Clarence Page: 'Hillbilly Elegy' author throws hat in the ring — and it’s a MAGA hat

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Aug 14, 2021

Vance responded to me patiently that he was not “concerned about” non-white people replacing whites, and “I’m sure that’s not Tucker’s concern either.”

Rather, Vance said, he was only concerned with too many new people coming into the country at once, not because the newcomers are good or bad, but simply “too much too quickly.”

Inflaming his concerns — and those of many others on the right — were people on the left boasting about projections of a “new Democratic voting majority” that he said he heard “repeated all the time from mainstream Democrats.”

“I don’t think most Americans see their identity in racial terms,” he said, “but eventually you tell people they’re always going to lose elections because young people and immigrants will swamp their vote, they might start feeling replaced.”

Maybe, especially if enough people encourage them to feel that way. Anxiety is a centuries-old issue in this land of immigrants.

With the rise of Trump, little wonder that projections of a possible Democratic majority, often touted optimistically by some on the left, cause consternation and heated politics on the right. “The U.S. is becoming more diverse, Census data shows,” said the Chicago Tribune’s headline on the release of 2020 census data Thursday, “and the country’s white population is shrinking.”

I’m optimistic, as I believe most Americans are, about this country’s ability to absorb new immigrants as we have in the past. But as political polarization grows, immigration is back as an issue that increasingly defines our parties, along with questions of voter suppression on the left and exaggerated fears of voter fraud on the right.

Vance’s early pokes at Trump may yet doom his Republican primary campaign. But the issue lingers on. Once again our national ethnic melting pot threatens to boil over. For the long-term good of our nation, we need candidates who are ready and willing to turn down the heat.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)