore a winner-takes-all feel to ethnically based politics where it may be rational to deeply fear the ethnic balance of power changing.

However, in a properly liberal democratic society, no one group is allowed to truly dominate even if they are the numerical majority. In fact, liberal democracy is the best placed system for handling ethnic change, as changing demographics are naturally reflected in the legislature and government via elections, while at the same time the rights of every group are guaranteed whatever their relative population strength.

And this is not just rhetoric, but to a very real extent, reality. We can see this in Western countries today, where a large amount of both left-wing policy, and social and legal activism aims at enhancing the rights and status of minorities (e.g. diversity quotas, judicial activism for the rights of refugees, BLM). Contrasting with this, are non-liberal truly majoritarian democracies like Israel or Modi’s India, where liberalism falls to the majority will. But this latter model has been dead in the West since the second world war, and there is no real sign of its revival, the populist right notwithstanding, as not even these populist right parties propose altering the framework of universal rights.

Integration of rising elites

Instability and revolutions generally come when the elites of one group are rising but are shut out of power. We can see this in the European revolutions of the modern era, where the rising middle classes (though this term can seem anachronistic, I just mean those benefiting from new economic development) butted up against the old land-based aristocratic class that had ruled since the fall of Rome. We can also see it in decolonisation, where rising native elites, more often than not educated within the colonial system, took advantage of the relative decline of European imperial powers post-WW2 to secure independence.

It is easy to see how these revolutionary pressures could arise in diverse Western countries, if the new populations were not let into power. But they are, with left wing parties being the main but by no means only conduit. In fact, contemporary liberal leftism’s primary goal seems to be to ease the entry of groups that are underrepresented in the elite, into the elite. This has often been criticised for paying insufficient attention to the working classes in society, which is certainly a valid criticism, but as it reflects the concerns of a rising elite, it may end up mollifying them too.

Trans racial elites, and intermarriage more generally

Elite universities plus elite professions are very effective at forming a new trans-racial, left wing (in the liberal symbolic, rather than wealth redistributing sense) elite. My impression is that among professionals in diverse Western cities, interracial marriage is much more normal than interclass marriage. A new elite is forming, multi-ethnic (even if more in symbolic form than substance) and performatively woke. This of course causes division with other, more traditional population groups, as we see today, but it is undeniable that a new elite with a new consensus is forming.

Regarding the wider population, in the absence of cultural barriers, humans will intermarry. And modern liberalism is very good at breaking down competing cultures. While it may valorise non-Western cultures symbolically, its true effect is to break them down (among immigrants to the West) as effectively as it does native Western culture. You cannot maintain a traditional culture in a community where liberal individualism encroaches, it just doesn’t work. We can already see this happening among immigrant groups, the exceptions being those who still maintain cultures that are hostile to intermarriage (Muslims most notably). But even Muslim clannishness relies on economic deprivation - it may exist in English northern towns or French banlieues, but not so much among Pakistani software engineer immigrants to silicon valley. So the tendency will be to intermarry, which is the only real form of integration.

Lack of a competing ‘national’ narrative among minorities, but the rise of a ‘diversity’ one

Traditional ethnic conflict is when you have different longstanding groups sharing a state (e.g. Northern Ireland, Bosnia). Both groups possess a narrative that the land is theirs. But Western immigration-led diversity is different. Instead of a ‘this land is ours’ narrative, what we see emerging is a ‘nation of immigrants + diversity’ narrative as took hold in the US from the 1960s, and that we see in embryonic form in Britain with the push to emphasize the symbolic important of the Windrush migrants and the small amount of non-white people living in Britain in centuries before this. While this narrative may be controversial and take liberties with the truth, it is at least potentially open to all (with a little self deception required).

The declining need for nationalism, from a functional perspective

While this point can be overdone, it is in general true that the 20th century was the high point of states having a functional military need to inculcate nationalism into their populations, due to the mass conscript armies they needed to field. The purpose of my wider argument is that high diversity states can be functional, thus the argument is helped by the fact that one of the needs for homogeneity has passed. Before the age of nationalism, for example, the Ottoman empire was a highly effective state, because there was little functional need to be a national state. So if the age of nationalism is indeed in decline, diverse states may be effective again.

The ageing population problem is real

Fears about this can be overdone too, however ageing populations in economically advanced states are a genuine problem for economic dynamism. The significance of this is that much of the answer as to whether diverse societies will ‘work’ is whether they prove to be relatively successful on the international stage. As Gideon Rachman notes “The big question of geopolitics will be not who has the larger population — but whether China or the west have made the right call on mass migration.” The positive future for diverse Western societies is that continued immigration helps to keep them economically dynamic, without causing insuperable social problems, while anti-immigration east Asia stagnates due to not enough working age adults. This would validate the Western high diversity social model. On the other hand, if East Asia continues to be more economically dynamic than the West, and at the same time Western politics becomes further degraded by ethnic conflict, the Western diversity model will be seen to have failed.

We have not yet seen the most extreme effects of an ageing population yet, Japan being the bellwether, so it’s still unclear how serious it is. In the good case, societies will adapt via automation and changing social expectations. In the bad case, ageing societies will be stuck in stagnation for decades, and may end up with the worst of both worlds, an immigrant society in practice due to economic necessity, without the social or legal changes to actually make this work as a functional one.

Positive examples - Canada

While many Western countries are struggling with political conflict over rising ethnic diversity, Canada appears to be on its way to becoming a post-national nation with little complaint, having a fast increasing ‘visible minority’ population of around 25%, roughly similar to the US, with little sign of the ethnic-change driven populist right eruptions that have occurred in other Western states. Canada has two key distinctions, one being that, due to the division between English and French speakers, it has never been able to be a singular nation, and two that its immigration is high skilled. Canada then seems to provide a workable model for high diversity Western societies.

Catastrophising in the past

The closest example I can think of an ethnic group having its predominance eroded in its state through immigration is Anglo-Americans via non Anglo immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The overwrought fears of Catholic domination at the time are well documented. And eventually demographics and the identity of the country did change, from the Anglo settler nation to the ‘nation of immigrants’ ideal popularised by JFK. But this was hardly catastrophic for the original Anglos. If nativists catastrophised in the past, perhaps they are catastrophising now too.

Ethnic politics are normal

Ethnic change is dramatically affecting Western politics, this is clear. The fear is that this is the beginning of a permanent political degradation where identity politics becomes the main political theme. But what if politics has always been identity politics, and has always been degraded? There was a long association between liberalism and the celtic fringe in British politics, while the democrats in the 19th century USA were the party of the ‘white ethnics’. And just as today these tendencies were often subterranean below the political surface made up of debates over policy. But nations still thrived regardless!

No competing global ideology to liberalism

There is no competing global ideology to liberalism. Competing ideologies are limited, only appealing to separate nations (nationalism) or religions (Islamism). Therefore for Western elites, once their countries become sufficiently diverse, there is simply no alternative - they have to make it work. With a sufficiently diverse population (in the absence of assimilation, which is not now aimed at), nationalism becomes infeasible, and something like Islamism can only ever capture a minority of the population, given that immigration comes from all over.