As part of my April 2026 move-out-of-Cambridge experience, I went to the Home Depot in Somerville, Maskachusetts. Four “youths” were riding full-size e-bikes around the aisles. The checkout lady appeared to be a Somali and was in full Islamic attire. One of the young clerks was white and Following Science (wearing a surgical mask to protect him/her/zir/theirself against an aerosol virus), but mostly it was an environment that would have been alien to a working-class native-born American.
I remember Somerville as a white working-class suburb when I arrived at MIT in 1979 and we would head over to Somerville Lumber in Bennett’s station wagon to buy loft-building supplies for my dorm room (I don’t think MIT ever charged me for the wall damage done by the toggle bolts!). ChatGPT says that it was 95 percent white in 1980 vs. about 60 percent non-Hispanic white today.
Malden was another bastion of the white native-born working class. Today is at least 43 percent immigrant, as shown on this January 2019 PDF (perhaps Malden is up to 50% by now; MA was at 17% in 2019 (below) and today is closer to 20%).
The transformation seems to have occurred well prior to the Biden-Harris open borders period. Here’s some 2016 data on “newly diverse places” (as of 2016, non-Hispanic whites were already a minority in Malden):
Some specifics regarding Malden from the above, again using 2016 data:
Note that the newly diverse communities don’t include places where the decision-making high-income elites would be likely to live (Cambridge might appear to be an exception, but the city maintained an Underclass of Color even in the old days). It seems that the white working class in Massachusetts (voters without a college degree) actually voted against a continuation of the Biden-Harris open border policy by voting, in a narrow majority, for Donald Trump 2024. Naturalized immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat than native-born Americans. So it seems that the native-born white working class of Massachusetts voted solidly against this transformation and yet it was imposed on them.
Consider the effect on someone who grew up in Somerville or Malden and was 20 years old in 1980. This person is now 65 years old and, if still in his or her hometown, part of a literally alien society. Here’s old white guy/Senator Ed Markey at the Malden Islamic Center:
Maybe this particular old white guy wants to talk about the “victims of Gaza”, which the mosque seeks to support, but does the average native-born white person want to do that? In order to live in a society that resembles that one in which the Somerville or Malden Boomer grew up, he or she would have to move to The Villages (NW of Orlando), which is roughly 95 percent non-Hispanic white and only 5 percent foreign-born. (Moving to Florida isn’t as much of a financial win for a Maskachusetts peasant as it would be for an elite. Social Security income isn’t subject to state income tax, for example, and the state estate tax exempts the first $2 million in assets.)
Finally, a New England senator says that the U.S. is short by hundreds of hospitals for the existing population. At the same time, it makes sense to continue bringing in 1-2 million legal immigrants every year to add to the population that is facing the hospital shortage:
Related:
- Lionel Shriver on why an American or European might oppose immigration on nonfinancial grounds
- “After riding with Spanish speakers, white commuters favored anti-immigration policies” (a Harvard study on the reaction of high-income Democrats in the Boston suburbs when they thought that migrants might have moved into their own part of the metro area)
I’m struggling to find the point here. Weren’t Irish Catholic immigrants trashed by the WASP elite back in the day as undesirables? My guess would be you are saying they are now undesirable out of lack of need for them, rather than bigotry. Right?
Re: Bernie — Posting on TwitterX, or paying any attention to the posts, isn’t going to yield progress or Progress of any kind. Disconnected dots leading to no conclusion, other than what I already know — Democrats want to spend my money on free stuff to get votes, and Republicans want to spend slightly less money and funnel “tax cuts” into military spending as enticements.
“Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.” — Miss Crawford, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
We can also hold constant the “customer experience”, if we dare to keep using that term, in our search for meaning in this post. I set down $100 worth of media at a used media store in my town, when two white “gamete donors”, or parents, let a kid scream at the top of its lungs. The employees did nothing. I walk out of my home improvement store occasionally, sometimes due to rude employees and customers — black, white, hispanic, or jew — doesn’t seem to matter. I swear never to go back. Today I returned “waterproof caulk, guaranteed not to crack.” Just washed off in the shower like frickin’ toothpaste. Missus Hippy made me clean it up at 11 PM, so she could have a quick shower. 9 bucks for a cartridge now!
Note the reactionary anecdote about the good old days. Probably some old codger looking at Phil going “I don’t like the look of those MIT punks. Damn newfangled bicycle contraptions.” (Hikes up pants.)
> Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.” — Miss Crawford, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Wow! This is brilliant! Wouldn’t have understood without the help of AI. What does to “settle the abundance” mean? Some old English construct?
Anon: I think your logic is a variant of “the immigration of my ancestors made life worse for the natives and therefor I should want my own life made worse via a new wave of immigration.”
Note that I didn’t say the transformation was a negative one. We can infer from the Trump votes that the white working class of MA believes it to be a negative transformation.
