Seriously, let's talk. I'm an old white guy, somebody you've seen down at the target range. You can talk freely to me about it, can't you, neighbor? I'm part of your community. You might grumble a bit about the state of my lawn when I let it go dormant in dry spells rather than watering it to keep it green, when I eradicate my dandelions with chelated iron rather than stuff that will poison every fish in the lake at the bottom of the hill if we should get a storm and it all runs off into the street drains but I'm also the guy who called 911 when lightning struck your power line and set your house on fire. The same guy who after he fell chipping ice and fucked up his shoulder had to get a big snowblower and used it to clear your drive too every time he did his own. The guy you lent a chainsaw to when that funnel came past and dropped the tree on my fence. We're buddies, right? If we're not we sure drank enough of each other's beer for folks that didn't like each other. So who do you think is seriously gonna replace us? In America of all places.
Really? Immigrants? Buddy, I'm an immigrant. Like I needed to tell you with the accent and all. Got my green card right here in my wallet. Oh, you've never seen one? Here, take a look. Kinda cool the way they do that strip of tiny images of every president in the holograms on the back, isn't it? I heard about this whole "replacement" thing on the TV the other day and it kinda didn't make sense, so I checked. How? I went online and looked up the past census data. Yeah, its all public, anyone can see it. Went back a few censuses, to before you or I were born. Every one had the percentage of foreign born residents in the same ballpark, there aren't more of "them" living here now than there were when we were both kids. Doesn't sound much like replacement to me.
Is your beer empty? Sure, grab another. I'm kinda proud of this batch. It's a copy of a British brew I used to drink with my dad all the time. What? Shit, when you're two miles offshore ain’t nobody else around to bitch about who's underage and who isn't. Besides, in the UK we don’t make kids wait until they are 21 like over here. What was that? Immigrants kids? Seems to me that if they were born here, came up through American schools and stuff, they'd be growing up American just like yours and mine did. In the same little league teams even. Didn't your wife's dad come over from Italy after the war? She seems pretty American to me. Oh tell me about it. I'm an OK cook but what she does in the kitchen is a whole different world.
With my dad? Mostly sea bass and mackerel. You planning on going out this weekend? Yup. Me too. Want to go halves on the boat rental? Sure, I'll see you there! Take care buddy!
But you ARE going to be replaced, my friend. Not with immigrants but with ordinary decent Americans who didn't grow up immersed in the same kind of bigotry you and I did. Oh, yeah, the UK was every bit as racist as the USA back then. We just got past it faster because the black and brown folks coming into our country were from nations that used to be ours, just like America used to be. It's still not perfect but our kids are working on it, even though you don't see yours doing it as clearly as I do. Just as well, really. I don't think you'd like the idea much.
** the conversation is fictional, of course. The neighbor, the events described in the first paragraph, and the beer are not. I knew him pretty well and we were buddies as well as neighbors and mentally filling in his part of the conversation, the bits I haven’t written down, wasn’t hard.