It is revealing that the growing social distress is generated not on the periphery of the Western world-system, but in the American metropolis itself. Equally revealing is that the West’s decline was not provoked by any catastrophe; on the contrary, it became evident at the very peak of the globalization-Americanization of humanity.
After the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc, US military hegemony and the dominance of the world’s reserve currency turned the United States into a global center for the capitalization of resources – the supreme beneficiary of the outflow of capital, brains, and ambitious youth from across the world. Only twenty-five years have passed since the apotheosis of the food-chain “finalists” was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, and already the desperate Donald Trump, calling to “Make America Great Again,” has drawn a line under Pax Americana.
Over the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first, the population of the United States grew by one hundred million people. Yet this impressive growth conceals a deep deficit: the United States is experiencing a decline in the production of life itself.
Since the 1970s, the American population has increased only due to immigration. Within the country’s own social space, the number of births has steadily fallen while mortality has risen. The story of religious salvation and the shine of economic success have turned into their opposites: a stream of seekers of the “American miracle,” inflated by financialization of GDP and the Pyrrhic victory of globalization, continues to pour in – but life itself is ebbing away from America.
In 2023, the number of births in the US dropped to the level of 1979, when the nation’s population was a third smaller than it is now. Fertility has declined to 1.6 children per woman (see chart below), and among white Americans to 1.5. Depopulation now affects all major demographic groups – not only whites, but also African Americans and Hispanics.
Because immigrants are predominantly from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, those communities continue to grow in the US, while the share of white Americans has plummeted. In the United States that, together with the USSR, won World War II, white Americans of European descent made up almost 90% of the population. In 1990, they still accounted for 80%; in 2010, for 72%; and by 2020 their share had dropped sharply to 62% (see maps below).
Spread of white American population over time
According to the 2020 census, whites became a minority in America’s three largest cities: New York (31%), Los Angeles (25%), and Chicago (31%), as well as in Washington, D.C. (38%). The 2020 demographic map clearly shows that the phrase “a different country” is no exaggeration – it merely records a demographic, genealogical, and ethnocultural transformation.
It is certain that since 2020 this transformation has only intensified, especially after President Biden effectively opened the border with Mexico. According to estimates from his opponents, another 10 million immigrants have moved to the United States.
Meanwhile, the 2020 census not only documented the declining proportion of white Americans but also recorded something unprecedented: for the first time in US history, the absolute number of white Americans decreased, by 5.1 million people in ten years.
Source: RT - Daily news
