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The first results of the delayed 2020 census are on the horizon and have made celebratory headlines in the mainstream media.

Big conclusion: Between 2010 and 2021, the American white population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the proportion of whites in the American population fell from 63% to less than 58%.

As The Washington Post reported, between 1990 and 2020:

African Americans made up about 12% of the population. Hispanics doubled their participation from 9% to almost 19% and Asians went from less than 3% to more than 6%.

What about white Americans? In those three decades, whites fell from three-quarters of the American population to less than three-fifths.

Bottom line: Racially and ethnically, we are becoming an increasingly diverse nation, causing widespread rejoicing among those who consider it an article of faith that “Our diversity is our strength.”

But is that cliché true? Where is the scientific, historical, or empirical evidence for the proposition that the greater the religious, racial, tribal, and ethnic diversity of a nation, the stronger it becomes?

To put it mildly, this is not a universal belief.

Our great rival China, for example, obviously fears such diversity.

China’s ideology is communism, and rival belief systems like Christianity and Falun Gong are suppressed, as are the Hong Kong Democrats. Conformity, not diversity, is the desired condition.

In terms of racial and ethnic diversity, Tibetans and Uighurs are subjected to methods of forced assimilation that are rightly considered crimes against humanity and cultural and ethnic genocide.

But while China’s methods of stifling diversity are often criminal, Beijing’s fears are not unjustified.

In Xinjiang, there are Uyghurs seeking to separate and establish a new East Turkestan nation. In addition, China saw up close what ethnic and tribal diversity did to its neighbor, the Soviet Union.

Three decades ago, the USSR divided along ethno-national lines into 15 nations. Since then, Moscow has fought two wars to prevent Chechnya from breaking free, fought Georgia to prevent its re-annexation of the ethnic enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and aided a Russified minority in Donbas in their drive to secede from Ukraine.

Last year, Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, attacked and amputated the former Soviet republic of Armenia.

In Africa, tribal diversity has once again separated Ethiopia: the Eritreans separated in 1993 and the Tigray forces now seek to separate.

Among the most diverse nations in the Middle East is Lebanon. Arabs and Druze, Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites: their diversity has proven to be a factor in their disintegration and descent into the state of a failed state.

But let’s go back to the United States.

Is the United States a stronger, better, and more united nation and people than we were under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, when 90% of the American population was of European descent, almost all spoke English and the African Americans were the greatest and in fact? practically the only major minority?

How have our deepening racial and ethnic divisions strengthened us?

Consider the causes and issues that have been tearing us apart for the past year: George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, Portland, Critical Race Theory, White Privilege, Systemic Racism, “The 1619 Project,” Statues of Robert E. Lee, Voter Crackdown, Jim Crow 2.0, Hate Crimes Against Asians.

Crossing our southern border today, in an invasion with almost no resistance from the Biden administration, are migrants coming not only from Latin America but also from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Without a doubt, these migrants, who entered illegally in July at a rate of 220,000 that month, add to our racial and ethnic diversity.

But does their numbers and presence here add to our strength? Does your presence help make us a more perfect union?

Apparently the more diverse we have become, the less united we have become, even over public displays of patriotism: the American flag, the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance. Neither our history, vacations and heroes unite us as before.

But if 2 million migrants from around the world – the number anticipated in President Joe Biden’s first year – are good for America, why not open the floodgates and bring in even more?

Is Europe getting stronger and better as migration diversifies from Africa and the Arab and Islamic world around the Mediterranean?

From the visceral retreat of the peoples of Europe, the opposite seems true.

Greece, Italy and Spain use every means they can devise to prevent the peoples of the global South from heading north towards Europe.

In fact, it is difficult to find a country where religious, racial and ethnic diversity contributes more to its strength and unity than to the forces of division, separation and secession. That’s one of the reasons the UN General Assembly that started with 51 nations now has 193.

Racial, ethnic, tribal, ideological and cultural diversity are the wedges of the history of national division, separation and secession, as we are discovering.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “The Nixon White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broken a President and Divided America Forever.”