[dominostars]

White Christians are losing their supermajority status in an increasingly ethnically diverse America. Even though white christians will continue to be the largest racial group for a long time, the shifting demographics feel very visceral by increased minority representation in media and politics. This has spurred a lot of racial anxiety.

There was a study done where people were primed by reading news articles about America becoming a "majority minority" country (e.g. white people as a group will no longer represent > 50% of the full population). Reading these articles causes white people to hold more favorable opinions of conservative policies across the board. However, if the articles included statements along the lines of, "But white people will remain as powerful", those conservative shifts go away. Further studies show this same effect across ethnic groups (e.g. Black people reading about growing Hispanic populations). The central takeaway is: when people feel like the status of their identity group is under threat, they become more conservative.

While racial anxiety can be assuaged, popular conservative media in America, like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al, do all that's in their power to inflame these anxieties. And while these anxieties all existed before Trump, Trump was the first major presidential candidate in recent memory to stoke these fires so directly (John McCain and Mitt Romney both famously refused to do so, John McCain by shutting down the "Barack is a Muslim" rhetoric at a town hall, and Mitt Romney refusing to campaign using racial anxiety even though he was showed polling that it would be effective). Trump getting elected has subsequently emboldened a lot of racially anxious people who finally have someone they can rally behind. You know, "someone who isn't afraid" to make the claim that people immigrating from Mexico are rapists and murderers.

And so here we are.

There's a whole other dimension about how damaging spending all day in internet communities can be for emotional health, how lonely a lot of young people are, and how groups like ISIS and white supremacists take advantage of these people by offering them community and subsequently radicalizing them. I'd expand but I'm lazy and I'm just another dumbass on the internet anyway.