Note that rich Democrats in MA became anti-immigrant when Harvard geniuses tricked them into thinking their own suburbs were being enriched
https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/anti-immigration-exposure/
As the setting of the experiment, Enos selected a series of commuter rail stations in the Boston metro area. For anybody familiar with area, it won’t be a surprise that the study sample consisted mostly of Anglo-white individuals—83 percent of the whole, to be exact. … Massachusetts is consistently rated as one of the most democratic and liberal states in the union, ostensibly meaning that immigrants would be more welcome in the state than elsewhere. This assumption was put to the test when Enos hired pairs of native Spanish speakers and instructed them to simply ride the train at the selected stations. In a previous survey, the Spanish speakers had been rated as appearing to be Hispanic immigrants. They were not told about the purpose of the study, nor were they given instructions to speak Spanish to one another or interact with people on the train, just to ride it and act however they pleased. … After being exposed to the Spanish speakers, respondents were far more likely to support stricter positions on immigration and to support making English the official language.
> https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/anti-immigration-exposure/
This is an interesting study. Here is a few observations:
1. People rarely have a lack opinion because of a lack of experience or evidence. If liberals didn’t really understand what is it to even commute with Spanish speakers around, then why have any opinion? Just have an open mind, right? It looks like democracy renders a neutral opinion ineffective.
2. People having a more circumspect opinion after a period of time is common in IMDB ratings as well. I have seen that new films are overrated when they are released and the ratings saturate after a few years. We tend to get emotional and tribal initially and tend to overrate the films.
3. This was also observed by Chomsky, and, at present, USA/Canada may be the most open to understanding this kind of behavior:
https://youtu.be/KftHGpJjPBo
> What does to “settle the abundance” mean?
It means po’ folk should be grateful for what they got, as condescendingly considered by the wealthy. E’ry one knows rich folk got what they got through they own talents, not by virtue of having a rich daddy. An important theme in Austen’s work, by the way. She really had a masterful understanding of the English language and culture.
Thanks, NH. I will try to read something by her. That quote seemed like something my mother would say, :D.
Ray Delahanty’s last video was about tax base fragmentation. He discovered the super rich vote for the koolaid but keep it in their own jurisdictions so the poor jurisdictions get poorer while the rich jurisdictions get richer. He found it more extreme in Calif* & Fl*rida than Bostonspun.
Somerville was Naumkeag land and must be returned to them (or their heirs and/or assigns) to clear title. Minus the improvements, of course.
Do you think the original Naumkeag dudes would like the new owners to do that? If not then would this be a similar imposition to taking the land away from them?
By original Naumkeag dudes, I mean the heirs and assigns of the original Naumkeag people who are around today.
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https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/anti-immigration-exposure/
21st Century Colonialists and their JavaScript fire water for the digital indigenous. I had no control over my ancestors, so no guilt. Web analytics are modern day smallpox.
How about making illegal immigration a crime, breaking off a $50B chunk of that military spending to build a criminal court system for them (with loyalty oaths for the judges), giving them a fair trial, and shipping them back to the shithole they came from, take lessons from fast food franchising. FAFO for repeat offenders. Change even I could get behind. In the name of defense, we are at war.
“A fair trial”? In https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/06/02/what-would-it-cost-to-deport-undocumented-migrants-with-due-process/ I calculated that it would cost $20 trillion to provide a trial for each undocumented migrant currently residing in the U.S., nearly all of which would be paid to attorneys. That’s why my lawyer friends all support the idea!
(Given that the relevant facts mostly happened half a world away, in languages that Americans don’t understand, and for which no documents are available, I don’t understand how the outcomes of these trials would be based on anything other than acting ability. Imagine a rule that nobody convicted of murder is entitled to asylum in the U.S. An asylum-seeker from Afghanistan is the subject of a deportation trial. The Taliban don’t make their court records available online in English, do they? If not, how would the rule be applied by a bunch of English-speaking Americans?)
A fair trial in the sense of the Old West. “He was given a fair trial, and hanged.” We learned how to crank out burgers for 1/10 the price, why not trials? 🙂 And you have to admit, it would appease the bleeding-heart liberals. And dude, like with the air conditioner replacement, your calculations are sus.
I’m aware that criminal proceedings would introduce the pesky idea of due process and civil rights. Nothing the Supreme Court or Congress couldn’t route around. They do have human rights, but since they are not citizens, what civil rights do they have, especially in light of the treasonous crimes they are accused of? “I smell the strong odor of immigrant coming from your car, papers please.” Bail denied. Damn, we did/do it to our own citizens…If the Native Americans had taken this policy, and not been so accomodating, we wouldn’t have this problem.
It was “sus” to say that a condenser could be swapped in Florida for less than $12,000 when we had multiple quotes to install complete variable-speed AC, including both air handler and condenser, at the same tonnage for $12,000? What would be an “un-sus” calculation?
(And then we actually did select one of the companies that quoted these systems and actually received the air handler, painful inside installation of the air handler, condenser, and straighforward installation of the condenser for $12,000.)
So there may be some precedent for ‘replacement theory’ after all?
Wampanoag Sachem Maintonomo took a hard line on illegal immigration but he got killed in what would be known as the King Philip War. That’s probably why we’ve erased him, except for some street signs.
When I graduated from HS in the early ’80s from my mid-size public high school 25 miles north of Boston, my city (pop. 60K) was 2% black, 4% Hispanic (Puerto Rican) and 94% ethnic Whites. Today, it’s 5% black, 25% Hispanic, and 70% White. The other day, the young Mexican Medical Assistant at my FL PCP’s office (grew up in Nashua) called my hometown “Little-Puerto Rico” and stated that it was so bad that she wouldn’t go there.
“Here’s old white guy/Senator Ed Markey at the Malden Islamic Center”
He looks pathetic.