‘Great Replacement’ Paranoia Will Lead to a Handmaid’s Tale Dystopia

Building a wall won’t be enough.

Neither will rounding up millions of undocumented folks and shipping them out of the country in cattle cars, planes, or buses.

Putting aside the impracticality and immorality of both actions, even on the terms favored by their advocates, such things would fail to deliver.

Though immigration restrictionists insist walls and deportation are needed to halt the “Great Replacement” of traditional American culture and “legacy Americans” — by which they mean white folks, even if they don’t say it — the demographic shifts about which they are so concerned, actually have little to do with immigration at all.

As such, even were we to end all immigration to the U.S. by brown-skinned folks from the global south — documented or not — America would continue to become less white.

Because the issue has never been immigration.

The issue is birth rates.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not parroting the right-wing myth that Black and brown women are uniquely disposed to having multiple children as some scheme to score public assistance.

That’s always been bullshit.

But fertility rates among women of color are higher than the rates for white women for one simple reason: women of color in the U.S. are younger, on average, than white women.

For instance, the median age of white women in the United States is 45.

For Black women, it’s 36.

For Latinas, it’s 31.

And it should be obvious that 31–36 year olds are far more likely to have kids than women in their mid-to-late 40s.

So even if all the undocumented Latinas were shipped out of the country tomorrow and no more were allowed in, the median age of fully legal Hispanic women in this country would remain within an age range of high fertility — not peak, but high enough to ensure continued birth rates that would eclipse those of their white counterparts.

In fact, even if Trump and Congress managed to expel all legally present foreign-born Latinos, like lawful permanent residents — many working towards citizenship — or temporary lawful residents, little about the demographic shifts underway would change.

Less than a third of the Latino population is foreign-born, while nearly 7 in 10 were born here and are already citizens.

But to really understand the magnitude of the age differences between whites and folks of color — and again, this is the key to demographic shifts in the U.S. — you need only consider this fact: today, the white modal age — meaning the age that is the most common age for white Americans — is a whopping 58.

Think about that. More white people are 58 than any other age — a mere seven years from retirement.

What’s the modal age for Black folks? 27.

For Latinos and Latinas? It’s 11.

The future, simply put, is brown, based solely on who is already here, legally, and capable of giving birth to future generations of Americans.

And therein lies the problem.

First, a problem for the MAGA types whose ethno-chauvinistic nativism leads them to presume that whites have a moral entitlement to majority status in America or that the nation will somehow crumble lest that majority remain intact.

And second, a problem for the rest of us unless we stop them.

Because once they realize the inadequacy of immigration restrictions for stemming the current demographic shifts, they will have to either embrace multiracial democracy (doubtful) or move on to the next phase of their project: namely, restricting the rights of white women so as to boost white birthrates by way of authoritarian means.

As it turns out, the lower birth rates and the older median age of white women mentioned above, which are at the root of demographic change, are a direct reflection of what happens when a group of people gains greater access to opportunities like education and high-paying careers: they delay childbirth and have fewer kids than they might have had in prior generations.

In every society, fertility rates fall as women’s rights and opportunities expand.

So, as white female baby boomers began to access jobs and schooling largely off-limits to their mothers — and as Gen X and Millennial women did the same, even more so — they had fewer kids. As such, while they aged, they didn’t create enough children coming behind them to suppress the median age of the overall white population.

So, how does one reverse the birth dearth?

There is only one way: by restricting not only white women’s reproductive freedom — as with the banning of abortion and further restrictions on birth control — but also by restricting their rights and opportunities more generally.

This would mean rolling back protections against sex and gender discrimination and, even worse, openly embracing such discrimination in the workplace in an attempt to restore men to their “rightful place” of occupational dominance and restrict women to the trad wife role of mother and homemaker.

One can imagine such efforts beginning with mere “incentives” for white women to have lots of kids, and younger than at present — perhaps with accelerated tax breaks, baby bonds that could be used for their children’s educations, or some other carrot to natality, without blatant restrictions on women’s freedoms.

But eventually, as women continued to seek out higher education and careers, a state truly committed to traditional white cultural and demographic dominance would have to transition to fully fascist efforts.

This would mean crackdowns on white women’s liberties, alongside obvious crackdowns on those of people of color, including Nazi-like sterilization of Black and brown women to prevent more non-white births.

If you think all of this sounds far-fetched, ask yourself how else people concerned about the “Great Replacement” can hope to attain their endgame — the maintenance of a white-dominant U.S. and the restoration of white hegemony?

Short of the mass murder of citizens of color — literal ethnic and racial genocide — there is no other possible way.

And we can already see evidence that some are gearing up for precisely this kind of Handmaid’s Tale scenario.

• The overturning of Roe, making it harder to get abortions? Check.
• Seeking to ban medication abortion through the mail in every state — including those that wish to maintain abortion access? Check.
• The rise of Trad Wife influencers and their supporters on TikTok and Instagram, who encourage white women, in particular, to embrace domesticity and leave the thinking and the careers to the men folk? Check.
• Going after DEI efforts that seek to increase the representation of people of color and white women across a range of occupations in which they have long been underrepresented despite their ability? Check.
• Open calls to roll back the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote? Check, check, check, and check.

Indeed, some just come right out and say it, like this guy, who has more followers than most of you would wish to imagine.

Of course, the great irony in all this is that the majority of white women voted for Donald Trump, yet again, at least in part because they agreed with his plans to get rid of millions of brown folks in the name of national renewal.

Because they think their whiteness will protect them.

Little did they realize the real endgame, or the reality that those who have them all revved up about the Great Replacement will be coming for them next.

Because white dominance and patriarchy are siblings, or at least first cousins.

And unless we defeat the one, we’ll never defeat the other.