Lawrence Auster and Immigration and Race

Lawrence Auster, a prominent paleoconservative of Jewish descent, wrote something interesting in terms of why he insists on speaking in terms of race when his primary concern is cultural. A reader asked,

When reading your blog, I am struck by the number of times you and others talk about the “white race” or a “white majority.” You seem fixated on race.

However, the battle we are fighting has little to do with “race” and everything to do with “culture.”

Auster explained,

A massive number of people of different race fundamentally changes the whole society. Then it becomes a matter, not of individuals joining a culture, but of one group and its culture replacing another group and its culture.

This distinction is all important. You must understand it if you are to understand the immigration problem.

If you don’t get the distinction between a few people and a lot of people, you are going to go on believing the neoconservative fantasy that you can transform an entire country from a 100 percent or a 90 percent white country to a majority nonwhite country and everything is going to remain the same. You’re not going to see the reality of, for example, the Mexican invasion, in which Mexicans are involved in a national/racial takeover of major parts of the U.S., in which they, the Mexicans, are conscious of themselves gaining power as a group, and of the whites as losing power.

To me, this seems to imply that according to Auster, race is primarily (in terms of immigrant threat) a divider between cultural and group identities. Still, could not the same thing happen between those of a similar (even exactly the same) race? For instance, when haredim move into and take over a formerly secular and Modern Orthodox neighborhood, the same dynamics without a disparate racial ingredient play out in a similar fashion in terms of cultural takeover.

If we accept that, then the question remains, why talk (primarily) in terms of race?

Update: Mr. Auster replied in the comments section that,

Why does the Kvetcher assume the most simplistic possible interpretation of my position? Have I ever said or remotely implied that race is the only basis for division between people? The human world is organized into all kinds of larger wholes–family, ethnicity, culture, race, religion, nation, civilization, political philosophy, economic class, and on and on. Divisions can occur along any of these divides.

But among these divides, and among the most intractable, is race. And when you have large, conspicuosly different racial groups inhabiting the same society which is lacking an unquestioned majority culture, serious culture/racial conflict is inevitable. A society must have a recognized majority culture and people if it is to thrive and survive.