Outside of a few places like the US, people care a hell of a lot about the genetics. Try putting Africans in India, or Japanese in China, and so on, there is no such thing as the melting pot in the vast majority of the world.
They don't care about genetics. They just dislike specific groups of people. Which ones is largely arbitrary and has more to do with history than genetics. Some places also have a much narrower "in-group" than others, again largely as a result of history. In some cases the "in-group" doesn't even include all the groups of people that historically live in the same territory, e.g. present-day China has significant undertones of Han nationalism or India with Hindu nationalism, despite both countries being geographically huge and ethnically diverse.
In the moment, aside from historical preconditions, the largest factor to how narrow this in-group is and how strong the dislike towards those not in it is, is mostly a matter of perceived scarcity and danger. As every good business owner knows, the best way to distract an employee from how small their share of the profits is, is to dangle a more desperate group in front of them as a scapegoat. Give someone your scraps, then make them deathly afraid others want to take it away from them, and they won't dare to ask for more (or solidarize with others against you - racism was one of the biggest cudgels against unions in the early 20th century US before simply framing unions as communist became an option).
>It really depends how you define what a people is.
Not at all, not unless you use some Orwellian tactics to completely redefine what an ethnic group is.
>Geographically, it's obviously not replacement. "People lived here, now people live here" is just continuity.
A geographic area is not a "people" nor an ethnic group. Shoving more people into the landmass we know as Japan may be good for the economy of the landmass, but it won't be good for the ethnic group we call the Japanese.
>Genetically, who cares.
Common ancestry is one of the core attributes of ethnic groups. The Japanese people and ethnologists care
>Culturally, that's up to the people.
"If we replace the Japanese with Appalachian Whites, it's up to the people to decide if they're being replaced or not."
Yes, you made my point for me: if you replace the Japanese with foreigners, they are being replaced.
> "If we replace the Japanese with Appalachian Whites, it's up to the people to decide if they're being replaced or not."
Basically true. An awful lot of Americans, for example, don't see it as "replacement" when people from Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, Spain, or wherever come join them. Their cultural identity isn't defined very tightly at all by who their parents were. This is not universally true in the country, of course, and some of the larger political fights are over this notion.
If Japan feels much more strongly that ancestry matters profoundly, well, that's going to be a rub for them moving forward.
But beliefs are malleable and it will ultimately be up to them.
Not at all, not unless you use some Orwellian tactics to completely redefine what ethnic replacement is.
>An awful lot of Americans, for example, don't see it as "replacement" when people from Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, Spain, or wherever come join them.
Just because there's a large group that's delusional or willfully ignorant to what's happening doesn't make it true. An awful lot of Americans think men can get pregnant, or climate change isn't anthropogenic or happening at all. They're being replaced whether they bury their head in the sand or not.
>Their cultural identity isn't defined very tightly at all by who their parents were.
Of course it is, just like it is in Japan. Your common ancestry and common ancestral grounds are core attributes of what we call ethnic groups.
>This is not universally true in the country, of course, and some of the larger political fights are over this notion.
As covered above, it's true whether one side believes it or not. No doubt it's become a large political fight from what I've seen. I agree with you there.
>If Japan feels much more strongly that ancestry matters profoundly, well, that's going to be a rub for them moving forward.
We do. Many countries in Asia and around the world do, which is why many of them (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) are ethnically homogeneous.
> not unless you use some Orwellian tactics to completely redefine
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
But I'm not really interested in tugging on this thread because it's extremely tedious to argue definitions of words in a language where the dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive.
> They're being replaced
You can't replace a culture via immigration that has, as a cornerstone, "Come join us." That's like saying the population of a school has been "replaced" because it graduated an entire generation of students and a new generation is there now. The relevant continuity is unchanged.
One way out for Japan would be to shift their cornerstones. If that's not on the table, if a younger generation unserved by the status quo can't find a way to put it on the table... Good luck.
We both know exactly what it means and it's clear that its aptness bugs you.
>But I'm not really interested in tugging on this thread because it's extremely tedious to argue definitions of words in a language where the dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive.
I'm not interested in it either, but it's clear: the definition and proscriptive usage doesn't suit your narrative.
>You can't replace a culture via immigration that has, as a cornerstone, "Come join us."
Yes you absolutely can. If you replace the "come join us" leftist people with ISIS, surprise surprise, you've been replaced. QED.
>That's like saying the population of a school has been "replaced" because it graduated an entire generation of students and a new generation is there now.
This is a hilariously not well thought out example because it actually proves my point. Yes, if you replace the population of a school with a different ethnic group, you're replacing the original ethnic group. This is like saying if the trout population in a stream goes down, and you replace the dwindling population with salmon, "the relevant continuity [of fish] is unchanged." You've kept the fish population the same, but you replaced the trout with salmon (who are not native there). Thanks for proving my point. QED.
>One way out for Japan would be to shift their cornerstones.
Or maybe Japan doesn't need "a way out".
>If that's not on the table, if a younger generation unserved by the status quo can't find a way to put it on the table... Good luck.
Homogenous nations will do fine, even if they upset your IMMIGRATION and unlimited capitalism pyramid scheme Gods.
Replaced? No. For the most part native Americans were murdered. Some, quite blatantly, sometimes with literal bounties being set on their heads but more often than not just like a regular "pest" or "dangerous wildlife". Others, more indirectly, through famines brought on by destruction of their food storages or culling of their hunting grounds. And even more died from plagues. They were also repeatedly strongarmed into contracts which were then broken after they had held up their end of the bargain. And of course there were many cases (as recently as the last century) where their children were forcibly removed and placed into Christian boarding schools to "kill the savage, save the child".
I know you probably like to use all of these things as fanciful metaphors to support your argument that "natives" (white people or the Japanese) are now being "replaced" by (incidentally Black and brown) immigrants but these weren't metaphors, these were the real deal. By alluding to these things as metaphors you're masking the real scale and character of these historical atrocities.